Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (1889-1955) was an American novelist and short story writer. She wrote romantic novels during the 1920s, but, after the stock market crash in 1929, she turned to the more lucrative genre of the detective novel. From 1929 through 1954, she wrote eighteen detective novels, which sold well and earned her praise for her style and character development.Holding was much admired during her day. Raymond Chandler, one of the top writers of detective fiction during its golden age of 1920-1940, said of Holding that she was "the top suspense writer of them all."Literary critic and editor Anthony Boucher wrote that "For subtlety, realistic conviction, incredible economy, she's in a class by herself."She had established a unique place for herself in this field, because she was first and foremost a novelist interested in the effect of circumstance upon people, rather than a jigsaw specialist fitting straw characters into trick plots.
