The Women Swore Revenge

[minor shelfwear only, a couple of very slightly scrunched lower page corners; the jacket is bright and attractive, with only some very shallow paper loss along the top and bottom edges, and a couple of tiny closed tears at the bottom of the front panel]. A woman-centric murder mystery (not the first one) by this noted feminist/suffragist, best known for the "Maida Books" series of children's stories. Set in a fictionalized Cape Cod town ("Satuit," certainly a nod to Scituate, where she had long summered with her second husband, journalist Will Irwin, and where she lived (and eventually died) after his death in 1948), the book involves the murder of "the most-loved woman in town," in her own (reputedly haunted) house, on Halloween. Although the jacket blurb states that "the detective work by which the case was broken was carried on by the four women who were the victim's best friends, and who were with her on the night of the murder," this rather obscures the fact that there's a man involved as well: specifically one Patrick O'Brien, Chief of Police of the town, and the central figure in four previous mysteries by this author. (This was actually her final entry in that series.) The novel, in fact, adopts a rather unsual narrative approach: the first "Book" (chapter) is narrated by Mary (Mrs. O'Brien), Patrick himself takes over the narration in Book Two (which at 60 pages is far and away the longest chapter), then turns it back to Mary for Book Three -- and then the rest of the tale (with the exception of another brief Patrick-narrated passage) employs a typical third-person narration. The tale is "packed with action and plot, not to say the fascinating detail of old houses, antiques and graceful living for which Mrs. Irwin is famous." She was famous for other things, too: born in Rio de Janeiro in 1873, she wrote more than 40 books over the course of her career (some published under a previous married name, Inez Haynes Gillmore), and held various positions in the literary world (including a stint as president of the Author's League of America). She had published her first book in 1908, but only took up mystery writing in her sixties; although she continued to crank out "Maida" books until 1955, this was her final book for an adult readership, with the single exception of a locally-published nonfiction book about the final years of the campaign for women's suffrage.

Product Info

Publisher: Random House

Year: (c.1946)

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

First Edition

Seller Info

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