Playing Happy Families: Julian Symons (1994)

“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.

A Sight for Sore Eyes: Ruth Rendell

In A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell deftly weaves 3 seemingly unconnected narrative strands involving a badly damaged young man, a girl whose mother was murdered and a woman who had a brief claim to fame.

In 1966, Harriet’s short-lived rocky love affair with a rock musician is immortalised in a famous painting. After she’s tossed aside, Harriet picks up Franklin, an older, married well-to-do man who is attracted by her youth, looks and tawdry fame.

She gave him an innocent, carefree smile. How could his being married interest or trouble her? Marriages, anyway, as far as she could tell were made to be broken. But he was rich and she, in only a few weeks was due to be poor again.

Franklin, besotted, foolishly divorces his reliable wife, marries Harriet, and lives to regret it. Infatuated with this new trophy wife he buys Orcadia Cottage, the house immoralised by the famous painting of Harriet and her liaison with the rock star.

Also in 1966, Jimmy Brex and Eileen Tawton, a dull emotionally-blunted couple decide to marry. The engagement lasts 5 years and only ends in marriage when Jimmy’s mother dies. Jimmy, who has spent his life wanking, and Eileen share the filthy Brex home with Jimmy’s equally odd brother, bachelor Keith. Keith, an overweight plumber, owns a succession of big American cars which are parked in the back garden and driven only occasionally. Jimmy and Eileen, a joyless couple have a son–Teddy who grows up in an emotional desert.

No one took much notice of him. But none of them took much notice of each other.

Jimmy is obsessed with television, Eileeen is obsessed with crocheting and Keith is obsessed with his cars. That leaves Teddy stuck alone, crying and ignored in a play pen. By the time Teddy is a teenager, he’s devoid of most feelings but hates his uncle, his parents and their ugly, filthy home. He develops a love of beautiful things and eventually becomes attends college and studies woodworking.

Francine has very vague memories of the day her mother was murdered. She was just a small child when, after being sent upstairs to her room, she heard her mother arguing with a male visitor. Following the murder, Francine lost her ability to speak for a long time, and so when Francine’s father is introduced to Julia, a “pedopsychiatrician,” it seems only natural that Julia should talk to the damaged child. And then Julia, so calm, so understanding, takes Richard as a client. She sells her house, ‘gives’ up her practice (she’s forced to by a legal action brought by the father of another child) and moves close to Francine and her father. Julia constantly makes Francine rake over the day of the murder and spends years telling Francine that the killer knows there was a witness and that he may come after Francine. Julia becomes fixated on Francine, and this fixation becomes increasingly controlling. Julia “had abandoned all other areas in which to exercise power.” so poor Francine is the focus of all of Julia’s energy and attention.

The only way to deal with Julia was to agree with her, acquiesce, and quietly do your own thing. Insofar as you could. Anything else, anything in the nature of an argument or a discussion, wore you out. You might be sixteen to her forty-nine, but you still got worn out first. Francine had reached a point where she couldn’t really speak to Julia much, just said yes, and no and thank you and smiled.

A Sight for Sore Eyes is a devilishly clever book. For a great deal of the novel, Rendell traces the lives of these people on their collision course to murder: poor damaged, gentle and innocent Francine whose stepmother creates a narrative about Francine’s damage which morphs into Francine’s unreliability, untrustworthiness and then… promiscuity. Yes, Julia loses the plot, for as Francine grows up and tries to grasp any degree of independence, Julia neuroses grow, so we see that she is dependent on Francine being practically a prisoner. Julia manages Francine’s life to the minutest degree and becomes, in essence, her jailor. In the meantime, Harriet, now middle-aged and just as vain and selfish as ever, lures handymen as potential lovers to her home with the filmiest excuses excuses. To Harriet, her attractiveness is proved when she beds men decades younger. And Teddy, the biggest psycho in a book full of ’em, develops a love for beautiful objects. Perfect objects.

