Book Review: Murder on Their Minds

Title: Murder on Their Minds

Author: George Harmon Coxe

Date: 1957

Publisher: Knopf

ISBN: none

Length: 215 pages

Quote: "He waited, wondering now just why she should come at all, for though he had known her for some time the relationship was tenuous and existed because of her husband, who had been a long-time friend of his before his death in an auto crash three months earlier."

Some of the murder mysteries of the 1950s were "hard-boiled," with detective heroes who detested, distrusted, and often ended up shooting women who were often guilty of killing the men they were ostensibly mourning. Compared with those dreary stories, Murder on Their Minds probably seemed an improvement; the amateur detective, full-time photographer Kent Murdock, ends up exonerating the young widow Rita Alderson, protecting her from the real murderer, and even admitting that now she can help him.

So who was murdered, who "dunnit," and why? No comment. If you like this kind of thing, read the novel and find out.

I'm not partial to novels aimed at "adults"--meaning rebellious teenagers--generally, whether they feature murder or adultery or both. (Was Rita technically guilty of adultery, in her fictional past? Read the novel and find out.) Novels about things that really interest adults, and novels that are frankly about kids, are more interesting. Novels with murder or adultery in them have to be awfully good to interest me. This one isn't and it didn't, but it seems to have satisfied many novel readers who are less particular, and if you like novels you may like it.

Murders: several, but no wallowing in onstage gore or cruelty.

Sex: yes, but all offstage and discreetly explained.

Naughty words: very few.

Psychological insight, moral wisdom, characterization, even sense of place: none. This is a novel for mystery fans whose interest is solely in guessing how the author set up the plot, more even than in whether or not the plot is plausible.

Does it keep mystery fans guessing long enough, not long enough, too long? I wouldn't know; I'm not mystery fan enough for it to have kept me interested. You might be.

Book Review: Washington Square

Title: Washington Square

(I don't agree that this jacket picture suits this book at all, and it's not the one on the cover of the book I have. Click here to see Amazon's selection of other editions with different covers. The one I physically own isn't shown, and the one I'd like to recommend, the Dover Thrift edition, has one of those interactive images that can't be pasted onto Amazon Associate sites.)

Author: Henry James

Date: 1881, 1959

Publisher: Bantam (1959)

ISBN: none

Length: 162 pages

Quote: “A dull, plain girl she was called by rigorous critics—a quiet, lady-like girl, by those of the more imaginative sort.”

One of the harder fictional plots to write is the Antiromance, the story of how two young people met, felt attracted to each other, and then, for whatever reason, left each other alone. To remember or imagine the hormonal attraction is to want it to be an indicator of True Love. It is much easier for a writer who wants to affirm the completeness of a character's uncoupled life to kill off the Person the Protagonist Didn't Marry, rather than to admit that carnal commotion has nothing in particular to do with True Love, that it's possible to feel intensely attracted to someone you never for a minute imagine you'd really want to live with.

I recently commended the novel Avalon for portraying, to those willing to let themselves see it, two young people whose attraction to each other makes them lifelong friends but never a couple; they feel stronger physical attractions to other people, and act on those, and they have other interests and adventures as well, yet their friendship is part of their story. They separate, love other people, and live happily ever after. It is hard to write a novel that way. Anya Seton pulls it off by making her two characters interesting people—the sort of people who wouldn't be truly compatible with each other for very long, but whom readers would like to know, if not to marry.

In Washington Square Henry James sets himself the more difficult task of portraying two unattractive characters, selfish bores who can't be imagined as good spouses for anybody, and communicating that their not marrying is a Good Thing. James' audience were interested in the idea of eugenics, the idea that at least unhealthy people—and, some thought, unattractive or non-White people—should never have children. James gave them a pair who couldn't really be called “defective” but whom no innocent child deserved to have for parents.

