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Holding, Elisabeth Sanxay

Page history last edited by Jon 12 years, 5 months ago

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (1889-1955) was born and brought up in New York and educated at Miss Whitcombe's and other schools for young ladies. In 1913 she married George Holding, a British diplomat. They had two daughters and lived in various South American countries, and then in Bermuda, where her husband was a government official. Elisabeth Sanxay Holding wrote six romantic novels in the 1920s but, after the stock market crash, turned to the more profitable genre of detective novels: from 1929-54 she wrote eighteen, as well as numerous short stories for magazines. In 1949 Raymond Chandler chose her as 'the best character and suspense writer (for consistent but not large production)', picking The Blank Wall (1947) as one of his favourites among her books; it was filmed as The Reckless Moment in 1949 (by Max Ophuls) and as The Deep End (with Tilda Swinton) in 2001. After her husband's retirement the Holdings lived in New York City. Her series character was Lieutenant Levy.

The Blank Wall is available from Persephone Books.

Mike Grost on Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Elizabeth Sanxay Holding's World War II spy tales show the same tough minded analysis of Nazism as Helen McCloy's works. She roots Nazism in hatred of women ("The Kiskadee Bird") and racism ("The Blue Envelope", 1944). These stories appeared in slick magazines (Cosmopolitan and Colliers, respectively) that had large woman readerships. "The Kiskadee Bird" is especially powerful in its feminist concerns. Both authors also look at the mass disturbance of civilian life churned up by the Nazis. Holding later used the setting of "The Kiskadee Bird", the imaginary Caribbean island of Puerto Azul, for such EQMM stories as "People Do Fall Downstairs" (1947).

"The Unbelievable Baroness" (1945) is another spy story set on a Caribbean Island. It is a little lighter in tone and more escapist than "The Kiskadee Bird". It is a genuine mystery tale, and a good one. Instead of a single well defined event, such as murder that needs to be explained, the story focuses on a bewildering tangle of mysterious little events. None of these is as sinister as a murder, but they plunge the reader into a situation that is hard to understand or explain. Eventually, Holding comes up with logical explanations for everything. This approach of plunging the reader into a bewildering situation that reaches a satisfying explanation recalls Mary Roberts Rinehart. So do Holding's strong women characters.