The Spider Orchid: Celia Fremlin (1977)

“Drinking to future happiness is one thing; embarking on it quite another.”

In Celia Fremlin’s novel, The Spider Orchid, divorced Adrian has had many “long, happy years” in a blissful affair with married Rita. In their love nest–her marital bed, his marital bed and now post-Adrian’s divorce, Adrian’s bachelor flat he has “begged her” repeatedly to leave her husband. But the begging took place when Rita’s divorce was “impossible.” They had “agreed long ago, agreed jointly, and without acrimony or argument-that if only Derek would agree to a divorce, then she’d come and live with Adrian.” But now the impossible has happened and Derek has suddenly agreed to a divorce. Adrian is floored. He feels shocked and “betrayed” by Derek, who was aware of the long-term affair, but always refused to divorce Rita. Rita is overjoyed…

Adrian, after divesting himself of his wife, doormat Peggy, has settled into a routine which suits his self-focused character. Even his daughter, Amelia has subsumed herself to her father’s wants and so a status quo reigned with Adrian seeing Rita when he feels like sex. When Rita announces that she’s moving in, Adrian can’t hide his dismay.

Adrian uses his once-a-week visitation with Amelia as an excuse to toss Rita out on the very first Sunday, and once Rita gets the message that Adrian is lukewarm about their relationship, her venom spews onto Adrian and Amelia. Meanwhile Amelia, a girl with an active imagination, starts hanging out with landlady Dorothy, one of those nosy people who have a taste for discord:

Dorothy had discovered that only by helping people in their troubles do you get to the real, juicy core of the disaster, in all its scandalous and thrilling details.

I laughed at the descriptions of Adrian’s relationship with Rita (the mistress) vs. Rita the live-in girlfriend.

She knew nothing about wines, any more than she knew anything about petroleum, or world affairs, or music, or even holiday resorts or detective stories; but she had this lovely way of pausing, as if in deep thought, before saying No, I’ve never been there, no, I’ve never seen that, no, I don’t read those kind of books, no, I’ve never heard of him. And after each of these admissions she’d give a sweet enquiring little smile, one eyebrow lilting delicately upwards, as if the one thing she’d been waiting for all her life was for Adrian to tell her all about it, whatever it was.

Derek, however, has a completely different view of Rita:

Having destroyed me utterly, she was up against a bit of a dead end. She was like an artist with no more canvas left to work on….

When an accident befalls Rita, a strange game of ‘pass-the-woman’ begins between Derek and Adrian, with Adrian insisting that Rita should return to her husband to be nursed and Derek insisting that Adrian didn’t “take her [Rita] away on a sale-or-return basis.” The way Derek sees it, Rita, thanks be to fortune, is 100% Adrian’s problem.

Celia Fremlin has a wicked mind which is a great thing for a crime writer to possess, and she excels with her depictions of the horrors of daily domestic life. Those four walls. …

The Man Whose Dreams Came True: Julian Symons (1968)

“He had practiced his smile in the mirror, and it did not fail him now.”

In The Man Whose Dreams Came True from Julian Symons, Anthony Scott-Williams is a secretary to an elderly British General. For Anthony, it’s a “cushy billet.” The widowed General lives in a splendid country home and a housekeeper manages the house well. Anthony has an attractive bedroom, and the work, helping the General write his memoirs, is boring but light. Soon after arriving at his new job, Tony “realized the memoirs would never be completed.” Tony also realizes that the General has had a string of secretaries, so Tony learns to lose at billiards, fiddle the books, and pander to the old man’s vanity.

As Tony digs in, he manages to get rid of the long-term housekeeper and then replaces her, continually, until he finds one who is “amenable.” Numbers are fudged in the household accounts as Tony “arranged what he thought of as his commission.” He splits the over-bill amount with the morally pliable tradesmen, and makes quite a bit of money skimming off the top of the accounts. But it’s not enough. He considers blackmailing the General (over some old letters) and forging his signature, or being named as the beneficiary of his the old man’s will. Tony (whose real last name is Jones) has big dreams:

With all that money in his wallet he would go to the south of France, stay in a good hotel, meet a rich woman older than himself who fell in love with his looks, marry her and live in luxury ever after.

