The Woman on the Roof, by Helen Nielsen

97819444520137
Black Gat Books/Stark House Press, 2016
originally published 1954
194 pp

paperback



A couple of months ago the lovely people at Stark House Press sent me an advanced reading copy of a novel
in their Black Gat line of books, Two Names for Death, by EP Fenwick, which comes out mid-April so I'll defer talking about it for the time being (although I will say that it's really, really good and that vintage mystery/crime readers definitely have something to look forward to).  After I'd finished that one, I started looking at the catalogue of other Black Gat Books, especially those written by women and bought this one, The Woman on the Roof by Helen Nielsen, and two other titles as well. 

According to Fantastic Fiction, Helen Nielsen (1918-2002) authored nineteen novels; she also wrote for television, including the old series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Perry Mason, and Tales of the Unexpected.  

The titular "woman on the roof" is Wilma Rathjen, whose brother Curtis has set her up in a garage apartment that looks down onto the six-unit apartment complex below.   We discover right away that Wilma has spent time in a sanitarium; she also has a job at a local bakery.   It is actually a muddle with a certain birthday cake ordered by one of the apartment dwellers that not only has her in a bit of a tizzy as the novel opens, but also leads to the discovery of the same woman in a bathtub in one of the apartments that Wilma can see into from her vantage point.  Because her previous trouble that had landed her in the sanitarium had to do with "tall tales" told to the police, and had upset her reputation-fearful, wealthy-businessman brother and made him threaten to send her back if it happened again, she keeps quiet about it, believing that someone else will eventually find the dead Jeri Lynn.   When the body is discovered, the police at first view her death as an accident, until circumstances and a little more digging reveal that her death is actually a case of murder.   Unfortunately for Wilma, she finds herself smack in the middle of it all, and the killer sets out to take advantage of her troubled past while believing that she knows more than she actually does. 

from Goodreads

If you are thinking that perhaps you've read this plot before, you probably haven't.  The author set up this novel so that it moves between two points of view beginning with that of Wilma before moving to  that of the lead detective on the case, John Osgood.  It is cleverly done; we know from the start that Wilma has some issues and that people consider her to be unbalanced.  I have to give serious credit to Nielsen here -- at one point she references a road-company production of The Snake Pit, but she never takes her readers down that road.  What she focuses on instead are Wilma's underlying worries and insecurities about what her brother will think and her fear of being sent back to the sanitarium now that her life is on somewhat of an even keel.  For his part, Osgood (who has his own demons to contend with) has the good sense to realize that

"Even a crazy woman should have a chance to speak for herself. How else could anyone tell the sane from the insane?"

He just knows that somewhere in what others perceive as her chaotic ramblings, she has something important and worthwhile to say and that perhaps she isn't "crazy" at all -- maybe she just has a different way of seeing and expressing things.  It is this slow realization, along with the fact that he must somehow try to impress on others to see things his way  and the slowly-growing trust between Wilma and Osgood  that allows for The Woman on the Roof to become more than just your average crime novel. 

 The list of suspects in this novel is a lengthy one, motives abound, and I never guessed the who.  But my reading focus is always on the people in crime novels, so for me it is a win-win, and a vintage mystery I can highly recommend.  The fact that Helen Nielsen was heretofore unknown to me but  is now on my reading radar is also a plus, and my many and sincere thanks to Stark House for putting her there. 

I'll be back in a couple of weeks with the previously-mentioned Two Names for Death that like this one spotlights another woman crime writer I've never heard of, and after that another, and then the two I recently bought ...  my Stark House reading future looks more than promising. 

The Aosawa Murders, by Riku Onda

"I'll tell you the truth, as I know it."

Generally I don't reread crime/mystery novels because I can only be surprised once,  but this is no ordinary crime/mystery novel, and it affected me much more the second time through. After the original read I knew I had something great in my hands but things were still a bit murky; rereading brought clarity and I was flat out chilled.  

781912242245

Bitter Lemon Press, 2020

originally published 2005

translated by Alison Watts

304 pp

paperback

It was a summer day and a special one: there were two "auspicious" birthdays at the Aosawa home: those of Dr. Aosawa, now sixty, and the grandmother who was eighty-eight.  There was another birthday as well, that of a grandson, and it was a day for celebration.  A neighbor child, Junji, had gone home to get his brother Sei-ichi and sister Makiko to come back to the Aosawa house to join the festivities, and the three arrived back just in time to witness a "scene from hell."  Seventeen people lay either dead or dying from drinks laced with poison, six of them children.  Two people survive: Kimi, the housekeeper who had only had a small taste of her drink, and Hisako Aosawa, the young daughter of the doctor who had none.   Kimi was out as a suspect because although she survived she was hospitalized right away, severely ill,  leaving only Hisako.  The thing is though that she is blind, and had no way to identify any possible suspects; nor is there any possibility that she could have laced the bottles of sake and soft drinks containing the poison.  The detective investigating the case is sure it's her, but there is no evidence linking her directly to the crime.  The case stalls, but another line of inquiry opens centering on the man who delivered the drinks to the party that day.  It's not until his suicide that, as the back-cover blurb notes, "his actions seem to seal his guilt," but the question is why? No connections could ever be discovered linking him to the Aosawas.  And then there are those people who aren't convinced he's guilty, still holding on to the idea that it was Hisako who was responsible. 

