FFB: Voice from the Grave - Doris Miles Disney

1st US Paperback
(Macfadden, 1970)

THE STORY: Adele Van Ostrand refuses to believe her son and his friend died in a canoeing accident when they went away for a camping trip and never returned. Neither body has been found, but the smashed remains of the wooden canoe washed up along the river banks leading police to believe that both boys drowned. Adele holds out hope that Howie survived while her family, friend Ursula, and police try to convince her otherwise. Then the phone rings. Howie is on the other end. He begs her not to tell anyone he is alive. Something has happened and he needs money. He outlines a plan and pleads with his mother to carry it out. And so begins a sinister plot tinged with deceit and exploitation of grief culminating in a truth more horrible than Adele could imagine.

THE CHARACTERS: In Adele Doris Miles Disney has created one of the least sympathetic portraits of a grieving mother in all of crime fiction. Voice from the Grave (1968) is both an exploration of mother too in love with her son whose devotion spills over into co-dependence, an obsessive need to control and a delusional hope that the person who is exploiting her must be no one other than her boy Howie. Only when her friend Ursula gives her solid proof that Howie and Dennis both must have died does Adele begin to suspect that she is being used. When she relents  she turns her attention against her stepson Lee, a young man who she has basically ignored all his life.

Adele has been married three separate times and has several step-children while only Howie is her own child. Unable to give love or see it offered from others, Adele is a pathetic picture of narcissism and selfishness. She claims others are self-interested, like her step-son Lee, but cannot recognize her own self-absorption. The reader cannot really sympathize with her in any way. She is being victimized by someone and, whether it is Howie or not, we feel that she absolutely deserves it.

US 1st edition (Doubleday, 1968)

The only real satisfaction in reading the book is trying to figure who is on the other end of the phone and why that person is taunting Adele and taking from her everything they can -- money, her trust and eventually her sanity.  Is it some sort of revenge for the past?  In part perhaps, but there is another aspect of the novel that will tie into the Adele/Howie story.

Disney also uses this novel to write about troubled young people desperate to find themselves, to be free from controlling and suffocating adults, and who in their rebellion lead themselves down the path of destruction. The opening of the novel tells us that two teenage boys have broken into an elderly man's home in order to steal his prized collection of whiskey. Caught in the act and fleeing from the house one of the boys strikes out at the man causing him to fall. The man hits his head on the stone steps in front of the porch and is sent to the hospital in critical condition. The reader awaits the old man's fate and the boys worry that if he dies they will be then guilty of a felony -- death caused during the commission of a robbery.

The camping trip that Adele thinks is going to be nothing more than canoe paddling and fishing turns into a hedonistic indulgence of underage drinking, picking up girls at the beach, and wild partying. When news surfaces in town of a young girl who has gone missing, the reader starts to put together the cleverly dropped hints that Howie and Dennis must have got up to no good and may be responsible for her disappearance.

These ostensibly independent plot threads must connect somehow leading the reader to ask multiple questions. Who survived the canoe accident?  Was it merely a sham? Are both boys dead?  Is someone pretending to be Howie? Who would want to prey on Adele and keep asking for her to drain her bank account? And is the missing girl dead or alive?  Could she be involved in causing the canoe accident?  Is she behind all the mysterious phone calls?

QUOTES: [Adele's] skin looked too tight for the bones of her face, Her pallor made her eyes look even bluer than they were. She had an indestructible elegance, Ursula thought, that neither time nor sorrow would ever take from her.

THE AUTHOR: Born in Glastonbury, Connecticut Doris Miles Disney (1907-1976) lived most of her life in her home state. She published at least one book a year throughout her writing career beginning in 1943 with A Compound for Death. With the exception of one mystery novel all of her work was published by Doubleday's "Crime Club" who said that Disney's books sold approximately 675,000 copies over her long career.

Her novels were a mix of hardboiled crime novels, domestic suspense, and some of the earliest examples of an inverted historical detective novel, with a particular leaning for the 19th century. She created three series detectives -- Jim O'Neill, a cop; Jeff DiMarco, an insurance investigator whose novels are the closest Disney came to writing genuine noir; and a postal inspector named Dave Madden. However, the bulk of her novels feature no series characters and tend to feature guileless senior citizens as the victims; duplicitous husbands and wives plotting murder against each other; adultery and blackmail. Disney employed familiar motifs of noir and hardboiled crime fiction but transplanted the usual urban scenes and gritty city life to rural and suburban settings recalling the work of her contemporaries Charlotte Armstrong and Ursula Curtiss.

