Mabel Seeley (March 25, 1903 Herman, Minnesota

Herman, Minnesota

Herman is a city in Grant County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 437 at the 2010 census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all of it land....

 - 1991) was an American mystery writer.

Her family moved to St. Paul

Saint Paul, Minnesota

Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...

 in 1920 where she attended Mechanic Arts High School and graduated summa cum laude from University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

. In 1926 she married fellow student Kenneth Seeley and they moved to Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, where she wrote advertising copy for a department store. This experience she used as background of the heroine in her first book, The Listening House. The Seeleys returned to Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 for medical treatment when Ken contracted tuberculosis, but they later divorced. The Chuckling Fingers won the Mystery of the Year award in 1941. In 1945 she was an early member of the Mystery Writers of America

Mystery Writers of America

Mystery Writers of America is an organization for mystery writers, based in New York.The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday....

 and served on its first Board of Directors. In the late 1940s she and her son Gregory moved to California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. In 1954, while in the East to promote her last book, The Whistling Shadow, Mabel Seeley met lawyer Henry Ross. They married two years later and settled in New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

.

Books

• The Listening House (1938)
• The Crying Sisters (1939)
• The Whispering Cup (1940)
• The Chuckling Fingers (1941)
• Sealed-Room Murder (1941)
• Eleven Came Back (1943)
• Woman of Property (1947)
• The Beckoning Door (1950)
  • Briefly noted in The New Yorker
    The New Yorker
    The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
    
    25/50 (4 February 1950) : 95
• The Stranger Beside Me (1951)
• The Whistling Shadow (also published as The Blonde with the Deadly Past) (1954)

External links

• Mabel Seeley - A Classic Mystery Author Rediscovered