Margaret MillarReviews

Darrrrrrk. God I love crime fiction.

I read it in one sitting, starting after dinner and going past midnight. I couldn't put it down!

Crime Novels: Four Classic Thrillers 1964-1969 is a wonderful snapshot of how the genre was evolving during this time frame. The novels are classics and having them together in one volume takes the reader back to the late 60s. Some of my general comments here will resemble what I wrote for the volume covering 1961-1964 since they have the same goals.

Collections like this I generally rate as a whole based on their purpose rather than, for instance, a collection of stories recently written that are presented to the world for the first time. In other words, while I think about how good they are I am more concerned with how representative they are of the time period. And on that note, I think this volume succeeds very well.

I preferred this volume to the one covering the previous few years for purely personal reasons. This is the time frame during which I started reading a lot of mysteries and thrillers. The summer between 3rd and 4th grade my mother, trying to keep me from getting into (too much) trouble, challenged me to see which of us could read the stack of old, as well as the new issues we got, magazines. Ellery Queen, Michael Shayne, and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines. I've been a fan since and loved the shift from hardboiled to, well, more psychological, more backstory of criminals rather than always a straightforward whodunit. This collection highlights that shift very well.

I had read all of these previously but only remembered Run Man Run and The Tremor of Forgery in any detail, so revisiting all of them was great fun. Himes' work is a reflection of society still.

Some may find these novels "dated." I won't say I disagree, but any work of fiction that utilizes the society contemporary to the writing as an element in the story is going to be, by definition, dated. That is neither a positive nor a negative, to treat it as either is pointless beyond simply being a personal reason to not like it. In fact, in a collection that seeks to highlight how a genre was evolving during a time period, datedness is a positive attribute.

I would recommend this collection to any readers of crime fiction who enjoy good storytelling, these novels can each stand as an excellent example of crime fiction. For those who like to know how their favorite genre has developed over the years, this will give you a glimpse at the time when it was swinging from hardboiled private detectives to more psychologically, and sociologically, driven narratives, a trend started in the early part of the decade.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

This thriller/mystery isn't of the style I generally prefer (too dark & creepy) but it is extremely well written and the ending came as a complete surprise to me.

Most of what you could want in a book of the type. Taut, pacy, tense, bit of humour, good characters. Bit dated in places but hard to fault it for that. Only missing a truly satisfying denouement. Not entirely sure the plot adds up but I did read it across two plane rides so quite possibly the fault is mine.½

Didn't quite live up the billing. Pretty plain split personality story- it did have a good / surprising to me twist. I enjoyed the lead characters - the recluse in the hotel who doesn't go out and seems to have shut out the world at 30. Not sure why the old lawyer is crazy about her... (?). And the Evelyn dodge is ok. I will try another by her because I was expecting her to become a favorite and this is "one of her best" but ... pedestrian.

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Creepy and quite disturbing.

review of
Margaret Millar's The Fiend
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 16-20, 2021

I was on a spree of reading Ross MacDonald novels. I'd read that he'd originally written under his given name, Kenneth Millar, but that he'd changed his name so as to not be in conflict/competition w/ his wife, also a crime fiction writer, Margaret Millar. That got me interested in reading something by her. This was the only thing I found by her at my favorite local used bookstore. I picked it as one of several bks to take w/ me on my vacation in September, 2021. Since my vacation was to start on Labor Day wknd I had a hard time finding anyplace I cd reserve. I finally picked a place that I thought was remote & facing Lake Erie w/ woods behind it. That turned out to be only almost the case: About 1,000 ft away was a playground. Ordinarily, that wdn't've mattered to me. As it was, I was there out-of-season so there were very few kids in evidence anyway. The thing that made it uncomfortable for me was that The Fiend is about a mentally ill guy who's been convicted of being a sexual psychopath who's obsessed w/ little girls & the novel starts off w/ him watching a little girl at a playground. That creeped me out & I cdn't bring myself to actually read this while I was on vacation. As such, I didn't finish it until the end of November instead.