Disney had one daughter, Elizabeth Disney Laing, with whom she was living in Fredericksburg, Virginia at the time of her death. Disney also had two sisters who both lived in Connecticut.

MOVIES & TV: Three of her books featuring insurance investigator Jeff DiMarco were made into movies. Fugitive Lady (1950) (probably taken from her 1946 crime novel Dark Road, aka Dead Stop) was an Italian & British co-production which included Janis Paige the only American actor in the mostly Italian cast. Stella (1950) was an attempt to make a contemporary black comedy based on Disney's much darker novel Family Skeleton (1949) with Ann Sheridan in the title role alongside Victor Mature as DiMarco. The Straw Man (1953) adapted from the 1951 novel of the same name is a B movie that changes DiMarco's name to Jeff Howard in the script adaptation.

In the 1970s three more novels appeared as TV movies. Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate (1971) starring veteran actresses Helen Hayes, Myrna Loy, Mildred Natwick and Sylvia Sidney in a strange tale that combines computer dating and a psychopath. Betrayal (1974),based on the novel Only Couples Need Apply (1973), is about an elderly woman (Amanda Blake) preyed upon by a murderous con artist couple. Yesterday's Child (1977), based on her 1967 book Night of Clear Choice, stars Shirley Jones as a mother whose 3 year-old daughter was kidnapped and never returned, fourteen years later someone claims to be that missing daughter.

FFB: Go, Lovely Rose - Jean Potts

US paperback edition (Berkley, 1961)

THE STORY: Coreyville is rid of its worst pest. Rose Anthony has fallen down her cellar stairs and suffered a fatal head wound. Rachel Buckmaster travels from Chicago to settle the estate with her nineteen year-old brother Hartley. Both are relieved the horrible housekeeper who was willed the house by their father and had helped raised the two after their mother's death is finally out of their lives. They plan to sell the place and each can be free of her miserable hold over them...and everyone else in town. But when Rose's look-alike sister Mrs. Pierce arrives to get to the bottom of the accident circumstances arise that lead her to believe Rose was murdered. She has Hartley arrested and is determined to see him on trial for murder. Rachel and young Dr. Craig are equally determined to foil Mrs. Pierce's vengeful plans by proving Hartley's innocence. But things do not look good for the boy.

THE CHARACTERS: At first we think that the story will be told primarily from Rachel's viewpoint, but it is Dr. Craig who mostly takes over the narrative. He acts as a sort of amateur detective while the primary murder investigation is in the hands of Sheriff Jeffreys and a police detective known only as Mr. Pigeon. But over the course of the novel we are allowed to know the thoughts of nearly everyone in the book with only Hartley consigned to the background. He spends most of the book in jail while the others do their best to look for the evidence they need to bring to the police and get him out.

Essentially it is the story of two families: the Buckmasters and the Bovards. In Rachel we see the beginnings of the new crime fiction heroine -- outspoken, willful, risk taking and thoroughly independent. Similarly, Beatrix "Bix" Bovard is the kind of teenager who seems more real than those normally depicted in fiction. Bix is a conflicted young woman on the verge of adulthood, incapable of reining in her volatile emotions, mimicking speech and dialogue from the movies, and generally looking for good time whenever possible. Her homelife is messy, her mother has rejected her and she has a difficult love/hate relationship with her father to whom we know she is utterly devoted. She's a breath of fresh air when she's unself-conscious and poignant in quiet moments when Potts allows us to enter her troubled mind burdened with familial conflicts and her presumed role as a loyal daughter.

Penguin UK paperback

Dr. Craig has his own share of troubles and secrets. Rumor and gossip follow in his wake about how he left his bad marriage and where his wife is now. A minor subplot concerns his attraction to Rachel who complicates matters with her suspicion of ulterior motives. Is the physician interested in helping Rachel clear her brother's name only to be physically closer to her?

