Mabel Broughton Billett

{{Short description|Canadian writer (1892–1964)}}

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Mabel Broughton Billett (December 22, 1892 – March 3, 1964) was a Canadian writer of detective novels.

Mabel Broughton Billett was born on December 22, 1892 in Hensall, Ontario, the daughter of William Bell McLean, a machine agent, and Elizabeth Ross McLean. In the 1920s, she married Frederick Broughton Billett, an Imperial Oil transfer agent, and they moved to Merritt, British Columbia. British Columbia would be the setting for most of her work. {{Cite web |title=Mabel Broughton Billett |url=https://cwrc.ca/islandora/object/ceww:cd5a6aa9-863a-4fa6-8d99-f05d13ab7e05 |access-date=2024-07-08 |website=Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory}}

Her novel Calamity House (1927) was inspired by rumors around the death of the wife of a Nicola Valley doctor. {{Cite web |last=Huenemann |first=Karyn |date=2012-09-17 |title=Calamity House (1927), by Mabel Broughton Billett |url=https://ceww.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/calamity-house-1927-by-mabel-broughton-billett/ |access-date=2024-07-09 |website=Canada's Early Women Writers: Authors lists |language=en}} Her novel The Shadow of the Steppe (1930) concerns intrigue in Afghanistan. {{Cite web |last=Huenemann |first=Karyn |date=2012-11-10 |title=The Shadow on the Steppe (1930), by Mabel Broughton Billett |url=https://ceww.wordpress.com/2012/11/09/the-shadow-on-the-steppe-1930-by-mabel-broughton-billett/ |access-date=2024-07-09 |website=Canada's Early Women Writers: Authors lists |language=en}} In her The Robot Detective (1932), the human detective feeds punchcards into a computer to help solve a double murder in a fictional remote British Columbia town.{{Cite web |last=Huenemann |first=Karyn |date=2012-08-22 |title=The Robot Detective (1932), by Mabel Broughton Billett |url=https://ceww.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/the-robot-detective-1932-by-mabel-broughton-billett/ |access-date=2024-07-09 |website=Canada's Early Women Writers: Authors lists |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Clute |first=John |title=SFE: Billett, Mabel Broughton |url=https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/billett_mabel_broughton |access-date=2024-07-09 |website=sf-encyclopedia.com}} Her novel The Smooth Silence (1936) was a fictionalized version of the Janet Smith case. To be published by Ryerson Press, the book was rumored to be quashed by parties unknown.{{Cite book |last=Starkins |first=Edward |url=http://archive.org/details/whokilledjanetsm0000star |title=Who killed Janet Smith? : the 1924 Vancouver killing that remains Canada's most intriguing unsolved murder |date=1984 |publisher=Toronto : Macmillan of Canada |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-7715-9813-5}} It was serialized by National Home Monthly.

Mabel Broughton Billett died on March 3, 1964 in San Francisco.