Then Tony meets a young woman called Fiona Mallory. She says she’s the daughter of a local rich “business tycoon.” Fiona seems to swallow Tony’s lies about being a stockbroker, and, as a variation on the idea of marrying a rich older woman, Tony thinks Fiona is perfect for him. A sexual relationship quickly follows but things begin to go wrong when casino thugs start hounding Tony for repayment of debts.

Gambling was his one weakness, or that was the way he sometimes thought of it.

But as it turns out Tony has several weaknesses which converge and meld into his downfall. At one point Tony retreats to his eccentric, savvy Aunt Bella’s seedy B&B, and here he meets a rich older woman, a widow named Mrs. Harrington. She fancies Tony and he fancies her money. It’s a dream come true:

Around Mrs. Harrington there hung always some curious scent, rather like low-lying mist clinging to the ground on a damp morning, but in the bedroom this heavy cloying smell was thick, as though he were in the lair of some powerful animal.

Throughout the story, Tony’s fortunes rise and fall and rise again, but as Tony tries to escape the consequences of his actions, he blindly walks right towards his inevitable fate.

Dangerous Thoughts: Celia Fremlin (1991)

“Some men are naturally tidy, while others regard their entire house as one gigantic in-tray. It’s just the luck of the draw, which kind you turn out to have married.”

In Dangerous Thoughts, Celia Fremlin explores the impenetrable, complicated territory of a long-term miserable marriage. Clare Wakefield is delighted when her husband Edwin, a journalist with a failed career, tells his wife that he is leaving on a highly sensitive job in the Middle East. Edwin, used to have a full time job, but after some sort of “row with the editor,” Edwin (unemployed) went freelance, and that means he’s home, bitching and moaning, most of the day. Edwin is not an easy man. His moods and temper tantrums set the tone for the household, so when he tells Clare that he’s been given a special assignment in the Middle East it’s a “red-letter day” for both Clare and her son, Jason:

Can you wonder, then that I was almost dancing towards the car park after seeing him off? Singing, too, as I wove my way among the snarls of traffic in blessed solitude–singing in my heart, and even aloud occasionally, as the sheer joy of Edwin not being there overcame me. Not there now, and not for days and days to come–a fortnight at least, from the look of things. A whole fortnight of not being nagged and criticised; of being able to do the hoovering without complaints about the bloody noise; of being able to not do the hoovering without remarks about crumbs on the carpet and the place looking like a pigsty!

With the petty tyrant absent, Clare relaxes but then her “little holiday is over” when Edwin comes home earlier than expected.

Within a week of his departure, there’s news that Edwin’s been kidnapped by terrorists and is being held hostage with two other men. And then comes a miraculous escape. The first sign that there is something amiss occurs when Clare gets a call from a somewhat bored skeptical sounding newspaper assistant editor who wants to talk to Edwin. The tiny nagging feeling of doubt Clare experiences about Edwin’s story, however, is swarmed by the onslaught of publicity. Then she’s contacted by the family of one of the other two men, Richard Barlow. Sally Barlow, the much younger wife of Richard, is spoiled and immature. The third man, Leonard, is still missing. His wife, Jessica, is a neurotic user. So two more marriages in which the spouses have very defined roles.

Celia Fremlin excels at exploring the horrors of everyday domestic life, and here we see Clare and Edwin playing the same old record day after day. He has these little pissy fits and it’s Clare’s job to soothe and placate him in an attempt to lighten the mood and stave off a bigger scene. How’s that working out for her?