The most fascinating person in the cast may be Francis Henshaw, dubbed Francie by the townspeople. In his youth Francie was a go-getter, a handsome young man engaged to marry a banker's daughter and voted most likely to succeed at anything by his high school classmates. That marriage was ruined by Rose and her evil machinations when Francie ended up chained to Rose for decades in a loveless marriage. Now long divorced from his "abomination" of a wife he has fallen into a pathetic hermit's existence. Running a second hand furniture shop he retreats into a world of dusty chairs, rusting metalwork and the cobwebs of his past. A candlestick turns out to be the murder weapon and has gone missing from Rose's home. It's mate was taken out of spite by Francie as part of the spoils of their divorce. Now Bix and Rachel are sure that both candlesticks are hidden somewhere in Francie's shop. The climax of the book involves an elaborate hunt for the murder weapon leading to violence and a showdown with Henshaw in the local hospital.

INNOVATIONS: Go Lovely Rose (1954) won Jean Potts the Best First Novel Edgar award for her debut mystery novel. It belongs to the burgeoning domestic suspense subgenre already becoming more prevalent and popular with the work of her contemporaries like Margaret Millar and Charlotte Armstrong, neither of whom had written their best books by 1954 making Potts' novel all the more noticeable in her debut. And its quite a performance for a first novel.

Potts helped forge the way for more women writers who were fascinated with dissecting the underbelly of rural and suburban life, rooting out callousness and seemingly inexplicable malicious behavior from which no good comes. As an examination of a horrible woman's vindictive lifestyle and its effect on not just two families, but an entire town, Go, Lovely Rose is easily one of the most arresting and perceptive crime novels of the 1950s. Potts succeeds in finding the balance between attack and compassion in her critique of the small-minded and malicious Rose and the long lasting wounds she has caused. The murder investigation, as is the case in many of these domestic suspense novels, is both a revelation and healing for all. But the restitution of well-being and equanimity for all families involved always comes at a costly price.

Go, Lovely Rose, US 1st edition (Scribner, 1954)

Potts has a writing style both colloquial and sophisticated with a talent for turning phrases that smack of real truth. With so many damaged people in the cast she is never patronizing or judgmental. Potts examines her characters from all angles often resorting to an omniscient narrative voice. She shines her unflattering spotlight on the most conflicted people like Bix and Rose's ex-husband Francis revealing them at their most vulnerable and truthful selves despite their outwardly deceptive ways. She has a fine ear for the way people talk, especially in her two teenage characters, "Bix" Bovard and Hartley Buckmaster. Bix in particular has the most unique speech pattern, kind of a junior 1950s Mrs. Malaprop, in her mispronunciation of ten dollar (scintillating with an "sk" sound) and a general misuse of words she's only seen in print but never heard.

At the heart of the story's mystery is Althea Bovard's unending grief for the death of her son, Ronnie. His ghost hovers over the Bovard house and his name is never far from his mother's lips. No conversation is free from the mention of some memory or wisp of Ronnie's short, difficult life. Ronnie has died more than 15 years ago when Bix was an infant and he is still Althea's favorite child. Primarily because Ronnie was severely disabled, born with Down syndrome though that genetic disorder is referred by its uglier 1950s terms -- Mongoloid and Mongolism. It is a rare writer of any period, let alone the 1950s, who gives us insight into the turmoil and struggles of a parent raising a child like Ronnie. Althea cannot forgive herself for not allowing him a longer life, for failing to find ways for him to adapt. Her grief is her punishment. Ronnie's death will prove to be the most significant aspect of the book, the key to gleaning everyone's unspoken resentments, and the ultimate answer to understanding why Rose Henshaw was such an odious woman.

QUOTES: The morning after Hartley's arrest Dr. Craig woke up late, realized it was Sunday, and lay for a few minutes contentedly surveying his cluttered little back room and his own large feet which stuck out beyond the end of the studio couch. He had forgotten to pull the shades again, and the winter sunshine lay in lemon-colored wafers on the dusty congoleum rug. Simultaneously the Methodist and Presbyterian church bells began ringing, loud and bossy-sounding, as if they were quarreling over the souls of Coreyville. They had something to quarrel about all right, thought Dr. Craig affably. A real prize package: the soul of a murderer.

The detective's name turned out to be Mr. Pigeon, of all things. And he couldn't have looked less like a detective if he had actually had pink feet and a fantail.