It is possible to follow the story because the other two main characters are interesting, albeit flawed. Catherine, the anti-heroine, is a “large,” “plain,” badly dressed, inarticulate, but sincerely devoted child-at-heart, who happens to have inherited a substantial income from her long-dead mother. Morris, the anti-hero, is “in love” with Catherine's money but not “in love” enough to invest a little time in winning the respect of her overbearing father. Dr. Sloper, the father, is at least intelligent—enough to keep Morris at bay long enough for Catherine to realize how false Morris is, though not (as he thinks) intelligent enough to keep Catherine from realizing how much he underrates her. Mrs. Penniman, the doctor's widowed sister, is selfish as she can be, a steady source of bad advice that she hopes will make the young people miserable in such a way that they'll be emotionally dependent on her and thus furnish entertainment through her prosperous but empty old age. Dr. Sloper wants to keep Catherine from marrying Morris, even though he correctly guesses that Morris is the only man who'll ever propose to her. Mrs. Penniman wants to “help” them achieve an unhappy marriage.

Of these four characters it's possible to say (as Mark Van Doren did) that Catherine is the only one who shows any sincerity or unselfishness at all, and thus the only one who deserves a happy ending. Perhaps it's not possible for male readers to admit that she gets one. Women can make that admission. Catherine is one of those truly unfortunate people whose intelligence, probably in the normal range, is constantly overshadowed by their “brilliant” relatives'. James shows us that she's not really stupid but that, if she did have any kind of talent, she has no idea what it might be. The only sort of career for which she's been allowed any preparation at all is as a “society lady”; for this she has no talent, and it's probably a good thing that being single at thirty allows her to support the arts and charities in peace. It's hard to imagine anyone being a good husband to Catherine—Morris wouldn't be—and, therefore, easy to say that her happy ending consists of not needing a husband's money.

Among novelists whose work has been published long enough to have been rated by more than one or two generations, Henry James rates high. Among novelists in that category who rate high, he's the one I've always enjoyed least. But lots of people like his style, and even I like Washington Square. If it's not possible for James to understand how happy it's possible for a woman to be when she freely chooses to reject a man about whom her late father was right, it's certainly possible for women readers to enjoy the irony of a man recognizing that a woman may be better off without a man.

This book is not at all hard to find. To buy it here, send a U.S. postal order for $5 per book plus $5 per package to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, or send a Paypal payment for $5 per book, $5 per package, plus $1 per online payment to the e-mail address you get by e-mailing salolianigodagewi that you'd like to buy this book. At least five and possibly seven books of this size will fit into one $5 package, so please feel free to add other books to the package...you're not actually limited to books reviewed at this site, although, if you do choose from the (by now quite long) list of books labelled "A Fair Trade Book" at this site, you'll be encouraging a living writer, or writers. You can add any real book Amazon offers, as long as the books can be squeezed into the package.

Book Review: Hunter's Hill

Title: Hunter's Hill

(Not to be confused with Harriette Simpson Arnow's Hunter's Horn, a greatly superior novel.)

Author: Mary Bishop

Date: 1973

Publisher: Dell

ISBN: none

Length: 303 pages

Quote: “So far as we know, Frances simply walked out of this house, and no one has seen her since.”

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Miss Eden Chase is hired as governess to Frances' daughter, who is recovering slowly from an injury. She doesn't really want to go; both her previous employer (she sees herself as a librarian not a governess) and she have been lavishly bribed, because Frances' father would like to remarry, if anyone can find Frances. Frances was spending a lot of time with a self-proclaimed count from Italy before she became a Missing Person. Nobody has been able to find either the alleged count or Frances as hypothetical countess. People are beginning to mutter that Frances may be dead.

Eden has bad feelings about the whole Hunter's Hill estate. It's all so Gothic. Frances' not suitably grief-stricken husband and daughter share the big house with a full domestic staff, the husband's brother and his wife, and an eccentric great-aunt on the third floor. People keep telling Eden very exciting things about the whole clan—any of the males might be in love with her, any of the females might be insane and dangerous, or, for that matter, so might the males, and Tony, the too-cheerful divorced or widowed husband, just might have killed Frances himself.

And Eden...isn't very bright, which may be why her previous employer was so easily bribed to pack her off to Hunter's Hill. She seems addicted to the adrenalin rush of excitement, whether it's Romantic Love or mortal terror. She's not sure she believes that Tony is “in love” with her. She's not sure he's emotionally stable enough to be anyone's lover. She's not sure he didn't kill Frances. She's not sure he doesn't plan to kill her too. She's just having a wonderful time reacting to it all.