It wasn’t entirely true, I reflected at this point, that I didn’t love him at all. It was his bad temper I didn’t love, and his nerves, his sulks and his insomnia; his needling of Jason, his fault-finding, his complaints and criticisms, his boredom, his restlessness, his endless fidgety presence, his mooning and moping and rooting for trouble …

Well it’s a lot not to love, isn’t it? It doesn’t leave much. But it leaves something.

Edwin, caught up in an orgy of interviews, should be happy that the other two men are okay, but strangely, he is tense, snappy and uncommunicative. Clare catches on that Edwin is lying about the trip, and since his behaviour is so strange, she begins to suspect the worst. Clare’s spiky, very natural voice made this a good read. However, for a great deal of the novel, she follows Edwin even as she questions his versions of events. This leaves Clare as a passive onlooker and less interesting. Nonetheless I laughed at Clare’s direct self-analysis. She’s asked by an interviewer how she felt when she heard that her husband was safe. She gives the standard reply “Over the moon.”

You have to lie sometimes. Anyway, what is it actually like over the moon? On the other side of the moon presumably. Bleak, I should think. Bleak and terrifying. So perhaps it wasn’t a lie after all.

The Man Who Killed Himself: Julian Symons (1967)

Middle-aged Arthur Brownjohn is a henpecked husband. He’s married to Clare, a sporty, bossy woman who brought their home, The Laurels, and her own independent income to the union. Not that she’s sharing her money, and that’s just one of Arthur’s many unspoken grievances. When he met Clare, he’d been “looking for a bank account,” to pump money into his inventions and his failing business. Clare seemed to fit the bill, but she refuses to hand over any money.

It then occurred to Arthur in later years to wonder why Clare had married him. He came to the conclusion that the idea of marrying somebody socially beneath her was really positively congenial, although she pretended otherwise. To social inferiority was added Arthur’s natural timidity, which made it easy for her to overcome him on any point, and when these qualities were topped by a disinclination for nonsense* he became (as he saw afterwards) an almost ideal husband. * nonsense = sex.

When the novel opens, Arthur is a seller of car parts, and his work takes him from home for part of the week, but when he’s home, Clare and Arthur occasionally host Bridge nights with friends. During these evenings, Clare openly monitors Arthur’s alcohol intake. One guest, feeling sorry for Arthur, finds Clare’s rationing of Arthur’s drinking humiliating for the poor man, but then again there was that incident when he drank too much and took off his clothes.

Repressed or henpecked people find alternate outlets for their grievances. Arthur manages to wiggle out from under Clare’s supervision for half of the week. During that time, sporting one of several specially made wigs (in various stages of growth), he leads a double life as Major Easonby Mellon, the confident, rakish, opportunistic owner of a matrimonial agency. This agency, with its low key work load, has the benefit of bringing many lonely women into his life. To make life comfortable, as Mellon, he lives with a woman named Joan who cooks his meals, washes his clothes and asks few questions as he cockily tells her he’s a spy and can’t discuss his life with her. It’s no small feat to juggle two lives, and two women, but then a young sexpot named Patricia arrives at the matrimonial agency looking for a husband. Patricia isn’t his usual sort of client and Arthur/Easonby can’t believe his luck. So Arthur, who also desperately needs to hide a money problem from Clare, decides to get rid of both of his old lives and start afresh with Patricia. Of course, that means murder. …

I came to this book thanks to reading the delightful The Colour of Murder, and I was not disappointed. With dark humour, Symons explores the vagaries of Arthur’s nature through his dramatically opposite dual lives and then Arthur’s new found freedom-post-Clare. Arthur discovers that without the old ball-and-chain to defy and sneak around, life has lost its meaning.

The Birthday Present: Barbara Vine

“We only want access to the book of fate when we can read something favorable to us in it.”

Barbara Vine’s (Ruth Rendell) psychological crime novel The Birthday Present is an exploration of responsibility and consequences. In this intriguing story of an affair that goes wrong, the plot doesn’t deal with guilt or even passion.

