Eleanore Kelly Sellars (1903-1972) is another author who dabbled briefly in mysteries and then moved on to other pursuits. Her sole contribution to the genre is an energetic glimpse into life in an exclusive Fifth Avenue department store including all the work needed to plan, promote, and implement a fashion show with dozens of models displaying haute couture to a crowd of well-off prospective buyers. Sellars imbued her characters with authenticity, as she worked in the advertising section of a department store just like her protagonist Debby Wood.
Wood is invited at the last minute to a working weekend at the home of the department store’s president Martin Cole, where plans for the year’s advertising would be discussed. She knows she needs to look her best in front of the executives so she scrambled to find an appropriate evening gown. She was delighted to locate the perfect dress at one of the store’s suppliers until she met her hostess that evening and found her in the same designer outfit. This social misfortune is a great set-up for the plot: when Mrs. Cole is shot later, it wasn’t clear if the killer meant to shoot her or to shoot Debby.
The cast of characters, all from the store, is sizable with the alliances and rivalries of any large workplace, and the familiar commercial setting contributes to the readability of the book. In the style of the best traditional mystery the most likely suspect for the murder becomes the second victim and the third murder just makes things even more complicated, as the detectives try to sort out alibis for three different times and places. Sellars had exceptional plotting skill for a debut author. She understood how to plant clues and conceal the culprit while deploying a red herring suspect or two. In the end the killer was a complete surprise to me.
For her efforts Sellars won the Dodd, Mead Red Badge prize of $1000 for the best mystery by a new author in 1941. (That’s a little over $21,000 in 2024 dollars.) In its 6 October 1941 issue TIME Magazine reviewed it along with three other mysteries, calling it “cleverly constructed” with an “authentic big business background.” The book appeared as the Sunday novel in several newspapers including The Washington Post and The Philadelphia Record on 19 April 1942. For fans of fashion-oriented or corporate mysteries especially (think Emma Lathen’s John Putnam Thatcher books) and anyone who enjoys classic crime fiction.