You'll probably see the solution to the mystery and the climactic scene coming, well before page 200, but I'll leave you that much suspense at least. All I'll say is that I think Eden's survival makes this a sad story from the injured child's point of view.

Evidently other people agree with me about the unadmirability of these characters, because this book has become quite rare. In one of those outrageous miscarriages of bookselling justice for which Amazon is notorious...because it's a cheap second-rate melodrama, the best price this web site can offer online will be $210 per book plus $5 per package (eight or twelve books this size will ship in one package) plus $3 per online payment. (In real life, the copy I have for sale will cost more than other lightly used books that still smell more of paper, ink, and glue than of mold, but less than $210.) 

Book Review: The Embroidered Sunset

Title: The Embroidered Sunset

(This first edition is getting rare; Amazon may try to take you to the first paperback edition, first.)

Author: Joan Aiken

Date: 1970

Publisher: Doubleday

ISBN: none

Length: 240 pages

Quote: “If it had not been a pleasure it would have been a duty to hate Uncle Wilbie.”

The problem with this ambitious early novel was that Aiken called it a “light romance.” It's a chaste, cheerful novel of lightly comic suspense,but it doesn't end with the kiss readers of a “light romance” expect. Only in cheap genre fiction does “romance” presuppose a happy ending; Gone with the Wind is mixed at best; Wuthering Heights is tragic. But if it's advertised as light romance...

The main plot is not romantic at all. It's better described, as in the paperback edition, as a "thriller" or Novel of Suspense. Lucy, an orphan, has an uncle she hates, an aunt-by-marriage she pities, two first cousins for whom she doesn't really care, and a purely sentimental attachment to a few fading early-childhood memories of her parents. When she leaves the pricey prep school she's also hated, Uncle Wilbie takes sadistic pleasure in telling her that the prep school took up all of her father's money, so now not only lessons with the great pianist who wants to teach her, but even public university is out of the question.

Then Lucy discovers some quirky collages up attic and learns that she also has a great-aunt, in England, who's always lived with another woman; they always looked somewhat alike and by now neighbors aren't sure which one's which. One of the old ladies has died, and since Wilbie's firm has been sending monthly payments to his aunt he's interested in finding out for sure which one. Lucy and her pianist friend think the collage pictures ought to be worth more than Wilbie's firm has been paying the great-aunt. So deals are struck: Lucy can have piano lessons if she finds out for sure which of the old ladies is dead.

What follows are some of the most delightful landscapes and aunt-niece scenes in all of English literature, undercut by a nastier element in the plot.Lucy has yet another first cousin she didn't know about, and he, his mother, and his partners in crime have a more active way of hating Wilbie than Lucy has. If it had ever been made into a movie, The Embroidered Sunset would have excelled in chase scenes. More characters get hurt or killed than is usual in Joan Aiken's fiction. The old lady's demise was not a real accident, and will be avenged by one of the plot twists.

The comedy revolves around a bit of improbable silly wordplay: Wilbie's aunt's real name was Fennel or Fenella, originally. The housemates nicknamed themselves Fennel and Dill, which became Daffy and Dilly. Their last cat was called Taffy. Adults are confused by this. People who enjoy the story at least laugh. A more fact-based piece of comic suspense is that the action is set in two or three small, remote English towns where most residents who belong to the same generation do look alike, which probably explains Lucy's attraction to outsiders and incomers rather than the old family friends who either think she looks just like, or thinks she really is, some distant relative of theirs. (A later novel by Joan Aiken featured two young, cute, narcissistic lesbians who were attracted to their physical resemblance to each other, but Fennel and Dill seem more like cousins.) Lucy doesn't exactly try to climb the social ladder in her father's ancestral town. She was brought up transatlantic and probably intends to live in the United States.

That romance? Lucy meets another young man, a doctor, in addition to the pianist. Neither is English or American, though both speak English. Lucy is so busy with her own concerns that it's hard to guess which one she'll choose...until the end. You saw the end coming, you knew which man was headed in the same direction Lucy was, you knew how they'd end up together...but you didn't want to see it, because this was supposed to have been a light romance.

