Hence I am back with a book review! haha yeah, my passion for books has been re-ignited, not that it was ever extinguished. Going to take a break from Ms Agatha, but not from the
The book title is called 'Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives". It is a collection of 14 short stories (edited by Sarah Weinman), celebrating female crime writers of the past century. These stories are about femme fatales, psychological thrillers about women having murderous tendencies and hallucinations that might sometimes be a little too real. To quote' domestic suspense genre containing deceitful children, deranged husbands, vengeful friends and murderous wives unleashed' they give readers 'a glimpse into their more sinister impulse'. Overall, the book was filled with stories that shows different facets of the criminal mind. Some of them are innate, yet some are forced by circumstance or blinded by love, driven by madness or out of desperation. What I like about the book is the twists that each story held, the hidden meaning behind each ending and some of them, a cliffhanger allowing the readers to imagine what happens next or ponder on the gravity of the issue. Each story made me want to read the novels written by each successful female author :) Their stories all gave me ideas for short writing (if I ever intend to pursue them in the future), as their plot twists is intriguing and their description of clothing or nature gives the reader a realistic picture to sketch out in their minds. Below would be the transcripts that I have written for each of the 14 stories.
The Heroine by Patricia Highsmith
- a little girl's twisted dream of trying to show her love for her employer's family
- of being part of the family that what she did (the basic job of looking after her emploer's children as a nanny), was not enough that she can do 'so much more'
- which includes risking her life by creating an accident so that she can save the children and prove her love for them
A Nice Place To Stay by Nedra Tyre
- one of my personal favorites in this book
- love the matter-of-fact tone that the narrator (our protagonist) used in this story
- how she admitted and resigned to her current condition, with her parents gone and she know that her sister-in-laws will not want to shoulder the burden of 'her'
- how she became a maid and took care of people really well or at least to the best of her abilities
- she admitted that she stole from the old lady she took care of but that the silver box was actually given to her by the old lady (via either verbal contract or in her mind she thinks that the old lady would want her to have the box)
- in comes the trial that she was a thief and the readers actually know that she was in a sense 'mad' and she finally got locked up in an asylum (which was a very nice place to stay to her since she finally had food and a roof above her head) gone were the days of only bed and board, next to the people she had to take care of
- however, she got taken out of her 'nice place to stay' by a lawyer who sought her out as a charity case and used her to gain fame and fortune
- so much so that it driven her to kill him and she got locked back into her 'nice place to stay' again
Louisa, Please Come Home by Shirley Jackson
- its kind of an eerie story, with Louisa as the narrator
- can draw ideas from how to write about someone who ran away from home here :)
- how this little lady ran away from home after carefully planning and her parents would broadcast that line over the radio on the anniversary of her disappearance
- how the reward was still sitting in the bank and this guy called Paul who grew up with her used to cheat her parents by bringing a girl posing as Louise every time, just to get the money
- until the real Louisa turned up at her own home (after a mistake she made of calling out to Paul), it had been 3 years since she last returned home, yet her parents failed to recognize her and instead thought that she was one of the ploys that Paul set up and sent her packing
- the voice of her mother's plea is still being played every year on her disappearance anniversary
Lavender Lady by Barbara Callahan
- a story which I could not really understand
-it left many questions marks but plenty of room for a reader to imagine and infer
- Lavender Lady is about a singer's longing for a lady with heavy lavender scent
- i would prefer to think of it as an obsession that the lavender lady was actually trying to kidnap her but the singer was not able to come to terms to with
- what I like about this story was that it is kind of real that singers would probably be sick and tired of singing the same song over and over again for various reasons, but the lavender lady's song was so powerful that it left the protagonist drained after her performance
-the bulk of the story was roughly narrating about the time she spent with the lavender lady, to the protagonist, lovely but to the readers, sinister and the singer's manager plays the voice of reason here, telling us what in a sense might really have happened... but unknown to him that it might even cause his death, like how Lavender Lady fell to hers
Sugar and Spice by Vera Caspary
- the longest short story in the book
- more towards the Agatha Christie feel about who killed the star
- its all right, probably just love the description of the people in it
Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree by Helen Nielsen
- quite a modern take for a short published in 1959
- about how an office lady who became the boss' wife met an old flame... whcih she did not want her current husband to find out