"So you're engaged to Etta Kincaid," Rose had said to him. "How nice. And you work down at the bank, for her father. How nice." Thus, with a flick of Rose's tongue, was love reduced to expediency.

"Oh, he's in it all right. He's up to his neck. As for motive -- well, you never can tell about these eccentric old birds. They get notions. They brood over some little thing, magnify it till it turns into what is, to them, perfectly good grounds for murder. It happens all the time -- people get killed for picking their teeth, or wearing the wrong color necktie."

THINGS I LEARNED: That mention of the congoleum rug in that first quote above was a puzzler for me. I always thought that congoleum was a floor tiling. It actually is an offshoot of a roofing material called Congo (supposedly named for the fact that asphalt used as a saturate in the roofing material came from that African region) created in 1902 by the United Roofing and Manufacturing Co. Here's the lowdown from the Congoleum Corporation's "History & Heritage" web page: "It soon became evident that the three foot wide strips of Congo roofing material could easily be used as floor runners to deaden noise and minimize dust and dirt collection in traffic patterns. It was also more durable than the rubber mats which were being used at the time. To differentiate between the Congo roofing and the flooring material, the flooring was given the name Congoleum." So really they were mats. But by the mid 1920s the company managed to make intricate decorative patterns in the material in order to mimic the look of an area rug. There's also another story about how congoleum and linoleum became cousins when two companies merged and the Congoleum Corporation simplified the costly and laborious manufacturing process for making linoleum. Click here for more on flooring material history and development.

THE AUTHOR: Jean Potts was born and raised in Nebraska. After graduation from Nebraska Wesleyan University she became a journalist for a Nebraska newspaper. Later she moved to New York to continue her journalism career and branching out into fiction for magazines. In 1946 her first story was published in Collier's ("The Other Woman") and she continued writing domestic melodramas for other "slicks" like McCall's, Cosmopolitan and Redbook throughout the 1950s and 1960s. After the great success of her award-winning debut mystery novel Go, Lovely Rose she focused more on crime fiction though she would occasionally write a "woman's story". Her crime fiction consists of a handful of short stories nearly all published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and fourteen novels. According to a Nebraska literary website Go, Lovely Rose had been optioned by a London movie company and her 1963 novel The Evil Wish (an Edgar nominee) was supposed to have been filmed with Barbara Stanwyck and Sir Ralph Richardson. Neither movie was made, nor can I find any confirmation that either piece of information is true. Jean Potts died in New York in 1999.

EASY TO FIND? As far as I know none of Jean Potts' novels have been reprinted. Few of her books turn up for sale in the used book market, but there are a handful of paperback copies of both the US and UK editions of Go, Lovely Rose. The US first edition is truly scarce and finding one with a dust jacket is next to impossible. I found no images online of the original first edition dust jacket proving that copies probably haven't been for sale for a long time. (BUT! thanks to Bill Pronzini I now have a photo of the US 1st edition DJ up there in the Innovations section.) Currently there is exactly one copy with a DJ offered for purchase from a Minnesota dealer but that's an ex-library copy.

FFB: Within the Maze - Ellen Wood

When the discussion of domestic suspense comes up no one ever thinks of Ellen Wood, or Mrs. Henry Wood as she was known back in her heyday as one of the most prolific and perhaps the leading Victorian bestseller writer. Why is that? Granted her books may be incredibly old-fashioned, but they are surprisingly readable. Any brave reader willing to dive into one of her massive tomes (most of them were released in three volumes during her lifetime) cannot fail to draw comparison to the modern work of Margaret Millar, Ursula Curtiss, Charlotte Armstrong, and Dorothy Salisbury Davis. Wood practically invented the subgenre. Instead of her books being seen as an offshoot of the more criminally minded Victorian sensation novels of Collins, Braddon and Charles Reade she gets clumped together with them. The majority of her novels have nothing to do with crime and are, in fact, domestic melodramas rich with scandalous incident. Victorian soap operas might be a unkind label, but sums them up rather nicely especially considering how soap operas have evolved into tales of passive aggressive schemers only happy when causing unhappiness to others. When Wood does turn her mind to criminal acts, they almost always result in unintentional cover-ups. Her men and women are determined to preserve family reputation and individual honor at all costs. There may a suspicious suicide, bigamy, theft, or even a murder or two, but the story is always centered on the aftermath of the crime teeming with misunderstanding, gossiping busybodies unnecessarily complicating otherwise innocuous events, stubborn refusal to speak without ambiguity, and characters suffering silently in their pain, guilt and shame while tenaciously clinging to what little dignity they have left and resolute in their stance not to expose their secrets.