The Fiend is on a par w/ some of Patricia Highsmith's work. Highsmith is accomplished at writing about the psychology of her characters in a way that really gets under my skin. Typically, one can see what's coming, be disturbed by it, & feel a sort of helplessness that one can do nothing about. Margaret Millar does much the same. While the main character, Charlie, doesn't, strictly speaking, commit any heinous crimes that the reader knows about, his whole mindset is almost insufferable. His obsession w/ little girls is such that it overides any small ability he has to be able to pay attn to much of anything else - including his loving fiancée. It's extremely exasperating to a person such as myself who keeps hoping he'll 'wake up' & become a less deranged adult, that he won't ruin his life & the life of the little girl(s) he becomes obsessed w/. Millar plays w/ this psychological tension beautifully.

The Fiend was originally written in 1964 but the edition I have is from 1983. Millar provides a new introduction:

"There is no fiend in this book, only Charlie, a good-looking, rather bewildered young man who suffers from an illness for which no cause or cure has been found. Charlie was treated for this illness, and was, according to the authorities who released him, rehabilitated. The term means, roughly, that he indicated remorse and promised not to repeat his offense. (It may also mean that the correctional facility is overcrowded and room must be made for newcomers.) Charlie's remorse and promise were sincere. They both are forgotten when he falls in love with a nine-year-old girl." - p -ii

The story of Charlie's previous conviction is only very gradually revealed. As such, the reader only knows that Charlie's obviously demented w/o knowing how far his dementia will take him.

"He knows he shouldn't be there. It was dangerous to be seen near such a place.

""—where children congregate. You understand that Gowen?"

""I think so, sir."

""Do you know what congregate means?"

""Well, not exactly."

""Don't give me that dumb act, Gowen, You spent two years at college."

""I was sick then. You don't retain things when you're sick."

""Then I'll spell it out for you. You are to stay away from any place frequented by children—parks, certain beach areas, Saturday afternoon movies, school playgrounds—"

"The conditions were impossible, of course. He couldn't turn and run in the opposite direction every time he saw a child. They were all over, everywhere, at any hour." - p 4

Charlie's just brimming over w/ 'good intentions' - or so he tells himself:

"Charlie wrote the name and address on the inside cover of a book of matches: Jessie, 319 Jacaranda Road. He wasn't sure yet what he intended to do with the information: it just seemed an important thing to have, like money in the bank. Perhaps he would find out Jessie's last name and write a letter to her parents, warning them. Dear Mr. and Mrs. X: I have never written an anonymous letter before, but I cannot stand by and watch your daughter take such risks with her delicate bones. Children must be cherished, guarded against the terrible hazards of life, fed good nourishing meals so their bones will be padded and will not break coming into contact with the hard cruel earth. In the name of God, I beg you to protect your little girl...." - p 12

But Charlie's so obsessed that he's myopically unaware of the world that he's interpolating himself into - Millar's depiction of this is deft - Charlie's oblivious to the soap opera of the adults, he doesn't even get what he's obsessed w/ right. I'm reminded of Philip K. Dick's straight novels, of the adult dysfunctionality.

""Listen, Virginia, I've wanted to say this before but I hated to cause trouble. Now that trouble's here anyway, I might as well speak my peace. You're getting too bound up with Jessie."" - p 22

But the typical drama of the adults isn't prepared for the special case of Charlie:

""In fact," Charlie said, "I can't even leave the county without special permission."

"Louise smiled, thinking it was a joke. "From whom?"

""From my parole officer."" - p 28

Louise, in love w/ her imagined Charlie is slow to catch on to his behavior & even allows herself to be implicated w/o understanding that that's what's happening:

""Louise, would you do me a small favor?"

""Consider it done."

""Would you look up an address in the city directory and tell me who lives there? It's 319 Jacaranda Road. You don't have to do it immediately. Just make a note of the name and give it to me tonight when you come over.""

""What's the mystery?"" - p 34

Now, of course, Charlie's just wiley enuf to not give an honest answer to that one.

