An Improbable Fiction

Sara Woods is a pseudonym of Lana Hutton Bowen-Judd. She was a British mystery writer, who also used the pen names of Anne Burton, Mary Challis, and Margaret Leek. Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, Woods was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Filey, Yorkshire. During World War II, Woods worked in a bank and as a solicitor's clerk in London, where she gained much of the information later used in her novels. She married Anthony George Bowen-Judd on 25 April 1946, and with him ran a pig breeding farm from 1948 to 1954. In 1957 they moved to Nova Scotia in Canada. There she worked as registrar for St. Mary's University until 1964. In 1961 she wrote her first novel, Bloody Instructions, introducing the hero of forty-nine of her mysteries, Anthony Maitland, an English barrister. Lana Bowen-Judd was a member of the Society of Authors in England, the Authors League of America, the Mystery Writers of America, and the English Crime Writers' Association. She was also instrumental in forming Crime Writers of Canada, serving on its first executive committee. Her last years were passed with her husband in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. She died in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on 5 November 1985. -