Within the Maze (1872) is essentially the story of two brothers and their wives and the complex interweaving of family secrets that can be traced back to a single foolish and criminal act. The older brother Adam Andinnian has been sent to prison for shooting a man who was stalking and paying lecherous advances towards Rose Turner whom Adam is secretly married to. Karl Andinnian, the younger brother is engaged to marry Lucy Cleeves but the marriage is not forthcoming because Karl is not seen as suitable in the eyes of Lucy's snobbish parents. Mrs. Andinnian who has always favored Adam over Karl is heartbroken when Adam is sentenced to hard labor for life in a penal colony on a remote British island. She cannot allow him to suffer there, nor can she live without him by her side. And so Mrs. Andinnian schemes with her servant whose husband is a guard at the prison to allow an escape to take place. The prison escape fails miserably, however, and ends in a violent shootout. Adam, another prisoner, and the guard all perish. One of the bodies is never recovered and the man is presumed to have drowned when the boat was attacked by prison officials and police. With Adam now dead and buried Karl has inherited the family title as well as the Andinnian fortune left to them by their grandfather Sir Joseph. The marriage between Karl and Lucy can now take place. All of this happens within the first fifty pages. You think that's involved? I left out a lot of detail and only highlighted the basics. But there's more to come, of course, in this 425 page novel. Karl and Lucy are not going to have a very happy first year as newlyweds.

A religious zealot named Theresa Blake who has her nose in everyone's private affairs becomes a lodger in the home of Karl and Lucy. Miss Blake quickly develops a morbid interest in Sir Karl's frequent visits to a house known aptly as "The Maze" as it is sheltered by a hedge maze. The sole occupant of "The Maze" is the reclusive Mrs. Grey who according to rumor has a husband who lives and does business in London though he has never been seen and very rarely ever visits his wife. Miss Blake being a sanctimonious religious hypocrite obsessed with immorality immediately jumps to the conclusion that Karl and Mrs. Grey are engaged in an adulterous affair. And of course the first person she tells is Lucy. The remainder of the book consists in Karl and Lucy confronting each other about their secrets, a complete misunderstanding of what each other is talking about, and Lucy's descent into a private misery wavering in and out of deep love and devotion to and utter distrust of her husband. Miss Blake complicates matters by her constant eavesdropping, spying and coincidentally being in the same place as Karl at the most inopportune moments. Karl, on the other hand, believes that Lucy knows the true secret of the occupants of "The Maze" and cannot understand why she is making herself more and more depressed and physically ill over something that he is dealing with as best as he can.

This is in fact one of Wood's few genuine crime novels. Eventually, the police get involved when Karl and Mrs Grey inadvertently stumble upon the possibility of another escaped prisoner guilty of forgery and financial chicanery living in the quiet little village of Foxwood. The story then gets doubly complicated with the police misinterpreting Karl's interest in the forger and the appearance of a mysterious man who seems to have vanished in The Maze. Some of those who witnessed his appearance believe him to be a ghost. Detective Burtenshaw is assigned to watch the home. His persistent efforts uncover the presence of a man hiding in The Maze. He is convinced it is the escaped forger Philip Slater, but Karl thinks the police are after "Mr. Grey" and fears his life will fall apart if the identities of Mr. and Mrs. Grey are ever made public, especially by the police. Karl begins to visit The Maze more and more frequently employing clever subterfuge with the help of Mrs. Grey and her servant Ann Hopley to prevent the secret being known. Meanwhile, Miss Blake continues to interfere and gossip and Lucy continues to languish in fear, depression and misguided jealousy making herself more and more ill. Yet in the end all will turn out for the best with some stunning plot twists.

