Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1950s

The Blunderer: The following may be spoilerish, but the plot isn't the point of this novel. It begins with a man murdering his wife, in a manner obviously carefully planned not only to divert suspicion from himself, but to provide himself with an alibi. In the second chapter we meet Walter Stackhouse, a man struggling to hold on to Clara, the wife he loves, but who treats him with contempt, accuses him of drunkenness, and alienates his friends. He has raised the subject of divorce in the past, but Clara threatened to kill herself if he pursued it. Now he takes extra pains to please her, but it's clearly never going to work. Walter keeps a scrapbook of interesting tidbits he intends to work up into essays; one of those is a news clipping show more about the body of a woman found beaten to death near a bus rest stop. Walter surmises that the woman's husband must have killed her, although the police do not seem to be working in that direction at all. He contrives to meet the man by visiting his used book shop on the pretense of ordering an obscure legal title. He becomes slightly obsessed with the murder, and when his own wife takes a bus to visit her dying mother, he follows it in a frenzied state, contemplating the possibility of killing Clara in the manner in which he has imagined that the bookseller must have killed his wife. When the bus makes its first rest stop, Walter looks for Clara, but cannot find her. Very shortly, her body is found at the bottom of a cliff, with no injuries that suggest anything other than a fall to her death. The rest of this book is almost completely psychological, a combination of Hitchcock and Dostoevsky, as Walter and the bookseller each become mutually convinced of the other's guilt in the death of their respective wives, while a police detective plays one against the other trying to keep them both off balance. The police captain is fiendish in his methods, and we are never sure whether he believes Walter pushed Clara over that cliff; Walter is wallowing in guilt to the point where he sometimes isn't too sure himself, and he can't leave the bookseller alone. The bookseller, on the other hand, blames Walter for turning the police's attention onto him...and so it goes. And goes, and goes...I got pretty tired of it by the end. Too much thinking. Too much talking. Too much heavy-handed irony. I got it 100 pages ago.
August 2017 show less

Really enjoyed these diverse and well-written novels.

Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong
Peter and Ruth are in New York City to attend an important dinner where Peter is receiving an award. Peter’s sister backs out of babysitting for their daughter Bunny, but the elevator man in the hotel volunteers his niece. When Peter and Ruth meet her, the niece is quiet and listless, but a different personality emerges once they leave. Right away you can guess this is going to go badly. The suspense is wondering just how badly. Skillfully, Armstrong balances the possibility of tragedy with humor.

The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith
Mr. Kimmel’s wife is leaving on a bus for Albany. Kimmel follows the bus to the first rest stop, lures his wife away from show more the stop and kills her. Walter Stackhouse is having marital difficulties with his wife. He begins an affair and plans to divorce his wife. Distraught, she attempts suicide. But on a bus out of town to visit her family, she is found dead at the first rest stop. For some reason, Walter becomes obsessed with Kimmel and goes to meet him. In so doing, he blunders into the murder investigation of Kimmel. Both are pressured by a vicious cop. The twists and turns of the dance among these three leads to a violent conclusion.

The Beast in View by Margaret Millar
A psychological suspense novel that reminded me a lot of Ruth Rendell (or, more accurately, is a forerunner of Rendell). Miss Clarvoe receives a disturbing and frightening call from a woman named Evelyn Merrick who claims to know her. Clarvoe hires Paul Blackshere, her investment manager, to find out who this woman this is. As Evelyn continues to stalk Miss Clarvoe, Blackshear discovers family dysfunction and sexual exploitation. The novel progresses to a surprising ending twist.

Fools’ Gold by Dolores Hitchens
This is a hard-boiled crime caper. Skip learns from his girlfriend that a roomer at the house where she is living with her aunt is stashing a lot of cash there. With his girlfriend’s help Skip figures it will be easy enough to get in and make off with the cash. But when his ex-con uncle Willy gets wind of the plan, he thinks Skip is too much of a punk to pull this off and sells the job to another ex-con Big Tom. Skip is not happy about having his take reduced to a small percentage. And it turns out that the stasher of the cash is a Las Vegas hotel owner. He has some juice and is unlikely to let someone take his cash. Of course, from the novel’s title, this will go badly. Who does make off with the cash and what will happen to the participants? I feverishly read the last half of the book to find out. show less

Possibly the best of a sorry set of 8 novels in this collection. Most had little suspense, little drama, were only moderately well-written and, frankly, boring. This set makes LOA less than the best. Finished 21.05.2021.

Good beginning, but as the novel progresses the story line becomes clearer and clearer until a not-so-good ending. Finished 18.05.2022.

The best of the 8 novels in this series. Easily. Leaves the reader guessing until the final page. Finished 21.05.2021.

Interesting, but I found the ending both unrealistic, unbelievable, and confusing. (As an aside, I have found this series of two books about women crime writers in the 1940s and 1950s to be, easily, the worst books in the LOA collection that I have so far read.) Finished 17.05.2021.

This was honestly better than any novel in volume 1. Story of a babysitter gone haywire. Finished: 04.05.2021.