Elaine Mathilda Sandberg was born in Emeigh Run, Pennsylvania, on November 28, 1911, and relocated with her family to Akron, Ohio, in 1919. She died in Deerfield Beach, Florida, on 7 January 1987. See her full obituary here: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/1987/01/11/i-shriber-author-of-mysteries/.
The Akron Beacon Journal ran an informative interview on Shriber on May 27, 1951.
Between 1940 and 1953 she wrote 11 mysteries, eight of them featuring Lt. Bill Grady. For a change, all of the usual sources concur with titles and order of publication.
The seventh was Pattern for Murder (Farrar & Rinehart, 1944). Katy Sturtevant travels to Cleveland from Boston to be the maid of honor in her college roommate’s wedding. She’d last seen Shannon Meade two years previously when all Shannon could talk about was Mark Frost. Katy is understandably confused when she learns Shannon is marrying her guardian, a doctor twice her age, and Mark is married to the doctor’s daughter.
There’s a good-sized cast of characters, including Shannon’s aunt and Shannon’s cousin, the doctor’s sister who is confined to her bed as she recovers from a fall, the nurse who is caring for the sister, a Chinese missionary, and the family lawyer. None of them seem to get along, and the doctor’s daughter has a drinking problem. So when the doctor turns up dead just before the wedding, Bill Grady and his assistants find themselves sorting out the relationships in the strange household and verifying alibis that can’t be confirmed.
Set in 1943, during the height of World War II, there are references to rationing gasoline, vehicles with A, B, or C tags in their windows, and men waiting for their orders to a military post. Trains are still the primary mode of long-distance transportation, and women still wore hats. Drinking seems to be their primary pastime. Katy says early that Scotch isn’t available in Boston and someone tells her they have plenty in Cleveland due to the black market.
As Steve Lewis points out in his review on Mystery*File, the scenario of an outsider viewing a dysfunctional group was common in 1940s crime fiction. https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=57990/ He had more to say about the Grady series in a later post, https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=63201 Shriber likes to foreshadow events and point out important clues, for instance saying two things occurred one afternoon that would be significant later on.
I found myself going down a bunny trail when the nurse introduced herself as Miss Dinsmore, Martha, she says, not Elsie, a reference to a religious girl’s series written by Martha Finley between 1867 and 1905. I was surprised to see the mention, considering the books were at least 40 years old at the time the mystery was written. They were unavailable for a long time but they became popular again in the 1990s when the Christian fundamentalist movement took hold. The books were reprinted and then were (wisely) re-considered. See one analysis here: https://www.reddit.com/r/FundieSnarkUncensored/comments/xcw3xj/harmful_fundie_childrens_literature_elsie/ and another one, from a former publisher of the series, here: https://www.exodusbooks.com/elsie-dinsmore/7457/
Which takes me far from the current topic: Shriber’s book. I agree with Steve, after a leisurely start, it turned out to be a good mystery, with some clever clues, plenty of misdirection, and a surprise culprit despite a writing quirk or two. The characters and scenario remind me a bit of the earlier Lockridge mysteries. I found it an easy read and plan to locate more of her work. A publisher looking for reprint candidates should consider Shriber.