A Modern Wizard

Rodrigues Ottolengui was the leading dental editor of the early 20th century, an orthodontist, a successful novelist, and a respected entomologist. Neither Angle-trained nor a specialist, Ottolengui's heritage was both in dentistry and journalism, and he was to fulfill both these callings admirably. He was born in Charleston, SC, on March 15, 1861, 4 weeks before the outbreak of the Civil War and in the first state to secede. His father was a newspaperman and playwright, and his mother was an author. Ottolengui practiced the dental profession for over 50 years. Early in his career he began to read detective stories; because, as he said, "these stories help to increase the analytical quality of the mind." Then he started writing stories in this genre and ultimately wrote 6 novels. Ottolengui's first novel, THE ARTIST IN CRIME, was translated into French, German, and Polish. In PHOENIX OF CRIME, he described how a dead person could be identified by his teeth. Five years later, a corpse floating in the river near Yonkers, NY, was identified by the sheriff of that county who had read the book and had a dentist chart her teeth. Thus was born the science of forensic dentistry. The SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE called Ottolengui "the dental counterpart... of England's physician crime solver, Dr Conan Doyle." Ellery Queen described him as "one of the most neglected authors in the entire history of the detective story."