It’s the 90s. Womaniser Ivor Tesham has it all: he’s wealthy, handsome, intelligent and as a member of parliament, he has some political standing in the Conservative Party. Ivor has the means, the time and the energy to pursue women, and one day, at a charity fundraiser, he meets the blonde, beautiful married Hebe Furnal. There’s an immediate connection, and they begin an affair. Ivor and Hebe share sexual tastes: namely S&M. Hebe’s husband, Gerry, a decent man with a modest but middling career, doesn’t suspect a thing, and this is helped by “the alibi lady,” Hebe’s friend, Jane Atherton. To say that Jane is a wallflower would be putting it mildly. She exists in Hebe’s glamorous shadow. For Hebe’s birthday, Ivor gives her an expensive pearl necklace but there’s also a “surprise.”

And what a surprise it is: Ivor pays two men to kidnap Hebe, bundle her in a car and then tie her to a bed–presumably S&M to follow. But there’s a horrible car accident, one of the men, an actor, Lloyd Freeman is killed. The other, Ivor’s mechanic, Dermot Lynch, is in a coma. Hebe is killed.

The story unfolds through 2 very different voices: Jane and Ivor’s brother-in-law, an accountant married to Ivor’s sister, Iris. Jane, whose life goes from bad to worse, thinks she could be the sort of wife to Gerry Furnal that Hebe never was. With no relationships (except fantasy ones) and hanging on to Hebe’s pearl necklace she plays with the power she may have over Ivor. Immediately following the accident, Ivor expects to be exposed and to see his career ruined. He confides his fears to Iris and her husband and they become his sole confidantes. Ivor’s brother in law is appalled by Ivor’s behaviour–the affair, the “surprise,” and Ivor’s callous concern only for himself. Ivor may have squared the grubby affair (and the accident) away in his head, but by confiding, he places a moral burden on his loyal sister and his disgusted brother-in-law.

In the months to come I was to remember this conversation. It made me think about the unforeseen and how we walk all the time on that thin crust that covers terrible abysses.

This is not a story of guilt but rather a tale of how a man tries to move away from the consequences of his actions. Character is fate, so we see Ivor drawn to the Lynch family to see whether or not Dermot recovers and talks to the press. And Jane, who is also complicit in events, has more than one opportunity to walk away, but she, building fantasies, continually writes herself into the slow destruction that takes place. The Birthday Present is a perfect example of what can be done with a “crime” novel. No police investigation–just people acting badly and then acting really badly to cover it up. I wasn’t too keen on the ending, but for this reader, the plot was fascinating.

The Parasite Person: Celia Fremlin (1982)

In Celia Fremlin’s The Parasite Person, social scientist 40 year-old Martin Lockwood is on sabbatical from a “run-of-the-mill” polytechnic. The sabbatical is to grant him the time to complete a PhD thesis about depression, but the thesis isn’t going well. At all. Martin has recently dumped his wife, Beatrice and moved in with his understanding mistress, Helen. School teacher Helen understood Martin’s sad married life and during the affair, every time he complained about his “hopelessly inadequate wife” (“no good at cooking,” “boring,” “lazy” “sluttish,” “no good in bed,” her lack of support, etc etc) Helen was there, with a “long, cosy talk,” to commiserate with Martin, and feed him 3-course meals while stroking him with sympathy that this most-misunderstood husband lacks a wife who appreciates him.

Now that Martin is getting all this wonderful support from the eternally understanding Helen, who even types up his thesis work before she makes his breakfast and hustles off to work each morning, you might think that Martin is speeding along on his brilliant thesis. But he’s not. He’s stalled. He finds, somewhat uneasily, that while he now has the perfect home life, his creative juices simply don’t exist. Before moving in with Helen, he could blame Beatrice or his students:

there was this relentless persecution by his students, for ever handing in their assignments and expecting him to read them, or else not handing them in and expecting him to listen to their hard-luck stories of how this, that and the other had prevented them finishing on time, and how none of it was their fault.

