The News included illustrated serialized fiction on its pages. Patterson’s wife, Mary King Patterson, was the fiction editor for the Tribune syndicate. She bought novels from popular writers of mysteries and light fiction such as Faith Baldwin, Agatha Christie, Mignon G. Eberhart and Rex Stout. The April 14 issue of the paper included the latest installment in the serial "The Laughing Detective,"a mystery by Rupert Hughes, a once popular and prolific writer of light fiction, as well as an historian and Hollywood screenwriter. Hughes is remembered today, if at all, as the uncle of Howard Hughes.