The focus is on Editha Mansbridge, the shrewish wife of the town doctor, who is both an object of desire and a target of derision. The US paperback reprint takes advantage of this persona in an edition retitled The Shrew is Dead. When Editha dies unexpectedly of an apparent drug overdose the rumor mill begins churning up story after story. Suicide, accident and murder plots are intermingled with whispered discussions of marital infidelity and same-sex wantonness.
Smith enjoys creating a multiple vignettes with ultra minor characters. Some of the more amusing ones involve a small army of old biddies seated at their sitting room windows with binoculars and notebooks and the tea time gossip sessions that follow their Gladys Kravitz acts. Other highlights include a feuding lesbian couple, Naomi and Crispin, who spend much of their time arguing over Crispin's attempts at luring Editha into an adulterous affair; and the surprise visit of Harry, Editha's rogue brother, always in need of money and his eventual hook-up with a lonely widow who he cajoles into helping him finance a brothel.
However, when the revelation of who is responsible for Editha's demise comes it does so anti-climatically. A final ambiguous sentence left me in a daze rather than having the story resolved satisfactorily.
I've only read a couple of Smith's comparatively few novels and liked them both - this one I've not come across. She did tend to specialise in a kind of emotional diminunuendo in the search for a more ironic finale and avoid melodramatic flourishes, which sounds pretty fatal in this case. I'm reminded of what the film critic Andrew Sarris once said about writer director Bryan Forbes (who adapted SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON and DEADFALL), "He perpetually pursues the anti-cliché only to arrive at anticlimax"
ReplyDeleteThat's a incisive comment about Forbes' adaptation of a brilliant book. I liked what he did but he utterly missed the point of McShane's story and basically re-invented the characters for his own version.
DeleteThis is one of Shelley Smith's later books. It seems to be an attempt to be more "contemporary", striving to match what was selling among her more successful fellow crime writers in this era. Her supporting characters were a lot more interesting than her primary players whose story was lost in the teeming cast and their problems and eccentricities. I think she liked the other characters more than her leads.
Great blog. Loved reading more about Ms. Smith as I've just found a badly battered first edition of one of her novels. Looking forward to discovering her.
ReplyDeleteCorrection? A police inspector does NOT take center stage. I wish one had done.
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