But now, on a sabbatical, there are really no excuses. No intrusions. He has time; he has a calm home life, but the brilliant thesis idea eludes him. Martin finds that he’s just as annoyed by Helen as he was by Beatrice.

Enter the very peculiar, domineering aggressive student, Ruth Ledbetter who turns up at Martin’s office as an interview subject about depression. Obnoxious Ruth always enters a room with sneering criticism which throws off the dynamic of anticipated polite greetings, and this effectively leads to most humans sputtering with defensive explanations. Ruth is very confident, psychotic and very possibly a fraud when it comes to her suicide attempt. Soon she invades Martin’s personal life and becomes his new assistant, interviewing one depressed person after another. Through Martin’s mercurial discussions with Ruth, the title of the thesis emerges: The Parasite Person. A Parasite Person is someone who latches onto another sucking the joy and energy out of the victim leaving “an empty husk, a hollow ghost of a person, without joy, without zest, and incapable of carrying on successfully whether his work or his social life.”

Martin had noted how many severely depressed people had helpmates–cheery souls who keep up a positive banter even though a spouse may be near catatonic. The Parasite Person is proved in Martin’s fantasy induced delirium of film rights and book sales.

Depressed geniuses were two-a-penny during the nineteenth century, and most of them had self-sacrificing, supportive wives, who could well be parasite persons.

I have no idea whether or not Celia Fremlin expected her readers to laugh at Martin’s theory, but I had a great time with his blind idiocy:

depressants: that could be one angle. Why are these drugs so notoriously unreliable, working splendidly for one patient, and yet failing dismally for another, with apparently identical symptoms? Or even in the case of the same patient, it can commonly happen that during one depressive episode he will do marvellously on these drugs, and then a few months later, presenting with identical symptoms and being prescribed the very same drug, he may this time experience no benefit whatsoever. Many are the doctors who have been baffled by these discrepancies, many the theories that have been vainly propounded; and now here was Martin Lockwood coming up with a new and arresting hypothesis what would explain it all!

The parasite person, of course! As fast as the anti-depressant begins to generate new energy in the patient, so fast likewise does the attendant parasite, the psychic tapeworm, devour it, sucking it out as fast as it is generated, leaving the victim as limp and listless as before.

The Parasite Person is not a perfect novel. Some things were unclear, but in spite of its faults I enjoyed the book thoroughly. It’s a great example of confirmation bias. Martin thinks he’s been ‘held back’ by all the parasites in his life: his unworthy wife, annoying lover and demanding students. But there’s nothing to hold back. Martin, with a complete lack of insight or consideration for others, is the emotional parasite here, sucking the life out of the unfortunate women he lives with. Beatrice, once shed of the emotional demands of her selfish spouse positively blossoms, and Helen, the loving adoring mistress discovers the hard way, through Martin’s temper tantrums and increasingly ridiculous demands, that fixing three course meals for her misunderstood genius is tough going. How to keep up the glamour and romance? If Martin wants to see a Parasite Person he should go look in the mirror. The trouble with parasites though, is that the feast is fun until a bigger parasite comes along.

With No Crying: Celia Fremlin (1980)

Celia Fremlin’s novels focus on the horrors of everyday domestic life, and the author’s With No Crying, examines motherhood and abortion through its main character, 15-year-old Margaret Fields. 4th former Miranda is still in the fantasy realm of dreaming about boyfriends when she has sex with her slightly older idol. As a result she is pregnant, and she has to break the news to her parents.

Catastrophe was upon her: humiliation beyond anything she could ever have imagined.