- don't sit under the apple tree was the tune that her old flame had shared with her
-after that she began receiving calls at 4am in the morning. someone calling her and when she picked up the receiver, the voice said 'don't sit under the apple tree'
- kind of freaky and material for a horror book :s
- the twist came at the end when she suspected that it was her old flame trying to make her go mad so much so that she murdered him but the telephone calls did not stop
-instead she found out that it was her husband who had been making those sinister calls, with help he got from the office girl... the post she once held
Everybody Needs A Mink by Dorothy B. Hughes
- a nice change from all the murderous genre
- its about our protagonist Meg's desire to own a Mink that is way out of her wallet, but by sheer luck a stranger paid and bought it for her while she was trying it on
-thinking that it was a prank, but the mink was delivered to her house the next day and when she told her family about it, her husband and children made rather interesting guesses about why did the man wanted to buy the coat for her
-the guesses were pretty diverse and it really reflected the minds of adults vs the young :)
- in the end the mystery is still not solved, yet it ended on a happy note
The Purple Shroud by Joyce Harrington
- a description of toxic marriage
- at first I though the title referred to something of remembrance, but in a way it was in a way it wasn't
- the shroud was made with love by Mrs Moon, whose husband was a art teacher who had affairs frequently but had always beg for her forgiveness after every turn, but it was used to wrap up the body of Mr Moon after she had murdered him.
- maybe the final straw came when the last girl he had an affair with, a girl from Minneapolis, had become pregnant and wished that Mrs Moon would free Mr Moon for her sake
- however the story progressed such that Mr Moon never did ever wanted to face his responsibility and hid away from the pregnant girl till she left for her own home town
- the story also had an open ending with Mrs Moon making her way to Minneapolis to find the girl, with two stone wrapped in her blue cardigan...
The Stranger In The Car by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
- a murder mystery
- a short story which centers around how the head of the house (usually the male or father) vs the seemingly-passive caretaker/governess/nanny who actually holds the actual power and they usually take charge at the right time and to satisfy their needs and wants, operate accordingly, even when it means to commit murder
- but it also showcases a mother's intuition and mother's love, how that cannot be surpassed by any outsider to the family
The Splintered Monday by Charlotte Armstrong
- a story telling you to trust your instincts, o matter how old you are or you thing its just nerves
- Her sister's death felt like something that wasn't right and Mrs Sarah Brady started to recall the events that happened on that fateful Monday
Lost Generation by Dorothy Salisbury Davis
- this story is special because it is from the perspective of men
- how even when it comes down to a child, or a wailing mother's cry, can take over a man's heart
- not in terms of love, but in terms of duty
The People Across The Canyon by Margaret Millar
- told in third person language about a family whose daughter seemed to be more outgoing than them, making friends with the people who just moved in from across the canyon
- the mother disapproves due to the lack of privacy but both her husband and her get caught up with the fictional life of people on the television
- even missing her quiz show time is a sacrifice to her
- this led to her child, Cathy leading a double life, daughter to her and daughter to the Smiths who lives across the canyon
- but when the Marion felt that Cathy seemed to place the Smiths in too high an importance and wanted to go over to talk to them, settling the matter once and for all
- it was found that there was actually no one in the old house
- just a mirror, that made their little daughter entranced to the life she narrated to her parents, one filled with details from television programs her parents used to watch late at night when they assumed she was a sleep and the other shaping her parents into who she thought they were to be
- kind of freaky though
Mortmain by Miriam Allen Deford
- personal favorite of mine as well
- able a nurse plotting to end the life of her employer and to make away with his money to a life that she can finally share with the love of her life
- however she least expected her plans to go awry and her employer found out about her evil intentions, stopping her before his death by hand-cuffing herself to him before he died
- driving her to madness being tied down to a corpse with money so near yet so far
A Case Of Maximum Need by Celia Fremlin
- interesting take on this one where Miss Fosdyke vehemently refused to have a telephone installed in her home although she was 100% disabled
- 'it's too dangerous' was her argument and readers will think that she was once a victim of a prank call that caused her to have this phobia of telephones
- the story does lead you along that line till the end where there was a plot twist and we realized that Miss Fosdyke was not trying to protect herself from other people, but other people from herself
There you have it, 14 short stories in this book. Recommended is you are looking for a change in book scenery, for some thrillers and female leads instead of the males ones.
God Bless!
=do something right=
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