Mabel Hodnefield Seeley (1903-1991) was an American mystery author. She lived in Minnesota and wrote seven mysteries between 1938 and 1954, all of them period pieces set in the Midwest. Seeley was born in Herman Minnesota and educated at the University of Minnesota, St Paul. In 1920 her father, Jacob Hodnefield, took a job as newspaper curator at the Minnesota Historical Society. In 1926 Mabel married Kenneth Seeley, and moved to Chicago, where she wrote advertising copy while her husband worked on a master's degree. The Seeleys returned to the Twin Cities for medical treatment when Ken contracted tuberculosis, but they later divorced. Mabel went on to become famous for her mystery novels, and by the late 1940s she and her young son Gregory were resettled in California.

In 1954, while in the East to promote her last book, The Whistling Shadow, Mabel Seeley met lawyer Henry Ross whom she married two years later. When asked many years later why his wife had stopped writing, Ross told a reporter: "She married me. Writing is hard work, and . . . she liked being married better." She was extremely intelligent, extremely generous, a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother.

Reissues of four of Mabel Seeley's books are available from Afton Press. See here for a longer review of her work.

Bibliography

The Listening House (1939)

The Crying Sisters (1940)

The Whispering Cup (1941)

Sealed-Room Murder (1941)

The Chuckling Fingers (1942)

Eleven Came Back (1943)

The Beckoning Door (1950)

The Whistling Shadow (1954)