Finding that readers actually cared about her fictional characters, Aiken proceeded to write Last Movement, another mix of suspense, romance, and comedy with the emphasis on the suspense, in which the disappointed young man meets his match and lives happily ever after.

The copy I own was discarded by a library after one of those disappointed readers scribbled her complaint in pencil on page 240, beginning “No she didn't, she married...” Sorry, Harlequin fans. She would have married him if this had been a Harlequin Romance. It's not, and Aiken was saving him for an equally likable, but prettier, heroine in any case.

I'll say this for The Embroidered Sunset. Even people who usually like novels of suspense do not usually go back and reread them every few years, after they know how the plot goes, for the pleasure of the characters' company. I've reread The Embroidered Sunset at approximately five-year intervals and, in the complete absence of any suspense at all, I still enjoy the company of Lucy and her friends as much as ever. And I don't usually even like novels. You may like Lucy and her great-aunt (or whatever) that much, too.

Although prices for early editions are entering the collector range, several editions of this novel have been printed. If you don't specify one you'll get whichever seems the best bargain on Amazon at the time of ordering, at the usual rate of $5 per book, $5 per package, $1 per online payment. Four books the size of the first hardcover edition, or eight the size of the paperback edition, will fit into one $5 package. Although Joan Aiken no longer has any use for $1 you're encouraged to make some of those books Fair Trade Books, for which we can send the authors 10% of the total price (typically $1).

Book Review: Night Whispers

Title: Night Whispers

Author: Judith McNaught

Author's web site: http://www.judithmcnaught.com/

Date: 1998

Publisher: Pocket Books

ISBN: 0-671-0085-3

Length: 303 pages

Quote: “I’m Special Agent Paul Richardson, FBI…We’re interested in your father.”

Despite its opening like an adventure story, with Agent Richardson stalking police officer Sloan Reynolds to make sure Sloan is the right sort of person to help investigate her long-estranged wealthy father, Night Whispers is pure fantasy.

Sloan is a tough, independent, mother-identified little proletarian who thinks she wants nothing to do with her father, his money, or even her long-lost baby sister, and doesn’t even care much about men, not even the ones who are in love with her; she has her job and her mother to think about. Needless to say, this will change when she spends some time with her father, her terrible great-grandmother, her baby sister, and their super-rich friends.

Since the only real suspense in this story is which sister will fall in love with Paul and which with the rich boy who’s become Sloan’s sister’s buddy, I won’t spoil that. Otherwise, it’s just the classic Cinderella story. Daddy will be much nicer than Sloan has ever let herself remember, she’ll love having a baby sister, she’ll have just enough time to start to like her bossy great-grandmother before the old lady dies, and by the end of the story she’ll be happily married with a child. And with all the privileges Daddy ought to have given her all along, too.

There’s more than one explicit “romantic” sex scene in this book. There’s at least one tastefully airbrushed murder, although Sloan’s life is never in danger. There’s little bad language but, if you don’t enjoy the kind of “romance” novels that tell you in exactly which manner and sequence the couple touch, then take the chance of making a baby, then quarrel, then reconcile, and only then bother to get married, don’t read Night Whispers, because that’s what Sloan and her man do.

Frankly I’m not sure why they bother, at least with the details of the sex scene. All these couples touch exactly the same body parts in exactly the same manner and sequence. The challenge of writing this kind of novel really is finding a way to write that scene that will pass Copyscape.

If you like just a little more adventure and a tiny, tiny bit more suspense than Silhouette Desire romances supply, you’ll like Night Whispers. I wouldn’t read it twice but I made it all the way through this book once.

Until I go online to post these reviews, I seldom know which authors are still alive and active in cyberspace. Judith McNaught apparently is, so Night Whispers is a Fair Trade Book. Buy it here, $5 per book, $5 per package, and $1 per online payment to either address at the bottom of the screen, and we'll send $1 to McNaught or the charity of her choice. If you add one of her newer books to the package (the newest ones should be added as new books) we'll send 10% of the total of that price per book, plus the $5 for the package, to McNaught or her charity as well, even though you pay only the one shipping charge; thus Night Whispers and Whitney My Love together would cost you $15, and the charity would get $2. If you'll accept cheaper paperback editions, you could probably fit more than two books into the package.