Her parents live in a “pleasant suburban house–with their pleasantly permissive principles and their vaguely left-wing broad-mindedness about vaguely everything.” Mr Fields is a quiet man and he assumes a “see-no-evil, hear-no-evil” look at home after Miranda breaks the news. Mrs Fields, the dominant one in the marriage, isn’t angry or disappointed–rather it’s an exercise in her broad-minded approach to parenting. She is very kind to her daughter but broaches the subject of abortion. Miranda wants to keep the baby–even has a name picked (she’s certain it’s a girl) and she begins refurbishing her old doll house for “Caroline.” Mrs Fields almost loses it but she returns to cajoling Miranda into an abortion, and promises her a long holiday and lots of new clothes. Miranda won’t agree, and at school, where she tells everyone that she is keeping the baby in spite of her mother’s wish, she is “the heroine of the Fourth Year.”

It must be like this to be an astronaut, or a pop star. During those last days of the summer term, Miranda basked in such glory as she had never known.

But Miranda has an abortion and there in the hospital, she decides she hates her mother. Leaving a note expressing her hatred for her parents, she runs away from home, with a large pillow stuffed under a maternity smock. As luck would have it, Tim, a bypasser invites Miranda back to a squat. After she tells her story: pregnant at 15, determined to keep the baby and defy her mother’s demands, Miranda is petted and praised by all the residents–everyone that is except Iris. Iris was pregnant by Tim but had an abortion to please him. Tim has drifted from the relationship anyway, but it is especially bitter for Iris to listen to Tim blindly and insensitively raving on and on about how “plucky” Miranda is. Jealousy and grief brew in Iris’s heart and already hostile to the newcomer, she begins to suspect Miranda’s story.

While this is not Fremlin’s best, I liked the way the book tackled the dynamic between Miranda and her mother. They each play their roles: broad-minded mother, defiant daughter, and they are so busy playing those roles that they both find it hard to let go. There are times when Mrs Fields wants to scream with frustration when Miranda talks about the baby, and there are times when Miranda, who is, if she would admit it, terrified, wants to revert to being a child again. The idea of role play continues with the squat housemates who all (except Iris) assume various socially acceptable positions of support… About the halfway point, the novel pulls a plot switcheroo which I found unbelievable. So a good set-up but not so great execution.

Missing Presumed: Susie Steiner

Susie Steiner’s Missing Presumed is the first Manon Bradshaw novel (1 of 3) and since the author died this year at age 51 from brain cancer, there will be no more.

The crime under investigation is the disappearance of Emily Hind, a 24-year-old post graduate student from a privileged background, who vanished from her home. Emily lived with her good-looking boyfriend, Will, and he returned to their home to find her gone, some blood on the floor and two used wineglasses. Since Emily is missing, we get various views of what sort of person she was, and the views offer a range of opinions about Emily. There’s Helena, aka the limpet, Emily’s friend, a slightly sleazy older male fellow student who has a sour view of Emily’s privileged social posturing, and Emily’s ‘perfect’ and perfectly boring boyfriend, Will Carter. As time passes with no news of Emily, details about Emily’s private life float to the surface. Emily is the daughter of Sir Ian Hind (Dr to the stars royals) and his wife, Miriam. Her father resents the media coverage of Emily’s relationships and uses his connections to try to control the narrative about his daughter’s life.

As always with police procedurals we see the lives of the detectives handling the case. DS Manon Bradshaw is working the case along with several other officers. There’s Davy, always upbeat who has an unpleasant girlfriend and also a strong interest in foster kids. DI Harriet Harper, in charge of the case, must juggle the intricacies of the investigation against keeping her superiors happy.

Police Procedurals are my least favourite type of crime novel but I thoroughly enjoyed this. Police work is presented as a hard, unglamorous slog with not enough sleep for those on the case and not enough time to have much of a private life. The main player here is Manon, who at age 39, throws herself into internet dating with depressingly similar results. She has a best friend who is married with kids and Manon feels that life has passed her by. While Manon is devoted to her career, she “remained a DS because if you were smart, you realised things didn’t get better when you climbed the ranks.” Most of the officers we see have failed at relationships (even the ones who are supposedly happily married) and so they plough into the one thing they are fairly good at: police work.