Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives ed. by Sarah Weinman (2013)

Anthology of 14 stories plumbing the depths of domestic suspense.

Mystery Review: Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, a collection of 14 stories by female authors published between 1943 and 1977, warns us that things are not what they seem to be and people are not who we think they are. This is often true in mysteries when the truth is obscured until the end. In the best of these stories, however, some mystery, the "why," still remains. These tales of "domestic suspense" lean toward the dark, creepy, demented, even mildly supernatural. The "twisted" of the title, hinting at psychopathy, is appropriate even though the stories are based on family, or the lack thereof, and rooted in the mundane, everyday lives of middle America (mostly). The narratives here are less predictable and formulaic than usually found in the crime genre. Although the stories span four decades only one was published in the Fifties, which seems the height of the domestic suspense era, but maybe that's just in the movies. Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives features notable names like Patricia Highsmith and Shirley Jackson, along with some of my personal favorites such as Dorothy B, Hughes and Margaret Millar, middling-known writers such as Vera Caspary (author of Laura), Charlotte Armstrong, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, and Celia Fremlin. The other five authors were new to me but no less interesting. As with any selection there are hits and misses with two or three being a bit simple or just whooshed me entirely. "Louisa, Please Come Home," "Lavender Lady," "Sugar and Spice," "The Purple Shroud," and "The Stranger in the Car" were the stories I particularly enjoyed, but I easily could see readers picking five others as their favorites. Margaret Millar's "The People Across the Canyon" seemed a perfect Shirley Jackson pastiche. What also struck me about Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives is just how professional the writing is, how well-written in structure and tone. These people wrote for a living. A job well done.  [4★]

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby (2021)

Two fathers seek revenge for the murder of their estranged gay sons.

Mystery Review: Razorblade Tears is the third of S.A. Cosby's four crime novels (my first). The book, though a thriller as much as a mystery, is heavy on characterization without the typical quirky clichés and explores genuine issues of family, race, and sexuality. There's some graphic violence thrown in among more sensitive moments of loss and love (while being circumspect about the sex). This is an accomplished and successful novel. Cosby has mentioned influences such as Walter Mosley (Easy Rawlins comes in for a shout out), Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard, Ross Macdonald, and John D. MacDonald, not to mention Chandler, Hammett, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Pretty good company and some influences are more visible than others. I see a bit of Jim Thompson as well, but whether he's an influence I see Cosby as an heir to James Crumley (that's a compliment, see The Last Good Kiss) in his ability to balance thoughtful insights with graphic violence along with a certain level of alcoholism. Crumley was far heavier on the wish-fulfillment sex and (slapstick) humor, but Cosby's portrayal is a heckuva a lot more realistic. One caveat is a jarring note of piously woke preachiness, okay in its place but is at odds with rednecks and vigilante violence in Southern backwaters while breaking fingers, putting a corpse through a chipper, and some gay-panic-defense-level brutality. It's hard to see "a hell-raising, whiskey-drinking, hard-loving redneck son of a bitch" saying "Thank God for white privilege." These folks just aren't high on the wokeness quotient. But maybe that was required in 2021. Other than that Razorblade Tears contains a high level of writing and plotting throughout. No meandering and meaningless plot points to fill out the story. One character says, "Folks like to talk about revenge like it's a righteous thing but it's just hate in a nicer suit." Anger is also omnipresent, with some stemming from the two father's self-hatred for not reconciling with their sons before their deaths. The rattlesnake wariness of the bromance between the two fathers in the strong core of the novel: "Had he really called Buddy Lee his friend ... they'd killed a man together, so they were more than acquaintances, but ... ."  Razorblade Tears is just the first. I'll definitely be reading Cosby's other three books.  [4★]

The Hunter by Richard Stark (1962)

A robber seeks revenge on the accomplices who betrayed him.

Mystery Review: The Hunter was a new kind of novel, and whether that was a good thing is open to debate. This was the  introduction of the mononymic Parker: hard-boiled, ruthless, amoral, a professional thief who lives well on the proceeds of a few big capers a year. He's not a detective. He's a bad guy, a strong arm robber who doesn't necessarily enjoy killing but doesn't avoid it either. Typically his story is of one bad guy wronged by other bad guys. The Hunter was made into the movies Point Blank (1967) and Payback (1999), both of which are excellent (the first has a sterling reputation; I'm unsure why the second gets so much grief). The novel has almost no extraneous detail, virtually all the writing is either dialog or description of people interacting. Little is wasted on pondering and description and the book reads like a runaway freight. If a field is described it's because Parker has to crawl through it. Here we get the violent end of Spillane melded into the Jim Thompson school of rough trade with just a touch of Simenon. I don't know if Parker is an anti-hero but he's certainly the protagonist as bad guy while he seeks revenge on the accomplices who betrayed him. At the end of The Hunter Parker is traveling to Omaha to get plastic surgery to change his appearance. The author was Donald E. Westlake under the oddly appropriate pseudonym Richard Stark, as the writing is uniquely severe and bare. He wrote 23 more installments of the Parker saga. Maybe it's not okay for the reader to be rooting for the bad guy to get away with it, but it sure is transgressively enjoyable and engrossing.  [4★]