NEW STUFF: Who Is Maud Dixon? - Alexandra Andrews

Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews
Little, Brown & Co.
ISBN: 978-0316500319
336 pp. $28
Publication date: March 2, 2021

I imagine many people have often said “I wish I had his/her life” at a low point when feelings of envy and jealousy often get the better of us. Count yourself lucky if you’ve been perfectly satisfied with your life in comparison to anyone else, especially someone much more successful in a career or wealthier or more attractive or anything that most people perceive as being the hallmark of what leads to happiness. The rest of us have been there. Dreaming of a life better than the one we have, hoping for the one we know we deserve. 

Florence Darrow, the protagonist of Who Is Maud Dixon? (2021), is such a person. With dreams of being a successful writer but not quite brave enough to take the plunge she has consigned herself to working as a lower echelon assistant editor at a high profile publishing house and is surrounded by people who she perceives as better than her – more informed, more sophisticated, more intelligent and hence more successful. Everything she experiences passes through a filter of her inexperience, her Floridian background cursing her and leaving her in the wake of faster moving, hipper co-workers speeding through the fast lane of a Manhattan lifestyle she had only dreamed of back in Port Orange in her teen years. She just can’t keep up. Each day reveals she knows little, lives a shallow too safe life, while her co-workers manage to see all, know all and take everything they want with ease.

Florence is going to try her hand at taking what she wants no matter what. She has no idea what awaits her.

Through a series of embarrassing choices that recall some of the worst revenge stories of the early months of the #MeToo rage Florence loses her job only to land at the feet of her idol – the mysterious Maud Dixon, bestselling novelist whose pseudonym has never been penetrated. Now Florence is employed by the real Maud Dixon -- Helen Wilcox -- and she is in awe of the woman behind the pen name. As unfettered and opinionated as anyone Florence has worked with Helen is sort of an unimaginable caricature of the independent woman. She lives her life large and damns anyone who settles for less: “Middle categories are for middling people” she tells Florence after denouncing the male species with this glib diatribe: “Men are blunt objects. There’s no nuance there.” Within weeks on the job ostensibly a mere transcription gig, turning manuscript into digital pages, Florence finds herself completely trusted by Helen. She is astonished as she is given access to not only the handwritten pages of Helen’s upcoming novel but her bank and email accounts. Even more unexpected Florence is asked to pretend to be Helen on occasion when her employer can’t be bothered to answer business emails, like the never-ending barrage of demands from her literary agent who wants to see the first chapters of the new book. It’s only the beginning of a shift in identity and a thirst to become a successful writer at any cost.

Who is Maud Dixon? has rightfully been compared to Patricia Highsmith though it discards Highsmith’s penchant for primarily male dominated storylines for an nearly all-female cast. Still, the comparison couldn’t be more apt. It’s one of the few contemporary suspense novels I’ve read that is all deserving of a Highsmith analogy. In Helen Wilcox Alexandra Andrews has created a character as ruthless and intimidating as Ripley, as charming as Bruno, as deadly as any of her antagonists driven to murder and steal in order to get what they want. Florence’s hero worshiping personality and her love/hate relationship with her mother Vera recalls the dreamy fantasist Carol who practically wishes her female lover into existence. And the shapeshifting, personality trading practices of Tom Ripley ironically wear rather well on Florence when a near fatal car wreck and mistaken identity allows her to fully immerse herself as Helen in what was previously only role playing.

What follows this quirk of fate is a highly suspenseful novel fraught with tension and devilishly constructed incidents in which Florence must outwit everyone who believes she is Helen and that the Florence is dead. Will she get away with it all? Or is this identity switch something not at all accidental but a sinister plot manufactured to doom Florence/Helen to a life that turns out to be not at all what she thought it would be. In taking on Helen’s identity Florence realizes too late that she must also embrace everything from Helen’s past life – the life of “Maud Dixon” – which slowly reveals itself to be not at all a work of fiction, but terribly and nightmarishly real.

Alexandra Andrews
(photo: Andrew De Francesco)

This is but one of a handful of new books I read this year that surpassed all the hype. And if I have one caveat it is that Andrews allows her characters to get the better of her. There is one scene that smacks of turgid B movie melodrama overloaded with the clichés of a psychotic killer on the rampage. The scene I'm thinking of has no place in a book that was so subtle and devious in its layering of manipulation, exploitation and identity theft. But I’ll excuse it all because I hear this is going to be a movie soon. That scene is going to make for some terrific scenery chewing and some nasty hand to hand combat (with a couple of household cleaning items deployed as weapons) for the two actresses who are lucky enough to be cast in the leading roles.

Who Is Maud Dixon? is highly recommended for those who think intelligent, original, and suspenseful crime thrillers are not being written anymore. It’s simultaneously literate, topical and filled with plot machinations of the kind that diehard crime fiction devotees crave. Patricia Highsmith would be have been proud to see her name invoked to sell this notable and deftly handled debut novel. And I think she might have conceded that after so many pretenders to the throne of Highsmithian suspense Alexandra Andrews is her legitimate heir.

P.S. I read this book last month and I wrote this review just after Thanksgiving despite it only being posted today. Coincidentally, I just learned that I'm not the only one who thinks this is worthwhile reading. Sarah Weinman, the regular crime fiction reviewer for The New York Times these days, selected Andrews' debut crime novel as one of the "Best Mystery Novels of 2021." Can I pick 'em or what?