Years later,  Makiko Saiga publishes a book about that day called The Forgotten Festival, which she claims was "ultimately fiction" although it was "based on facts and research."  Nonfiction, she says, "is an illusion," since "All that can exist is fiction visible to the eye. And what is visible can also lie."  Later her assistant will reference her work as a "grey area."  She had written Forgotten Festival after countless hours of interviews with people somehow connected to the crime;  and once published it caused quite a stir.   Now, thirty years after the murders, a friend of Makiko's younger brother feels compelled to start looking into the truth of things, going back to many of the same people who were  involved with the case or who had once been interviewed for The Forgotten Festival, including the detective on the case, Makiko Saiga and of course, Hisako Aosawa herself.

The Aosawa Murders is not simply about discovering the who and the why.  Among other issues, the author so disturbingly reveals throughout this story that although the murders happened thirty years earlier,  that day took its toll and  had a lasting, often devastating impact on several people, and continues to do so in the present.  She also asks the question of how to get to the real truth behind events, especially when it comes from so many different perspectives; there's also the ultimate question of responsibility. 

The author should be commended on how she put this book together, ultimately leaving it to the reader to go through several perspectives using personal recollections, newspaper articles, diaries, pieces of Saiga's Forgotten Festival etc. to pick up a number of clues before arriving at the chilling truth of what actually happened that day and why.    I discovered that there is nothing wasted here, that everything that everyone says is important, and the trick is in putting together things that may not at first seem to matter or to be connected.  We are handed that clue at the outset by Makiko Saiga, who as she is walking around the city talks about a "synaptic experience...all connected but separate."

If you must have a linear, easy-to-follow plot, or you're not one to really sit and think about what you've just read, this book is likely not for you.  This novel is brilliant; it is very different and quite cleverly constructed so as to provide a challenge to even the most seasoned of crime or mystery fiction readers.  It zeroes in on human nature which moves it well into the literary zone, which is where I most enjoy being.

For me, this book is not just Japanese crime fiction at its best; it is crime fiction at its very best.

The Sun Down Motel, by Simone St. James

9780440000174
Berkley, 2020
327 pp

hardcover


One of the authors blurbed on the back cover of this book says that The Sun Down Motel is "Deliciously creepy. A chilling blend of mystery and ghost story that will thrill fans of both." That would soooo be me:  I love both a good mystery and a good ghost story, so I picked up a copy in eager anticipation. 

The story is told from two different points of view and from two different timelines; the common ground between both is the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York.   In 2017 Carly Kirk has made her way here to find out anything she can about her missing aunt Vivian, who had just vanished back in 1982.  Carly never knew her, but she'd been "obsessed" with what had happened to her as long as she could remember.  Aunt Vivian was never spoken of at home; there were no photos of her anywhere, and the only thing her mother ever said about Vivian was that "Vivian is dead."  For Carly it was unfair that her aunt had been

"forgotten, reduced to a few pieces of newsprint and nothing else. It wasn't fair that Mom had died and taken her memories and her grief with her. It wasn't fair that Viv didn't matter to anyone but me."

Vivian had arrived in Fell in 1982. She hadn't planned on landing there, but  once she'd arrived she picked up a job as night clerk as the Sun Down Motel.  It wasn't long until she started having strange experiences including the strong smell of someone smoking (with no one else there but her), weird phone calls, footsteps and a presence she felt, lights going off and on, doors opening, and a woman who "wasn't real."   In  2017, when  Carly arrived in Fell, the same night clerk job at the Sun Down Motel was coincidentally (ahem)  available, and she took it.   While she investigates what may have happened to  her missing aunt, she comes across a series of past unsolved murders that occurred prior to her aunt's disappearance; she also begins to experience the same strange phenomena at the Sun Down.  What she didn't know was that Vivian had also become interested in these unsolved crimes.  The novel follows both Vivian and Carly as they explore these crimes in their own way across time.    Much has changed in the meantime, including the advent of the Internet, "murderinos" who share an obsession with and information about crimes past and present, cell phones, etc.,  but two things remain the same: the potential for danger as each woman gets closer to answers in her search, and the weird, inexplicable happenings at the Sun Down Motel.


The Sun Down Motel begins with a number of questions that will eventually be answered when all is said and done, and its first chapter drew me in quickly setting up the strangeness to come, especially at the end when Viv writes the following in her notebook:

"The ghosts are awake tonight. They're restless. I think this will be over soon."

I'm thinking at this point that this was going to be good.   And then something happened: right at about page 102  somehow I figured it out.  I knew who was behind it all and I knew how this novel was going to end including the twisty bit towards the end.   I wrote down the name on an index card as well as a prediction, stuck it in the book and went on to finish reading it, hoping I'd be wrong. I wasn't -- on either count.  Oh, what a disappointment!  Obviously there were plot points that I couldn't know by page 102, but somehow I'd pegged it nonetheless in terms of the weirdness at the Sun Down, the solution to the crimes, and a big part of the twisty ending; for me the suspense just wasn't there.   What was said (referring to the back-cover blurb again) to be  a novel that "takes danger and fear to a new level" came off like a beach read.  So there goes the promise of being  "thrilled."    What about  "deliciously creepy?" one might ask.   Well, that didn't quite pan out as well as hoped either.  Ghostly/supernatural stories from across the world and across time happen to be a large portion of my reading bread and butter, and the one in this book I found sort of lackluster and  not really very frightening at all, landing more on the side of  supernatural effects that you might find on tv or in a film.  To be fair, I will say that for the most part some of these scenes were written so vividly that I could actually see some of them in my head as they were happening, but the hackles on the neck just weren't there -- another disappointment. 

The truth is that  most readers loved this book and have given it stellar ratings as well as an abundance of uber-enthusiastic reviews,  so once again,  I find myself swimming against the tide of popular opinion; once again I am the little red fish going the other way.  Sometimes I'm just not the right audience for certain books; this one falls into that category.  It happens to everyone.