"Mrs. Oakley leaned over to pick up the cat and it was then that she saw the old green coupé parked at the curb across the street. At noon when she'd unlatched the screen door to let the girls in, she'd seen it too, but this time she knew it couldn't be a coincidence. She knew who was behind the wheel, who was staring out through the closed dirty window and what was going on in his closed dirty mind." - p 36

But, no, she doesn't, she's deranged too, in a more common way, & everywhere she looks, just like here, she sees signs of her imagined menacing ex-husband.

"But this time she didn't even hear the jay. Her ears were still filled with her mother's voice: "He's got what he wanted, that fat old gin-swilling whore who treats him like little Jesus." The sentence bewildered her. Little Jesus was a baby in a manger and her father was a grown-up man with a mustache. She didn't know what a whore was, but she assumed, since her father was interested in birds, that it was an owl. Owls said, "Whoo," and were fat and lived to be quite old." - p 40

The naive innocence of the children is contrasted nicely w/ the out-of-control manias of the adults.

"He knew from experience what Ben's reaction would be. Playround? What were you doing at a playground, Charlie? How did you learn the child's name? And where she lives? And that her little bones are delicate? How did she fall, Charlie? Were you chasing her and was she running away? Why do you want to chase little girls, Charlie?

"Ben would misunderstand, misinterpret everything. It was better to feed him a lie he would swallow than a truth he would spit out.

"Charlie took off the windbreaker he always wore no matter what the weather and hung it on the clothes rack beside the front door." - p 48

The adult drama is excruciating just by virtue of being so real.

"The door opened and Virginia came out, clutching a long white silk robe around her. All of her skin that was visible was a fiery red and her eyes were blooshot. "I'm not feeling very well, Howard. I have a fever."

""You also have a visitor," Howard said in the same calm voice. "Jessie has come to return the book you gave her this afternoon. It seems her mother considered it too expensive a gift for her to accept. How much did it cost, Virginia?"

""Please, Howard. Not in front of the child. It's—"

""How much?"

""Twenty dollars."

""And where did you get the twenty dollars, Virginia?"

""From my—purse."

"Howard laughed." - p 54

All the adults are so miserable. The children are generally ok when they're not confused by the adult behavior. & why wd Louise fall in love w/ Charlie? Who knows? But it's realistic - think of all the women who wanted to marry Ted Bundy while he was in prison arrested as a serial killer.

""Nobody can explain what it is, what makes people fall in love with each other. Do you remember that first night when you were sitting in the library and I looked over and there you were with that book on architecture? I felt so strange, Charlie, as if the world had begun to move faster and I had to cling like mad to stay on it. It hasn't slowed down even for a minute, Charlie."

"He stared down at the floor, frowning, as if he were trying to see it move in space. "I don't like that idea. It makes me dizzy."

""I'm dizzy, too. So we're two dizzy people. What's the matter with that?"

""It's not scientific. Nobody can feel the world move."

""I can."" - p 65

Charlie, the airhead, chooses the one moment when Louise waxes romantic to be 'scientific'. He's too stupid to even realize what a wonderful thing her devotion to him might be. Louise isn't exactly all there either.

"She looked down at her blue dress. It was spotless, unwrinkled. It bore no sign that she had run out into the street after Charlie's car and been dragged under the wheels and lacerated; and Charlie, unaware that anything had happened, had driven on alone. He had seen nothing and felt little more. Maybe I felt a slight bump but I thought it was a hole in the road, I certainly didn't know it was you, Louise. What were you doing out on the road chasing cars like a dog? - p 66

Do dogs still do that?

So they get engaged. Louise shd've moved on after the 1st of many red flags & here she is, delighted:

""I don't want to wait even until Christmas. I think we should get married right away. Maybe the first week of September, if you can be ready by then."

""I've been ready for a year."

""But we just met a year ago."

""I know."

""You mean you fell in love with me right away, just looking at me, not knowing a thing about me? That's funny."

