About Mabel

Mabel Seeley (née Hodnefield) (March 25, 1903 Herman, Minnesota – 1991) was an American mystery writer who wrote ten novels between 1938 and 1954, all period pieces set in the Midwest. Often referred to as “the Mistress of Mystery,” Seeley’s work included the acclaimed The Crying Sisters (1939) and seven other mysteries. In the 30’s and 40’s, she was heralded as the most popular crime writer of the century, receiving rave reviews from such arbiters of literary fashion as the New York Times, the Saturday Review and the New Yorker, as well as the Mystery of the Year award in 1941 for The Chuckling Fingers. Literary critic James Gray once described her as “a high priestess in the cult of murder as a fine art.” Her novels were published by Doubleday and HarpersCollins and distributed globally by The Crime Club. She was also an early member of the Mystery Writers of America and served on its first board of directors.

Early Years

Seeley’s family moved to St. Paul in 1920 when her father, a teacher, got a job at the Minnesota Historical Society. Her mother was a natural storyteller, “so I started life with a book in my hand and well-said words in my ears,” she once wrote. Seeley attended Mechanic Arts High School and was encouraged to write by an English teacher. As a result, she contributed some work to the school’s literary magazine. Mabel once wrote about her decision to get serious about writing. She was crossing a busy street, was almost hit by a speeding car, and thought, “Here I’m going to die and I haven’t written any books.” She would eventually pen ten titles, eight of them mysteries, all set in Minnesota.

Seeley won a St. Paul College scholarship and graduated summa cum laude with honors from the University of Minnesota in 1926. She married fellow student Kenneth Seeley and they moved to Chicago. This was short lived as her husband was diagnosed with tuberculosis and they move to the woods of Minnesota where she became a mother to their son, Gregory. Their marriage was difficult and they divorced. Mabel moved back to the city where she began writing advertising copy for a department store; an experience she used as background for the heroine in her first novel. After seven years she quit, planning never again to write. But within a year, she had started The Listening House (1938), a mystery set in a seedy St. Paul roaming house.

The Listening House (1938)

The hall wasn’t inviting. It smelled of old gas. It smelled of 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 gray day outside; a murk that might have been the grime of the outside walls floated loose and suspended in the hall. Ahead a rectangle of lighter gray showed the door of a room on the right, farther ahead on the right glowered a doorway into pitch-blackness.

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