Marian Babson is a pseudonym for Ruth Stenstreem. who was born in 1929 in Salem, Massachusetts but has spent most of her adult life in London. She worked a variety of jobs as a librarian, as a den mother to a firm of commercial artists, as a campaign headquarters manager, and as coeditor of a knitting machine magazine despite the fact she can't knit. Eventually, she turned to writing mysteries, penning over 30 novels (the last in 1999) and served for ten years as secretary of the Crime Writers Association, from 1976 to 1986.
The publisher's tagline for her books is "Murder Most British," which indicates the "cozy" or traditional tone of her writing. Babson re-uses some characters in her novels, including aging actresses Trixie Dolan and Evangeline Sinclair and the publicity firm of Douglas Perkins & Gerry Tate, although even the series books can be read in any order. Many of her novels, especially the Perkins & Tate series, involve cats, with such titles as Canapes For The Kitties and Miss Petunia's Last Case.
But Babson also wrote standalone suspense novels like Murder Sails at Midnight (1975), a closed-setting-style plot, in which the action all takes place aboard a cruise ship. Four wealthy women sail from New York to Genoa aboard the luxury liner Beatrice Cenci in first-class. We learn early on that another passenger, "Mr. Butler," has been hired to make sure one of the women doesn't finish the voyage. The book thus becomes not a "who dunnit," but a "who will get it," because we don't know the identity of the intended victim, although each woman has secrets and also individuals in their lives who would benefit from their deaths.
Babson's writing has been described as possessing a coolly amused, ironic voice, much in evidence in Murder Sails at Midnight, which has a more serious tone than her Dolan/Sinclair and Perkins/Tate books. As to how she came up with the idea for the book, Babson wrote in an essay for Mystery Readers Journal that she was an avid traveler and had freqently taken cruises:
"Death, if not murder, is part of shipboard life. Sadly, by the very nature of things quite a few passengers tend to be elderly and not always in the best of health. Two of them died on one of my recent voyages."
She also experienced ship bomb threats, as well as sailing through the tag-end of a hurricane and "man overboard" scenarios. She added,
"A friend of mine once told me, 'I love to listen to your travel stories -- but I never want to travel with you.' I don't blame her. There are times when I don't want to travel with me, either, but what choice do I have? On the other hand, look at all the material I collect."
Marian Babson remains one of my guilty pleasures. Her books have always been entertaining.
Posted by: Jerry House | September 07, 2012 at 01:34 PM
Even the praise-resistant Kirkus Reviews gave several of her works positive feedback, so you're not alone in your enjoyment of Babson's humorous mysteries, Jerry! "Murder Sails at Midnight" is actually far less humorous than her others and more out of her usual fare.
Posted by: BV Lawson | September 07, 2012 at 02:41 PM