FFB: False Witness - Helen Nielsen

Publishing executive Markham Grant has been sent to Norway to secure the rights to the memoir of renowned resistance fighter Tor Holberg.  While riding a funicular up to a well known tourist spot in Bergen he witnesses a woman being strangled in the train that is descending on the opposite side of the tracks. But when he and a fellow tourist, Ruth Atkins, investigate no body is found. The woman seems to have vanished.  This bit of amateur sleuthing makes them late catching their cruise ship and it leaves without them.  Luckily, a local named Sundequist they met on board the cruise ship comes to their rescue and gives them temporary lodging at the nearby home of his friend Dr. Bjornsen. That evening Grant and Ruth meet Sundequist's artist niece and Grant is astonished.  She is the woman he saw strangled on the funicular!

In the new reprint of False Witness (1959) from Stark House Press Curt Evans rightly brings up Agatha Christie's classic Miss Marple detective novel The 4:50 from Paddington (aka What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!) with its similar eyewitness account of a strangling in a train on parallel tracks and the subsequent disappearing body. But Nielsen is not so much interested in the mystery of who the woman is and why she looks like Sigrid...or is it the other way around? This story is no real murder mystery.  Rather, it is a clever amalgam of psychological mystery and suspense thriller. False Witness owes less to detective novels of the Golden Age (something Nielsen indeed knows a thing or two about), but more to Alfred Hitchcock and his favorite trope of the pursuit thriller spiced up with espionage. The novel is rife with Hitchcockian details like a Macguffin (Tor Holberg's memoir), doppelgängers, dual identities, and even some questionable supernatural elements with a dash of hypnotism thrown in for good measure.  I would also mention that this novel is a cousin to The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon, coincidentally also published in 1959, while also hearkening back to Sax Rohmer's early Fu Manchu novels of the 1910s.  For what lies at the heart of False Witness is an intriguing idea about mind control that seems decades ahead of itself.

False Witness is also highly unusual for Nielsen, known for her gritty realism, because it dares to address the occult and extrasensory perception.  Clairvoyance and déjà vu permeate this quasi-supernatural thriller.  Grant has more visions while staying at the Bjornsen’s home.  Viewing a painting of a ruined church for the first time oddly brings back a rush of memories.  Wearing the borrowed clothes of Sigrid's dead husband makes Grant feel like someone other than himself.  The more time he spends with Sigrid the more his visions and sense of déjà vu rapidly increase. Nielsen does an effective job of making it seem like Grant is losing control of his mental faculties and that something eerie is happening to him and the people he interacts with.  But you can rest assured that there is something altogether more sinister at work here.  While the motives may appear diabolical, the villains at the heart of the devilry are entirely mortal.

In exploring alternate realities and other worldly dimensions Nielsen seems to have become more self-conscious of her writing. The dialogue is teeming with a kind of Wildean epigrammatic speech with snippets like "Someday is nothing but a delayed now" and "The heart remains loyal; the mind forgets."  An abundance of this kind of talk can ruin the serious mood with unintended hokey humor, but Nielsen shows restraint and manages to make it seem natural.  I particularly admired her prowess in creating an unusually speedy intimacy between the leads. Sigrid makes a fire, takes Markham Grant's wet shoes and clothes from him. While he warms himself she gives him her husband's robe and slippers. They look at her paintings and talk about their lives. Soon Sigrid finds herself divulging her hidden life to Grant almost instantly. It's as if she creates a new Carl, her dead husband, in the person of Grant and uses him as her confessor. The intimacy flows naturally and allows for some nice poetic touches.

The novel does not turn into a sentimental romance thankfully.  Cary Bryan, the “freeloading American” as Ruth calls him, intrudes.  Bryan has been making a living as a cheap guide for English speaking tourists ignorant of Norwegian language and customs.  And he keeps appearing in the most unlikely settings leading Grant to believe he is being followed. Bryan is often wearing a dirty raincoat that reminds Grant of the raincoat the strangler was wearing.  And wasn't the man on the train a redhead too?  Or is Grant misremembering that?  Bryan takes on a sinister aspect and Grant suspects that what he saw was a vision of an event yet to take place, that he was somehow in touch with the future. He is determined to prove Bryan to be the strangler and prevent him from killing Sigrid.  If only he could get everyone else to believe him.

Eventually Grant meets up with his publishing colleague, Nate Talmadge, who secured the rights to Holberg's memoir and wants Grant to get the contract signed. Talmdage seems to be Grant's only ally and friend. When a real murder takes place the two men will discover the reason for Grant's visions and the truth of what took place in the train.

QUOTES:  

"Very few people ever find love -- genuine love. Perhaps that's because they expect too much from something or someone outside themselves.  They feel lonely and unfinished and go looking for someone else who is lonely and unfinished, and you know what happens if they succeed, don't you?  Two miserable people go stumbling though life, lonely and unfinished together."

"Marriage is very much like the funicular. In order to fulfill its purpose, both trains must be perfectly balanced on the same cable. One can't pull more weight than the other; one can't run ahead of the other; one can't dominate the other." 

"[The portrait] was supposed to be [of Carl]; but I can't seem to get the face right. I can't  -- this is ridiculous, but I can't remember."

Discretion moves more rapidly than a police car with a screaming siren. 

"A man in your profession must have the gift of imagery. [...] A gift of imagery. With this -- with thought alone -- we can reshape the world."

"It's guided thought that conquers; not the guided missile."

"Murders are done every day. A man goes mad and slaughters his children; a nation goes mad and invades a neighboring nation. What's the difference? It's all weird; it's all madness. Someone has just found a new approach to murder..."

NEW EDITION:  Stark House Press has reprinted False Witness in tandem with Sing Me a Murder also by Helen Nielsen.  This twofer volume goes on sale in mid-November 2021.  Sing Me a Murder, a superior crime novel equally worthy of its new edition, was reviewed on this blog several years ago. Those interested in knowing what that other Helen Nielsen book is about can read the post here