Minimal Murder Monday
Oct. 9th, 2017 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I'm Only Noting in Passing
I've gotten busy very suddenly, so the only thing going this week is a book called The Opening Door by Helen Reilly - which I have in a double paperback edition, bound head-to-foot with another Helen Reilly book. Eve's aunt is shot in a park just outside the family mansion; Eve jumps to conclusions and hides the rifle belonging to "the man she loves" (who also happens to be her half-sister's fiance) thereby implicating him and herself and confusing everybody for days on end. Then, suddenly, poison! The twist ending is very Gothic.
This is one of what seems to be a very large number of mid-twentieth century suspense novels about unhappy rich people in New York, who are always clutching each other Hollywood style in drawing rooms and thinking up elaborate and cruel ways to get at each other's money. A happy ending isn't statistically likely in this milieu, but Reilly tries for one anyway.
The writing is pretty good. Reilly does a lot of misdirection by incomplete POV, usually a foggy close third, which I might mind if it were just a fraction more obvious. Half the time Inspector McKee is called Inspector McKee, and the other half he's "the Scotsman," which is a little distracting, as he goes on being The Scotsman long after he's been introduced to everyone.
Next Time:
Atlanta Noir! I've finished reading it, but not written anything yet. And the other Helen Reilly book in the two-novel bundle, Follow Me
I've gotten busy very suddenly, so the only thing going this week is a book called The Opening Door by Helen Reilly - which I have in a double paperback edition, bound head-to-foot with another Helen Reilly book. Eve's aunt is shot in a park just outside the family mansion; Eve jumps to conclusions and hides the rifle belonging to "the man she loves" (who also happens to be her half-sister's fiance) thereby implicating him and herself and confusing everybody for days on end. Then, suddenly, poison! The twist ending is very Gothic.
This is one of what seems to be a very large number of mid-twentieth century suspense novels about unhappy rich people in New York, who are always clutching each other Hollywood style in drawing rooms and thinking up elaborate and cruel ways to get at each other's money. A happy ending isn't statistically likely in this milieu, but Reilly tries for one anyway.
The writing is pretty good. Reilly does a lot of misdirection by incomplete POV, usually a foggy close third, which I might mind if it were just a fraction more obvious. Half the time Inspector McKee is called Inspector McKee, and the other half he's "the Scotsman," which is a little distracting, as he goes on being The Scotsman long after he's been introduced to everyone.
Next Time:
Atlanta Noir! I've finished reading it, but not written anything yet. And the other Helen Reilly book in the two-novel bundle, Follow Me
