British writer Maureen Sarsfield had all the tools necessary to make it as a major mystery writer, but after publishing just three novels—two of which were mysteries—between 1945 and 1948, she completely disappeared from the literary landscape. Whether she died young, commenced her short career at an advanced age or simply grew tired of the writing life is unknown. The biographical copy on the dust jacket of the American edition of Green December Fills the Graveyard (reprinted here as Murder at Shots Hall) merely identifies her as a new writer, making no comment on her age. Many of the characters in her three novels are in their thirties or forties, and she writes so believably about the sensibilities and attitudes of that age group that she herself probably either belonged to it or had recently entered the early stages of middle age.

Although other mystery writers had been known to give up the form after gaining financial independence (Anthony Berkeley and Ernest Bramah in Britain and Phoebe Atwood Taylor in the United States spring immediately to mind), it seems odd that Sarsfield would have retired after only two mysteries, especially since she began publishing at a time when it was somewhat unusual for an unknown British writer to be picked up so quickly by a U.S. publisher. There is no evidence that her books, although widely reviewed, made much of a splash in the U.S. Other than an appearance in 1950 in Two Complete Detective Novels (a pulp magazine) by Green December Fills the Graveyard, her books seem not to have been reprinted. Her one mainstream book, the very British Gloriana, a look at the bickering inhabitants of a neighborhood in London awaiting the arrival of the young woman title character, failed to attract an American publisher. She also published a number of children’s books under the name Maureen Pretyman but these also stopped in 1948.

Her choice of titles for her mystery books may have been partly to blame for what we assume were unimpressive sales. Green December Fills the Graveyard is not only a mouthful but perhaps a bit too literary. Her second and final mystery was published under equally nondescript titles on either side of the Atlantic: in Britain as A Dinner for None and in the U.S. as A Party for Lawty. We make no apologies for giving both mysteries somewhat more genre-driven titles (we have retitled her second mystery Murder at Beechlands). However, while dull titles and mediocre sales would immediately condemn a mystery author to literary oblivion in today’s cutthroat publishing world, in the 1940s publishers gave their writers more time to develop an audience, which makes it all the more puzzling why there were no further books from an author who achieved the critical success that Sarsfield did. This is, of course, pure speculation. All our efforts, going back several years, to discover anything at all about Sarsfield have failed. Hopefully, the republication of her two mysteries will rectify this situation.

Those two mysteries are gems of the British school. Both feature the fortyish Lane Parry, a Scotland Yard detective who twice finds evil deeds in the backwaters of Sussex. Parry is a complex and well-drawn character, yet it is Flikka Ashley, a 36-year-old sculptor, who dominates the action and the minds—at least of the male characters—in Murder at Shots Hall. You would be hard pressed to find another nonseries character in the crime fiction of that era who so completely steals the stage from the investigating sleuth. What is even more remarkable is that she manages to do so in a book that is filled with so many fully realized subordinate players. Adding to the virtuosity of Sarsfield’s debut is her ability to move smoothly and efficiently from one point of view to another. 

Eccentric characters also abound in Murder at Beechlands, whose plot and setting are very much in the Agatha Christie tradition. When Parry’s car fails him during a raging snowstorm, he seeks shelter at a private country hotel, where the murdered body of one of the guests has been ejected from the premises via an upstairs window. Cut off from his usual police assistants by the blizzard, Parry functions almost more like an amateur sleuth than a Scotland Yard detective. In addition to the Christie-like setting, the characters trapped in the hotel may remind you of the inhabitants of Gosford Park, the recent Oscar-nominated period mystery film from Robert Altman.

One can only speculate where Sarsfield’s career would have gone had she continued in the vein of these two books. Even so, she made her mark on the field. If the brevity of her career prevented her from becoming one of the masters of the field, she stands, as W. Somerset Maugham so honestly described himself, in the front rank of the second raters.

Tom & Enid Schantz
June 2003