""Not to me. Oh, Charlie, I'm so happy."" - p 70

Meanwhile, this reader was writhing w/ the misery of it all, caught up in a fiction as if it were something happening to a friend. Then Charlie drops his anonymous bomshell, triggering more paranoia.

"The note was neatly printed in black ink:

"Your daughter takes too dangerous risks with her delicate body. Children must be guarded against the cruel hazards of life and fed good, nourishing food so their bones will be padded. Also clothing. You should put plenty of clothing on her, keep arms and legs covered, etc. In the name of God please take better care of your little girl." - p 73

But Charlie can't even get that right & sends it to the wrong parent. One thing leads to another & Charlie's car gets investigated:

""Yes, but meanwhile pass the license number around to the traffic boys. If they spot the car anywhere I'd like to hear about it, any time of the day or night. I have an answering service."

""What's that license again?"

""GVK, God's Very Kind, 640."" - p 97

Charlie's backstory continues to be revealed:

"Ben remembered the document word by word, though it had been years since he'd seen it:

"We are recommending the release of Charles Edward Gowen into the custody and care of his brother. We feel that Gowen has gained insight and control and is no longer a menace to himself or others. Further psychiatric treatment within the closed environment of a hospital seems futile at this time. Gainful employment, family affection and outside interests are now necessary if he is to become a useful and self-sufficient member of society." - p 104

In the meantime, Louise is still in the dark but knows that something's amiss:

"If I am to deal with this thing, if I am to hep Charlie deal with it, I must know what it is. I must know. . . .

"Charlie had never even mentioned children to her, he never looked at them passing on the street or watched them playing in the park. Yet somehow, somewhere, he had seen the girl, Mary Martha, and found where she lived. Louise remembered his excitement the previous night when he was talking about 319 Jacaranda Street and the little dog that chased cars. Well, there was no little dog; there was a child, Mary Martha." - p 105

In the other meantime, Mary Martha's mother, Kate, has been helped along into her total paranoia by Charlie's misdirected anonymous letter:

"["]I could scream for help at the top of my lungs and not a soul would hear me. I've got enough privacy to be murdered in. Sheridan knows that. He's probably dreamed about it a hundred times: wouldn't it be nice if someone came along and murdered Kate? He may even have made or be making plans of his own along that line, though I don't believe he'd have enough nerve to do it himself. He'd probably hire someone, the way he hired Gowen."" - p 132

Charlie continues w/ his demented fantasy obsession:

"His only reason would have seemed sinister to Louise and peculiar to Mr. Warner, but to Charlie himself it made sense: he had to find a little girl named Jessie to warn her not to play any more tricks on him because it was very naughty." - p 133

Of course, Jessie has no idea that Charlie exists & hasn't played any tricks on him. Charlie's obsessions are all rooted in his delusions. He IS aware that sooner or later he might have to face some consequences:

"He might even have to take a lie-detector test. If he were asked whether he knew Jessie Brant he would say no because this was the truth. But his heart would leap, his blood pressure would rise, his voice would choke up, he would start sweating, and all these things would be recorded on the chart and brand him as a liar." - p 153

& the adult drama never ceases its misery:

""Three days," Howard said bitterly, "I've been home three days and not for one minute have I felt welcome. I'm just a nuisance who appears every two or three weeks and disrupts your real life. The hell of it is I don't understand what your real life is, so I can't try to fit into it or go along with it. I can only fight it because it doesn't include me. I want, I need, a place in it. I used to have one. What went wrong, Virginia?"

"Dave and Ellen exhanged embarassed glances like two characters in a play who found themselves on stage at the wrong time. Then Ellen put some dishes on a tray and started toward the house and after a second's hesitation Dave followed her. Their leaving made no difference to the Arlingtons than their presence had." - p 160

Charlie continues to be even more deranged than everyone else:

""He's sitting out there on the top step of the porch making funny sounds. I think—I think he's crying. Oh God, Mac, so many crazy things have been happening lately. I feel I'm lost in the middle of a nightmare. Why should a strange man come up on my front porch to cry?"" - p 171

So, yeah, Jessie disappears & the police get involved in searching for her & the reader knows that Charlie was nearby stalking her when it happened but don't know whether he did it or not.