Miss Blake receives a tea-rose from
the mysterious Mr. Smith

You may have guessed the secret of "The Maze" yourself. Remember that missing body that was never recovered after the failed prison break? Who do think it really was? An unrecovered body lost at sea (any missing dead body for that matter) nearly always signals someone is really alive as we all know from reading hundreds of mystery novels. And who do you think "Mrs. Grey" really is? If you aren't clever enough to have discerned the obvious, never fear. Ellen Wood tells you almost immediately in one of her many direct addresses as the omniscient narrator who sees all, knows all, and cannot help but tell all in a sometimes annoying patronizing tone.

The inability for people to communicate properly with one another and harboring their secrets is at the heart of this book very much about the mind and spirit. This theme is brought up as early as the first section when Karl attempts to get his mother to confess her involvement of the prison escape "[Mrs. Andinnian] had always been a strangely independent, secretive woman: and such women, given to act with the daring independence of man, but not possessing man's freedom, may at time drift into troubled seas." The words dishonor and disgrace occur throughout the novel. The characters are fearful of tarnished reputations, afraid of how they will be viewed by others if they ever open up with total candor. Clinging to these secrets not only leads to depression but it makes them physically ill. Lucy, Mrs. Grey, Adam, and Margaret Sumnor all succumb to what amount to psychosomatic ailments. Some of them are chronic, some of them prove fatal. All because no one is willing to speak the truth.

Wood employs the metaphor of the broken heart both figuratively and literally. Lucy more than any other character desires to make her heart whole again, but it is her stubborn refusal to discuss her real troubles and fears with her husband, who she supposedly unconditionally loves, that leads to her dangerous decline in mind and body. She wants to believe he is innocent of philandering, but Miss Blake's malicious gossip she takes as gospel truth. When Mrs. Grey gives birth to a child and Miss Blake delivers that awful blow Lucy nearly dies on the spot. But there is a patient spiritual masochism at play here as well. It is almost as if Lucy, so blithe and optimistic and deeply in love in the first portion of the book, truly wants to suffer and wants to be the wronged woman more than she wants her marriage repaired. When all seems lost Lucy in desperation turns to her well-meaning friend Margaret Sumnor. The words of wisdom Lucy receives are ill advised though they perfectly embody the Victorian mindset: "Whatever your cross may be, my dear -- and I cannot doubt that it is a very sharp and heavy one -- take it up as bravely as you can, and bear it. No cross, no crown." Knowing that she has no real cross to bear at all, that her marriage was never was in disrepair, makes her plight all the more bittersweet, if not maddening. What is unspoken and held close proves time and again to be detrimental to everyone. Secrets can indeed kill in the world Ellen Wood creates. What is more indicative of domestic suspense than these stories in which people will not confide in anyone or too late choose the wrong person as their confessors? Here are people so entrenched in misery of their own making and mired in their inability to "see clearly" so that they are not only at the mercy of interlopers and malicious exploiters but they become victims of their own fantasies.

The busybody Theresa Blake spies on
Sir Karl and "Mrs. Grey" together in London

Within the Maze, may be one of Wood's lesser known novels today, but it was the fourth most popular of her books in terms of sales with over 150,000 copies sold between 1872, when it first appeared as a serial in Argosy, and 1900, one of its many  reprint years. That's nowhere near the 520,000 copies sold in the same time range of her famous potboiler East Lynne, the popularity of which grew evermore with its several stage adaptations. Yet still Within the Maze is notable for having remained in print for thirty plus consecutive years and continuing to be reprinted long after the author had died. With that kind of decades long popularity surely it is time to take notice of why Ellen Wood's books have struck such a resonant chord with readers of all types throughout history. There are indeed many clunkers in her stupendously prolific career ranging from dreary diatribes on the evils of drink to ponderous sentimental tales of women dying slow and languorous deaths, but when she was writing a book like Within the Maze all her talent in suspenseful storytelling kicked into high gear. She is long overdue for being recognized for her contributions to a subgenre still popular today.

FFB: Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives - Sarah Weinman, editor

Troubled Daughters, Twisted Lives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense
edited and introduced by Sarah Weinman
Penguin Books
ISBN-13: 978-0143122548
384 pages $16.00
Publication date: August 2013

Yes, it's a brand new book and it's my choice for Friday's Forgotten Book. I guess this is a cheat of sorts. Since many of these women writers are utterly forgotten (but not by me -- I've written about many of their novels here) and this review is months overdue (I finished this book back in August) it's time to get it up on the blog.

