“You’ve said they’re what’s called a close-knit family, and that always makes me shiver a bit.”
Playing Happy Families from Julian Symons opens on the 30th wedding anniversary of John and Eleanor Midway. 58-year-old John, a business executive, a man of regular habits, eats his usual Saturday morning breakfast which is cooked by Eleanor, a housewife who is very proud of her kitchen amd its high-end appliances. The entire domestic scene is described as one might describe a painting in a gallery.
So we see them in the kitchen with its long, narrow table covered with heat-resistant plastic, he rucking into bacon and tomatoes, she confining herself to coffee and dry toast. They present an image of English bourgeois life, a couple not at all self-satisfied, aware of their luck being somehow remote from the problems that harass many of their seniors and juniors, problems about a place to live, children’s education, money.
The opening description of this married cpuple is well done as it captures a moment in the life of the Midway family: the last day before their lives turn to hell. The Midways celebrate their anniversary with their son David and his wife, Mary, daughter Jenny and her boss Louis Meyers, and John’s bachelor brother, Giles, who is a judge. Also joining the celebration are surprise visitors from America: Eleanor’s son (from her first marriage) Eversley Grayson, his wife Sally Lou and their 2 children.
The next day, Jenny, who works in an art gallery, leaves for lunch and never returns. DS Catchpole leads the investigation and quickly discovers that Jenny was a bit of a mystery. While she is loved by many, she has bad taste in men, and according to her roommate, model, Patsy, Jenny had many short-term relationships with a wide range of men, including boxer Gabriel Lewis, betting shop owner, Alex Garrod and upper class Rupert Baxter. There seems to be no pattern to the men she selected just that she picked them up, had sex a few times and then dumped them. A theory develops that Jenny simply met the wrong man….
The book explores racism through the attitudes Jenny’s boyfriends towards her black roommate, Patsy, and there’s the police attitudes towards Gabriel Lewis, the black boxer who soon emerges as the main suspect. The weakest part of the book is a sub-plot (or avenue of investigation) involving art. The most interesting aspect of the book to this reader was the way the crime transformed the family. John takes Jenny’s disappearance the hardest, and he is certain she’s dead. Eleanor, however, with hints of earlier discontent, is galvanised into action. John has always been confident and in charge, and now that he’s overwhelmed by depression, Eleanor starts making her own decisions. She agrees to a television interview and starts a new career. We all react to shock, stress and grief in different ways:
It is said that times of crisis are tests of personality. What is certainly true is that they often reveal strengths and weaknesses unknown to their possessors. After the first shock of Jenny’s disappearance Eleanor was conscious of a kind of bounding energy and enthusiasm that demanded an outlet. She had an itch to be doing something, and a belief that no matter what it was her actions would somehow be keeping faith with Jenny, even in some mysterious way preserving her from possible harm.
His Futile Preoccupations ..... 