""I'd better get my mother's permission. She's kind of nervous this morning, I don't know why. But I have to be careful."

""She hasn't told you anything?"

""Just that Mac was coming over with a soldier and we were all going to have a chat."

""A soldier?"

""He's a lieutenant. I'm supposed to remember to call him that so I'll make a good impression."" - pp189-190

The misunderstandings of the children add to the overall misunderstandings of just about everyone. & Charlie continues to be feeble-minded:

""The grape and me, we're buddies. Got a cigarette and a light?"

""I don't smoke but I think I have some matches." Charlie rummaged in the pocket of his windbreaker and brought out a book of matches. On the outside cover an address was written: 319 Jacaranda Road. He recognized the handwriting as his own but he couldn't remember writing it or whose address it was or why it should make him afraid, afraid to speak, afraid to move except to crush the matches in his fist.

""Hey, what's the matter with you, chum?"" - p 232

Did Charlie do something to the little girl or not? I hope I haven't given away too much of the plot, much of it is a sort of foregone conclusion that the reader suffers through. Do I recommend this? It's well-written, it's a difficult subject - but if you're a person like myself who finds the general feeble-mindedness of humanity painful to try to get thru the obstacle course of then you might not really enjoy this reinforcment of your already depressing & cynical POV.

Try again to later. It might get better.

Fooled me.

Among Millar’s best works, The Listening Walls is tightly constructed, and with a twist at the end, you are both ready for the spring to release and a bit relieved at the same time. Worth the read.

A very strange and menacing story but gripping.

I read this with enjoyment. A view into another time and place for sure. I cannot really recall what it is about, it did have a beginning, middle and end but it was more the experience of reading it, like going back in time and seeing into the minds of others that were full of important things from that time but which seem nothing much now.

If this was a movie it would have been on late at night on a near forgotten channel.

That doesn't sound as good as the book so forgive me.

Beast in View by Margaret Millar is an Edgar Award winner. Written in 1953, its writing is reflective of the genre at the time.

thirty three year old shut in Helen Clarvoe receives a threatening phone call from her brother's ex fiance Evelyn. Estranged from both her mother and brother, she has no one to turn to for help but her deceased father's financial manager, Paul Blackshear. Blackshear reluctantly agrees, and being a widower, also attempts to form a relationship with Helen. The latter doesn't materialize.

However, his investigation turns up something one doesn't expect. Beast in View is a true psychological mystery, analyzing the psyches mainly of both Helen and Evelyn, but also delving into Helen's family.

Were it not for the stilted language, this would be a 4+ star book. However, if you are interested in mystery classics, it might be worth your while.½

Margaret Millar was best known for her mystery and suspense novels. Wives and Lovers, published near the height of her career in 1954, is somewhat of a departure. The story takes place in Channel City, a thinly veiled version of Santa Barbara where Millar lived with her husband, mystery writer Ross MacDonald.

If you come to this this book expecting a hook and an immediately engaging plot, you'll be frustrated. Wives and Lovers is set of interwoven character studies and a sociological portrait of a fairly wealthy small city in mid-century California. The value of the book lies in Millar's exceptional depth of insight, the richness and complexity of her characters, and the eloquence and grace of her writing. You have to slow down to read this one, and it's well worth it.

The primary characters are Gordon Foster, the dentist; his assistant Hazel Anderson; Hazel's ex-husband, George; Gordon's wife, Elaine; Gordon's lover, Ruby; and Hazel's housemate Ruth. The book also includes a number of richly drawn minor characters, including the boardinghouse landlady, Carrie Freeman, and the Superior Court Judge, Anton Bowridge. With the exception of the older Bowridge and the young Ruby, all of the characters are middle-aged, and all are working through the adjustments of midlife, recalibrating hopes and attitudes after finding the lives they had expected didn't pan out.

