mals 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 thIn 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 inviting. 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

o 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 inviting. 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 th

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 inviting. 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 th

he 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 inviting. 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 thmals 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 heroine 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