Investigating Frances Shelley Wees

Frances Shelley Wees (1902-82), a now largely neglected crime writer, was so popular during the 1950s and 60s that she was known as “the Agatha Christie of Canada.” And thanks to Véhicule Press’s Ricochet Books, two of her mystery-suspense novels have been re-issued over the last decade.

An American-born author of educational works and children’s fiction, as well as a writer of crime fiction and romantic suspense, Wees spent most of her adult life in Canada and set a number her books here.

She also wrote fiction and articles for Saturday Night and Chatelaine, as well as for an array of newspapers. Her reviews cite her as one of Canada’s best-known and most popular writers, and her work was was published extensively in the U.S. and translated into German.

The biography posted on the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory fills in details about Wees’s early life in the U.S., where her parents’ divorce precipitated her own move across states to leave with relatives. She relocated to Saskatoon at some point in her teens and attended Normal School, becoming a teacher when she was only seventeen.

Wees wrote her first (still unpublished) novel while attending the University of Alberta. Her first crime novel, The Maestro Murders, came out in 1931 and was followed by more than two dozen other books. Her husband, a professor who later worked in publishing at Gage, was apparently supportive of her work, and he’s credited as having been the one to initially submit her novel manuscript. In interviews, in keeping with her era, Weems was always careful to note that she considered her vocation as wife and mother to come before her career as a writer.

About a decade ago, Véhicule Press’s Ricochet Books re-issued The Keys of My Prison, a 1956 novel by Wees set in Toronto. The new edition features an introduction by crime writer Rosemary Aubert. Several years later they re-issued I Am Not Guilty. Neither is outstanding, by contemporary reading standards, but they’re perfectly readable.

I prefer Wees’s children’s novel, Mystery in Newfoundland, which is available in a digital form courtesy of Memorial University. I’s terrifically fun while also providing young readers with detailed information about local history, culture, language, food, and–perhaps more surprisingly–politics, including the heated Confederation debates. First published in 1965, it’s a testament to Wees’s affection for Newfoundland and Labrador.

I had the pleasure of spending several weeks doing research at U of T this fall, and the Wees collections at Robarts Library and the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library are extensive. I read through a number of novels while considering whether to include Wees in my book project. Ultimately, though, I think there’s too little connection with later writers: as significant as her popularity was in her own day, I haven’t come across any references by recent authors that she exerted a significant influence on their work.