Hazel Holt

 Hazel Holt was a well known light novelist, who died a few years ago in 2015.  She was born in 1928 but didn't start writing novels until she was in her 60s.  She was educated at a good school in Birmingham and went to college.  After college she worked in the the African Institute which had  been set up for the study of African languages.... She met Barbara Pym there, who became a novelist famous for writing about older women... Pym became a good friend and later Hazel wrote her biography. She also wrote television criticism....

She married in her 20s and had  a son Tom, who later became a novelist, writing science fiction and "Mapp and Lucia" novels.  She started to write crime novels where the detective is a middle aged widow, Sheila Malory, living in a small town in Devon.  Sheila has a son and has a career as a writer but she finds that through her day to day activities, doing charity work and keeping house in a small country town, she gets involved in detective investigation.   Her son is a lawyer so she has access to legal knowledge and to the police. 

The Sheila Malory books are a light easy read, about an ordinary woman, and have a good deal of comedy about her many pets... I wish there were more of them.....Sheila leads a quiet but pleasant life in her small town, writing literary criticism, helping with charity work and going to church.  One of her friends, Rosemary, has an elderly mother, Mrs Dudley who domineers over the  little towns social gatherings although she is very old. 

Possibly her friendship with Pym, who was I think one of the first writers to write about older people... gave her the idea of writing about an older woman as detective....