Babs Hodges Deal, 74; Novelist Nominated for Edgar Award

Babs Hodges Deal, 74, who wrote more than a dozen novels over a 20-year period, died Friday in Montgomery, Ala., of complications from a recent illness.

Deal, whose last novel was published in 1979, was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe award -- one of the highest honors in mystery writing -- for her 1966 novel, “Fancy’s Knell.”

A subsequent novel, “The Walls Came Tumbling Down,” was the basis for a movie made for television.

Along with her late husband, novelist Borden Deal, she lived and wrote in Sarasota, Fla., for many years. She had recently been living in Gulf Shores, Ala., and was hospitalized in Montgomery.