In 1938 America was in the last years of the Great Depression. People were returning to work, but disposable income was scarce. Consumers wanted to get the most for their dollar, so not everyone had the funds or was willing to spend the two to three dollars required to buy a hardcover novel. They bought True Confessions, Blue Book or Argosy, instead. Even so, Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts RinehArt, Rex Stout and Dashiel Hammett were household names with thousands of readers waiting impatiently for their next novel. 1938 was also the year when Mabel Seeley, a diminuitive woman from Minnesota, published her first novel, The Listening House.
In the Listening House, the first of seven novels, she has her heroine walking into a house where the corpse of the mysterious Mrs. Garr has died. In a quote from The Girl Detective website, The Hall wasn't in viting. It smelled old gas. It smelled animals confined to cellars. The ghosts of long-fried dinners, the acridity of long-burned cigarettes haunted the air that was a thicker, foggier dark than the day outside; a murk that might have been the grime of the grime of the outside walls floated loose and suspended in the halls. What a way to set a scene, eh?
She also had a knack for coming up with believable characters. Her heroines weren't fluff from a romance magazine but real people. SmArt, hard-working and self-reliant, they didn't climb dark stairways with a candle in their hands to find out what caused that strange sound that came from the attic. But they're certainly up to going to a resort in Northern Minnesota to babysit for a hunky but mysterious man and his son. The only Seeley book I was ever able to locate was The Crying Sisters. The hero ine is a librarian who is offered a substantial amount of money to look after a young boy. Janet accepts, but cannot understand where her counterpArt disappears to at night. And why does he refuse to talk about it? Janet has a sharp wit and the repArtee between the main characters has a great edge to it. The only thing I questioned in the book is why the hero would think that she would be thrilled to keep her charge if anything happened to him. Even more surprising, why didn't she call him on it! I also remember being pleased with the ending.
Mabel Seeley was popular, but never reached the panoply of mystery-writers deities. Her books got positive reviews in the New York Times and Atlantic Monthy. She was in the Mary Roberts RinehArt school, and unfortunately became associated with the had I but known Gothic movement. Her stories generally began with the main character reflecting on an ordeal she had suffered and wondering how she survived. She used creepy settings, but didn't brood obsessively over them the way so many in the HIBK school did.
Besides The Listening House and The Crying Sisters, Seeley also wrote The Whispering Cup, The Chuckling Fingers, Eleven Came Back, The Beckoning Door and the Whistling Shade. She retired in 1954 to devote her time to her marriage. I intend to read all her books as they again become available.
John Anderson is a devoted mystery reader and recently a mystery writer. His novel, The Cellini Masterpiece, was published under the pen name of Raymond John. If you have a question or comment about the Article or his book, he will be very pleased to repond to queries at his website, http://www.cmasterpiece.com.
Author:: John Anderson
Keywords:: Mabel Seeley, mysteries set in Minnesota
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