Sarah Weinman has gathered together an impressive array of woman mystery writers who were instrumental in the development of a subgenre she likes to call domestic suspense. The anthology brings together pioneers in crime fiction like Margaret Millar, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and Charlotte Armstrong with stalwarts like Patricia Highsmith, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, and Dorothy B. Hughes. Rounding out the group are the modern and all too often forgotten writers like Nedra Tyre and Celia Fremlin, and wonderful new finds like Joyce Harrington and Barbara Callahan. There are a total of fourteen women represented with a variety of stories that run the gamut from creepy and atmospheric to outright nasty. There is even a surprise happy ending delivered in "Everybody Needs a Mink", an atypically lighthearted story from Hughes normally known for her novels of paranoia and dread.

I would’ve liked a better story from Margaret Millar than her oft anthologized "The People Across the Canyon", a story even if you have never read it before will seem very familiar as it recycles an idea used too frequently in crime fiction. The story from Shirley Jackson, a master of both the novel and short story, is unfortunately the weakest and least satisfying in the collection. There has to be a better example from her pen than "Louisa, Please Come Home" which lacked bite and pizazz compared with the quality of the others selected. But the rest of the stories each have something to recommend them. Below are highlights from half the collection.

"A Nice Place to Stay" by Nedra Tyre
Tyre was a regular contributor to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine where she published over forty short stories. In this tale she captures the voice of a loner woman whose only desire is a comfortable life, good food and a nice place to stay. An opportunistic lawyer jumps on her case and turns her into tool to advance his career. But the narrator has a surprise in store for all his hard work.

"Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree" by Helen Nielsen
I am a big fan of Nielsen’s novels and also her TV scripts for shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In this story she takes the old trope of the anonymous phone caller and gives it a Nielsen triple twist. The story is notable for her narrative trick of weaving back and forth between the past and present in order to build suspense.

"Lavender Lady" by Barbara Callahan
An example of the creepy domestic suspense story and very well done. The story tells the origins of a popular folk tune as narrated by a singer/songwriter. Slowly we learn how her muse has affected her creative life. The repetition of the song lyrics are like the chants and doggerel of doom so often found in fairy tales.

"Lost Generation" by Dorothy Salisbury Davis
The most experimental and mature of the lot. As in The Judas Cat and The Clay Hand, both early novels about how violence uncovers the corruption of small town’s population, Davis does in miniature and with an economy of words another story of rural life and crime. The narrative structure is layered with ambiguity and requires assiduous reading to glean all the subtleties. The relationships are revealed through bare bones dialogue and minimal description. It’s almost like a radio drama. Quite an impressive feat, loaded with sharp details and yet it’s the one of the shortest pieces.

"The Heroine" by Patricia Highsmith
As I was reading this one I couldn’t help but think of “The Turn of the Screw” and movies like The Nanny. Another one of those stories about a possibly mentally ill woman left in charge of children. Lucille has an obsessive need to prove herself and suffers from a few delusions. You know something is odd about her but you keep hoping that she isn’t a crazed lunatic. The ending is a shocker.

Joyce Harrington (a former actress) confesses
she writes by the Stanislavski method

"Mortmain" by Miriam Allen DeFord
Probably the nastiest story in the collection. Reminiscent of the kind of macabre irony Roald Dahl perfected in his short fiction. DeFord tells the story of a greedy nurse taking care of an ailing deputy sheriff and how her scheme to steal money from his safe goes horribly wrong. Has a gasp inducing ending proving this story to be the only true noir tale in the collection.

For me the gem of the book is "The Purple Shroud" by Joyce Harrington, a writer whose work I knew nothing about until I read this tale. It’s a little masterpiece. Each carefully chosen word rings true. The brilliant use of weaving imagery from the work on the loom to the spider spinning its web, the language used to evoke the serenity of Mrs. Moon’s state of mind as she plots revenge on her womanizing husband –- it’s all perfect. Here is the epitome of what Weinman talks about in her informative introduction defining the aspects of domestic suspense. If I were you I’d save it for the very last and savor it like a fine wine. It’s really that good.

