Mabel Seeley

Mabel Seeley (née Hodnefield) (March 25, 1903 Herman, Minnesota - 1991) was an American mystery writer.

Her family moved to St. Paul in 1920 where she attended Mechanic Arts High School and graduated summa cum laude from University of Minnesota. In 1926 she married fellow student Kenneth Seeley and they moved to Chicago, 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 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 and served on its first Board of Directors. In the late 1940s she and her son Gregory moved to California. 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.

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 25/50 (4 February 1950) : 95
The Stranger Beside Me (1951)
The Whistling Shadow (also published as The Blonde with the Deadly Past) (1954)