Hazel Holt has many devoted fans in the United States and Great Britain as a writer of "cosy" British mysteries; she has published nineteen Mrs. Malory novels at last count. She is also known to admirers of Barbara Pym as the friend and biographer who additionally edited Pym's posthumous works.
Ms. Holt originated from Birmingham, England, where she attended King Edward VI High School for Girls. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, and went on to work at the International African Institute in London, where she became acquainted with the novelist Barbara Pym, whose biography she later wrote.
Holt wrote her first novel in her sixties and is a leading crime novelist. She is best known for her "Sheila Malory" series. Her son is the novelist Tom Holt.