Mrs. Freeman's attitude at the arrival of her new tennant, Ruby, sums up the weariness and wariness many of the middle-aged characters are struggling against: "She peered down at the car with the look of chronic suspicion that landladies acquire after years of people."

Millar creates a sharp contrast between the misery of those who refuse to forgive, and the grace of those who put in the hard work of understanding and forgiveness. She probes each character in turn and shows how the rigid and intolerant are psychologically incapable of joy or even happiness, how they are toxic to those around them, not just creating but also compounding their own troubles and the troubles of the world.

This novel would not--could not--be published today under a mystery imprint. It's literature with a capital L, and not the precious or pretentious kind. It simply examines the many facets and ordinary characters of a world we already see and reveals in it a depth and richness we rarely take the time to discover. There's too much in here to absorb in a single reading, so this one is on my list to read again.

Rose’s Last Summer by Margaret Millar is a fun mystery novel that is about a faded actress’s death and the chaos that she leaves behind her. With her best days behind her, Rose bids adieu to her only friends, a noisy landlady and her psychologist and announces that she’s off to a new job as a housekeeper. Suspicions are aroused when she turns up dead in the garden of a wealthy doll manufacturer despite the coroner’s finding of a natural death.

Something strange is going on, and when another older lady disappears and there are threats of kidnapping and demands for ransom money as well as long lost relatives showing up, it is up to Detective Greer and psychologist Frank to get to the bottom of this complicated case.

Originally published in 1952, Rose’s Last Summer wasn’t quite as clever as I had been led to believe as I wasn’t surprised by any of the “twists” or the predictable outcome but it was a light, whimsical read perfect to kick back with on a warm summer’s day.

Classic Alfred-Hitchcock-magazine type mysteries.

There is so much ugliness and pain in Beast in View, which, granted, is essential to the book's plot, but still is so disturbing. Even understanding this and knowing that it was written during a different time than ours, I still have trouble with the novel's archaic attitudes about certain things. The writing is superb and I have a feeling the reader is not supposed to feel comfortable in any way at all, but, still, this is so unsettling I had to watch several episodes of Golden Girls afterwards.

This thriller/mystery isn't of the style I generally prefer (too dark & creepy) but it is extremely well written and the ending came as a complete surprise to me.

A young housewife has a dream of her own grave and becomes obsessed with investigating what happened on the day of her "death," four years before.

I enjoyed the style of this and found it very readable. The dialogue was quite good. I could picture the Hitchcock-style film version, everyone wearing nice suits and the pale, washed-out colors under a bright California sun. Unfortunately, the plot strained my suspension of disbelief quite a bit. I don't believe in selective amnesia, the love story seemed forced, and I saw all the twists coming well beforehand.

Theme notes: This is the second noirish thriller by a woman writer that I have read from this time period (the other being The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes), which exposed the ugliness of racism in polite American society. I shouldn't be so surprised about this, as race and racism permeates all of American culture, but it struck me as significant that both books should have such a strong theme.

The main character, Daisy, is overprotected and coddled and ultimately betrayed by everyone in her life, an indictment of sexist attitudes toward women masked as protectiveness. I hoped at the end that she would find happiness in her newfound independence.½

3.5 Stars. I read an article about Millar somewhere online and was intrigued. I haven’t read a lot of mysteries (since adolescence) so am probably not a good judge, but I enjoyed this one. I appreciated the introduction in which Millar tells how she came to write the book, how she developed the story from the first premise. There are some far-fetched bits that wouldn’t fly in fiction today and we might now expect more psychological depth. The story reflects the social structure, expectations, and prejudices of the time — though the author is clearly exposing, rather than buying into, them. The details didn’t seem as dated to me as I’d have expected, and the prose quality was higher than I generally expect from genre fiction. (The book was published in 1960, and the story takes place in 1959.) I’m particularly interested in women mystery writers and hope to read more. I'd probably try another one by Millar, especially if the character Steve Pinata were in it, but I think this is the only book in which he appears.