FFB: The House Next Door - Lionel White

Best known for his novel Clean Break which became the stunning noir caper movie The Killing directed by Stanley Kubrick and with the crackerjack cast of Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Vince Edwards and Elisha Cook Jr (among others) Lionel White is the last writer you may think of comparing to Charlotte Armstrong, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding or Dorothy Cameron Disney. But while reading The House Next Door (1956) those are the three writers who came immediately to mind. White's seventh novel is a true departure - an exposé of what happens to the homeowners in a suburban housing development when murder literally lands on someone's front lawn.

The novel opens with a near perfect crime that goes terribly wrong. Gerald Tomlinson and his partner Danny Arbuckle are planning to rob Angelo Bertolli who makes a nightly deposit from a racetrack bookie joint in an after hours bank depository slot. All Tomlinson needs to do is wait for the mark, knock him unconscious, grab the money and run. Simple, clean, easy. What he doesn't plan on is Mrs. Manheimer, a little old lady news agent, who is headed to make her own deposit at the precise minute the bookie's agent is at the bank. When she sees Tomlinson raise his hand clenching a gun and striking Bertolli on the head she lets out a piercing scream. In the confused chaos that follows Bertolli produces a gun he always carries with him and fires two shots as the robbers drive off. Danny, the driver, has been shot and he needs a doctor's attention. Tomlinson has a lot to deal with now that his perfect plan has blown up in his face.

Meanwhile, Len Nielsen has been celebrating his recent job promotion. He's not much of a drinker but to placate his boss he keeps accepting drink after drink. Drinks at dinner lead to a celebratory champagne toast with two friends and later more drinks at an after dinner bar crawl. Len is sloshed by the time he heads home. He climbs into a cab and directs the driver to Fairlawn, a suburban development with a maze of streets where all the homes look exactly alike. The cabbie is left to his own devices when Len barely coherent can't tell him the precise location of his house. As Len leaves the cab he manages to lose his hat and his glasses and isn't sure where he's walking. His key doesn't seem to fit the front door so he has to climb in a side window. But when he gets inside his wife Allie, who has been expecting him for hours, isn't anywhere in sight. She isn't even in the bedroom when he stumbles in noisily bumping into furniture that he doesn't recognize. Then he notices the garish purple wallpaper with mauve roses. He's in the wrong house. And on the bed is a dead man with a bullet in the center of his forehead.

The two plotlines - the botched bank robbery and Len's unintentional discovery of a dead body - will eventually meld together. But not before the brutally beaten body of a teenage babysitter is found on a neighbor's yard and Len is arrested for suspicion of murder. Unlike White's previous three books published by Gold Medal and the two hardcovers for Guilt Edged Mysteries The House Next Door is not so much a study of how criminals turn on one another but rather how crime affects everyday people. Fairlawn's families range from the McNallys, an embittered married couple dealing with infidelities and dissatisfaction, to the staid Kitteridges, British expatriates who hold their neighbors in slight contempt all the while wearing plastered smiles on their faces. As the story progresses the carefully constructed facades of neighborliness crumble to reveal the ugliness at root in these households.

U.K. 1st edition (T.V. Boardman, 1957)

The crimes will also transform some of Fairlawn's inhabitants, notably Allie Nielsen who is compelled to prove her husband's innocence when Lt. Giddeon refuses to accept her protestations. Allie turns snoop like a younger American version of Jane Marple in order to get at the truth of the babysitter's murder. As she goes door to door asking questions, once adopting a false identity, the final third of the book turns into a neat pastiche of an amateur sleuth detective novel.

There is an element of HIBK in this book, too, which was rather alarming for a writer who is better known for tough-edged noirish thrillers. Reading sentences like "if it hadn't been first for Mrs. Manheimer, and then later for that certain fifteen-year-old girl, Tomlinson's plans would have been without flaw" call to mind the work of Dorothy Cameron Disney and Mary Roberts Rinehart.  Jarring to say the least.  It's a recurrent stylistic choice, but not without effect. White's unusual method of creating suspense definitely had me turning the pages more quickly.

White juggles the multiple storylines, the large cast of characters and the plot machinations with the ease of any carnival entertainer.  It's an invigorating, insightful, and incisive read. Amid all the domestic squabbles, the brutality and violence, The House Next Door is not without its compassionate moments.  There are several touching portraits on display to offset the nastiness. White rarely made of use of the balance of light and dark moods in his later career. That he dedicated this book to his wife noting his deep love for her may be the most telling point of all.