Cozy Case Files

1936 – 2019

Marion Chesney was born in 1936 in Glasgow, Scotland. Her first job was a bookseller in charge of the fiction department in John Smith & Sons Ltd. While working there, the Scottish Daily Mail hired her to review variety shows; she quickly rose to be their theatre critic. She left Smith’s to work as a secretary--albeit without typing or shorthand skills--in the advertising department of Scottish Field magazine but was soon the fashion editor instead. She moved to the Scottish Daily Express, where she reported mostly on crime, then to Fleet Street and the Daily Express, where she was their chief woman reporter. Marion married Harry Scott Gibbons, and they had a son, Charles. Harry was offe…