It’s difficult to know how to talk about A STRANGER IN MY GRAVE without giving away too much of what makes it an interesting story so I’ll give the briefest plot synopsis possible. Daisy Harker, seemingly well-married and without much to fret about in life, has had a dream. In it she happens upon her own gravestone with a date of death some four years prior to the book’s present day. No one in Daisy’s life – not her mother, not her husband, not her husband’s best friend – thinks there is much to be made of the dream but Daisy becomes consumed by it. When she encounters a private investigator she hires him to help reconstruct that day in her life and determine what significance it has.

I’m not sure I completely buy this story’s premise – which is essentially that Daisy has blocked out an entire day from her personal memory (my subconscious kicked in every now and then with ‘really, just the one day?’) – but even so I was captivated by Daisy’s story. Millar reveals that what you see on the surface – Daisy’s perfect life with her perfect husband – isn’t even close to the truth. And the peeling back of the layers of betrayal she has experienced at the hands of just about everyone who should have been looking out for her makes for compelling reading. Of course they all had their reasons. They were protecting Daisy or saving her from some imagined hideous fate. Or was it all just self-interest and prejudice?

This is only the second book of hers that I’ve read but in both Millar explores the subject of childlessness. I wonder if there was something personal in the subject for her (though she did have one daughter) or if it was just an interesting subject for someone so keenly observant of the psychology of women. Here she also explores the subject of parenting more widely. In fact in a way almost all of the threads of the story are about parenting in some way and I liked the way they juxtaposed the traditionally accepted notions of ‘good parenting’ with someone brought up without parents. Stevens Pinata is the private detective Daisy engages and as the book progresses we learn that he was an abandoned baby who has no real knowledge of his heritage. Yet in many ways he is the most morally sound character in the book and this felt like Millar was making a kind of ‘up yours’ statement to the establishment. Or maybe I’m reading too much into things but either way I liked this element of the story.

Pinata is also responsible for my favourite line of the book. It occurs when he and Daisy encounter the name Camilla which Daisy assumes to be based on the camellia flower but is dismayed to find out it actually means “a little bed”.

Daisy: Oh. It doesn’t sound so pretty when you know what it means.
Pinata: That’s true of a lot of things.

Indeed. Millar – via Pinata mostly in this novel – is adept at distlling truths such as this one.

In short I liked this book a lot. It’s not really very mysterious in the traditional sense but it is full of tension because we don’t know if Daisy will learn everything she needs to, nor how she and those around her will react if she does. It’s just as easy to imagine the poor woman being hauled off in a padded jacket as what actually happens. Although it is in many ways a product of its time – some of the attitudes to women and racial minorities are wince inducing today – the book also has something of a modern sensibility in the way it explores a very domestic environment in great depth.

Maybe if Margaret had used a pseudonym like her famous husband, she’s be remembered and read today. But since she was a woman, she’s forgotten. And there’s no reason she should be. This was a tight narrative full of intrigue and a terrific twist that some saw coming, but I didn’t and literally had to go back and re-read the reveal to make sure I got it. It’s sudden, but brilliant.

Reclusive rich spinster Helen Clarvoe receives a telephone call from a woman who threatens her. After quizzing the staff of the hotel where she lives and finding out nothing, Clarvoe contacts her investment manager, Paul Blackshear, and ask for his help. Since he has just retired, and he finds himself liking Clarvoe, he decides to investigate… which puts him on the trail of Evelyn Merrick, an old school friend of Clarvoe and the estranged ex-wife of Clarvoe’s brother – who is gay, but married Merrick in order to appear “normal” but it all went horribly wrong on the honeymoon. While Blackshear runs around Los Angeles trying to track down Merrick before she makes good on her threat – and stumbling across a few of the Clarvoe family secrets, a murder, and increasing evidence that Merrick is completely deranged… But there’s a clever twist in the tail. I pretty much read this in a single sitting one Sunday afternoon. Worth a go.½