Mystery Review: Dread Journey is as much a thriller as a mystery and so suspenseful I had to keep putting the book down when I got too nervous. A group of eight women and men, most with Hollywood ties, one who may be a murderer, travel across America by train as their lives grow entangled. Eight flawed characters become three-dimensional human beings who the reader cares for despite their flaws. Dread Journey is told from multiple viewpoints, multiple minds with all their thoughts, doubts, fears, and torments. Natures and motivations come into multiple conflicts. Maybe my emotions were overstimulated and I read too much into it, but the story raised questions in my mind about the kind of war America had just fought, the validity of the death penalty, and just how wrong and evil is murder. Most mysteries don't make that point. The victim's often a stranger the reader hasn't engaged with much, who after all is reading about murder for entertainment. Dorothy Hughes (1904-93) also makes overt and perceptive statements about race and class in America: "a man's pigmentation did not make him a mean creature. That all men were human and as such differed one from another; and as such were the same, one to another." All in a well-written ("But a whisper could be as perilous as a scream"), hard-boiled slice of someone else's life. As an aside, did Hughes write about Harvey Weinstein in 1945? Unlikely, he wasn't born yet. Which shows that he isn't a just a person but a label for a breed of predator that has existed for a long time. Which may be why this profound but cinematic mystery was never made into a movie. Hollywood comes off poorly. Dread Journey was impressive, much better than any mystery published in 1945 has any right to be. Powerful, intense, and indelible. [5★]
No comments:
Post a Comment