Beast In View

She wanted to say, Give me the police, the way people did in plays…

Beast in View by Margaret Millar

December 6, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

So this is one of those kinds of novels from the 1950s that we kind of still get but don’t as much any more where the kinds of domestic utopian bliss that the lies of the 1950s post-war American society is built upon is disrupted in severe, violent, and drastic ways. This domesticity is disrupted and it’s very clear from now on that nothing will ever be the same. So in this novel we meet Helen Clervoe who receives what is not clear may or […]

Squicky

Beast In View by Margaret Millar

August 4, 2019 by Jake Leave a Comment

Read as part of CBR11 Bingo: Award winner. This book won the 1957 Edgar Award for best Mystery work. This book edged out Patricia Highsmith’s legendary The Talented Mr. Ripley for the 1957 Edgar Award. Both of them are more psychological thrillers than mysteries. Both were written by world class female crime writers, maybe 1 and 1a of the genre. Yet while Patricia Highsmith’s work has endured (she’s the only woman whose works have been republished by the Everyman’s Library), Millar’s were largely forgotten for decades. This […]

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