Louisa O'Malley

In the novel The Clocks,  Louisa O'Malley is an American crime writer. Hercule Poirot has been spending his retirement reading crime fiction. He tells Colin Lamb that he regards American crime fiction highly. It is "more ingenious, more imaginative" than English writing and "less atmospheric and over-laden with atmosphere than the French. He gives Louisa O'Malley as an example. He thinks she is a very good author, with fine scholarly writing which, at the same time, manages to evoke what excitement and mounting apprehension in her reader.