Ruth Burr Sanborn (1894-1942) was an industrious author during her short life, producing short stories, novels, and book reviews. Her papers are held in the Harvard Library archives, which offers the following biography:
“Ruth Burr Sanborn, author, was born in Woodville, New Hampshire on July 13, 1894, the daughter of Wilbur J. and Julia E. (Hobart) Sanborn. Her family moved to Framingham in 1900, and Sanborn attended the public schools and was graduated from Framingham High School in 1914. She received both her A.B., magna cum laude in 1918, and her A.M., in 1922, from Radcliffe. She took further graduate courses from 1926-1927 and 1928-1929. Sanborn concentrated in English; she belonged to the English Club, was a reporter, 1915-1916, then Associate Editor, 1916-1917, for the Radcliffe News, and was on the editorial staff of the Radcliffe Magazine, 1917-1918. While at college she wrote The Cuss Club (1917) and was joint author of Augusta Wind (1918).
Sanborn was first employed as an advertising copy writer, 1919-1920, and began her writing career in 1922 as editor of Memoirs of the Harvard Dead in the War against Germany and Harvard Africa Studies. Her short story, “Professional Pride,” was published in the O. Henry Memorial Award prize stories (1929). Sanborn wrote more than 100 short stories that were published in the leading magazines both nationally and abroad. She wrote mysteries and romantic novels, such as Murder by Jury (1932) and Murder on the Aphrodite (1935). She reviewed books for the San Diego Union and the New York Herald Tribune. She served as a trustee of the Southern Pines (North Carolina) Library and was a member of the Authors’ League of America. Sanborn died on June 29, 1942 in Southern Pines, North Carolina, where she had moved with her family in 1932.”
Her first mystery was Murder by Jury (Little, Brown & Co., 1932; Coachwhip Publications, 2020). Unusually structured, it opens well into the deliberations of a jury considering the fate of a woman accused of killing her lover. The reader learns quickly that Mrs. DeQuincy Vanguard runs the town of Sheffield and intends to run the jury as well. Any reader who has lived in a small town will recognize the type right away. She bullies and threatens the other members to vote her way until only two holdouts remain. The inveterate gossip Angeline Tredennick is one of them. A woman after my own heart, she always has a bit of candy in her hand. At one point, she uses a dab of sticky caramel on a door latch to keep it from closing so she can listen to the conversation inside. As tempers rise, the foreman calls for lunch to be delivered to break the tension. Near the end of the meal, Mrs. Vanguard keels over and is rushed to the hospital, where she dies of poisoning that was administered unnoticed in the presence of the entire jury.
At first the overbearing district attorney tried to pin the death on the doctor who had attended Mrs. Vanguard in the jury room. When he didn’t succeed there, he broadened his focus to the rest of the jury, most of whom had good reason to dislike the victim. When the solution is finally revealed, the truth of the case being tried also unfolds.
A polished piece of writing: elaborately developed characters, an original plot, and brisk, even pacing make this book an engrossing read. Isaac Anderson in the New York Times of May 22, 1932, liked it a lot. The final sentences of his review: “This is Miss Sanborn’s first novel. In it she displays ingenuity, skill and a delightful sense of humor, qualities that should carry her far.”
The Birmingham News said on April 3, 1932:
“If there is any place one would think himself safe, it would be in a jury room, locked up with fellow members of a jury, considering a verdict. Yet that, strangely enough, is the place Miss Sanborn chose for her victim. Naturally it takes an unusual bit of scheming on her part to make the murder plausible, and to set the stage so that the killer goes undetected long enough to fill the volume. Yet she manages it without false leads, or last-minute introductions of new characters. The big-jawed lady on the jury, who had almost dominated the scene until that moment, is actually–and cleverly–made away with by another member of the 12, and right under their eyes. Another female member of the same jury finally follows the course of logic which solves the mystery, and in so doing uncovers the real secret of the case upon whose settlement they were debating when murder entered their locked room. It’s well told, and is interesting in the portrayal of the characters of the story.”
Well worth the attention of mystery readers looking for something a bit out of the ordinary.