A Life Devoted to Faith, Hope, and Mystery

‘Her Life in Ink: Elizabeth Jordan, Journalist, Editor, and Mystery Author’By Sharon M. HarrisLyons Press, 272 pagesEducated in a convent school, Elizabeth Jordan (1865-1947) early on understood the authority that women, religious or not, could exert. She thought she might want to devote her life to the Catholic Church, but her father thought she should try a career in journalism first to see if, perhaps, that was her true calling. Reverend Mother Mary Caroline concurred, and soon Jordan realized that she could apply her Catholic principles to the world at large in her roles as reporter, editor, novelist and campaigner for women’s suffrage.Jordan established herself as a first-class journalist while covering the trial of Elsie Borden, accused of murdering her parents with an axe. Jordan’s reports depicted an immaculately dressed and composed women acquitted in less than two hours by a jury, even though the press had sensationalized the crime and swayed many to believe in her guilt.Jordan, eager to prove herself, took on whatever assignments were offered to her, although she also agitated for important stories to cover for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. All along, though, she had it in mind to become a bestselling author and influential editor, working for Harper Brothers and publishing Stephen Crane, Henry James, and Mark Twain as well as discovering and working on Sinclair Lewis’s first two novels.Sharon Harris crams an extraordinary amount of information in a narrative so deftly done that all the details lock into place, thus capturing the extraordinary momentum of Jordan’s life, including her editing of suffragist composite novels that called on the talents of the best women and men writers of her day.Jordan lived in an era during which she could not be open about her lesbianism, and her enduring relationship with Frances Hodgson Burnett, best known as the author of “The Secret Garden” (1911). Only many years later in her autobiography, did Jordan divulge the great passion of her life. As Ms. Harris notes, Jordan simply could not leave out such an important person to whom she was devoted.Ms. Harris makes the case for Jordan as a mystery novelist in the same league as Agatha Christie. In terms of style the two writers are alike, and Jordan might be an even bolder writer, exploring the supernatural and the gothic, while employing female amateur detectives whose solving of crimes is inseparable from learning more about themselves.Over nearly two decades Jordan produced a mystery a year, usually receiving high marks from reviewers in The New York Sun and other newspapers, many of them fascinated with her stories about convent schools, a subject no other writer had explored with such knowledge, and at a time when anti-Catholic feeling was a significant factor in American life.I confess Jordan’s work was new to me. Much of it is now available in paperback and e-book, but for quite some time she was overlooked and hardly mentioned in histories of the mystery/detective story. One of her novels, “The Lady of Pentlands,” is a tribute to Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw.”I’m on chapter 3 of “Deep Silence.” Audra, suffering from amnesia, comes under the protection of Lord Ronan, who places her in one of those Victorian schools among abusive girls jealous of her — a sensitive but also stalwart young woman who, I can tell, is about to be involved in an intrigue that threatens her life. Although Lord Ronan means well, he is a little like Rochester in “Jane Eyre,” in his rakish manner, also shades of Lovelace in Samuel Richardson’s “Clarissa.” Audra is careful with those in authority who could injure her, but she isn’t letting Lord Ronan just push her around.Elizabeth Jordan’s work, in other words, reflects a writer steeped in literary history concocting stories that have a reminiscent ring as she drives you to an outcome that may be suspected and yet cannot put into so many words until the final scenes are discharged.Jordan makes her work seem — as many of the reviewers quoted in Ms. Harris’s book declare — inevitable and struck off with a verve and ingenuity that parallels the extraordinarily successful life that Ms. Harris tells so well.Mr. Rollyson is the editor of Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction.

A Life Devoted to Faith, Hope, and Mystery

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