The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis is a vintage mystery that won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1947. Set in the academic world of an elite woman’s college we are immediately immersed in the angst and despair of a student’s unrequited love for her English professor. A professor who is just about to be murdered.

We know a woman killed him and we know she declared her love for him just before doing the deed. What we don’t know is whether this particular student is the murderer, or if her confession is simply part of her hysteria. The story unfolds through the viewpoint of a number of characters some of whom I liked much more than others. Although I was sure that I knew who the murderer was, the author managed to completely blindside me in the last few pages.

I found The Horizontal Man a challenging read as the author didn’t break the book into chapters, instead the book ran as one narrative so I didn’t always realize when one narrator was changed to another. At times I felt the author delved too deeply into psychology but overall it is a compelling and unusual story. ( )

BOTTOM-LINE:
Doesn't hold up through the years
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PLOT OR PREMISE:
A professor is killed, and a young student in love with him confesses to the murder. But there are lots of other more likely suspects.
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WHAT I LIKED:
Eustis won the 1947 Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and it is easy to see why it won. The sense of place is strong, and a strong foreboding all the way through the novel adds some suspense. There is more than a hint of psychological darkness lurking in the shadows.
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WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
There are some parts that just don't hold up. The understanding of mental health disorders were not as rich, and the interactions of the two protagonists are misogynistic to read (he continually calls her fatty and comments when she drinks a beer that there too many calories). There's also an underlying current that women are nothing without a man. Hard to read in 2019, even as historical. The red herrings clear by midway through the novel, and the solution / foreshadowing is obvious, leaving the last 40% of the novel just "get to it, already".
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DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I am not personal friends with the author, nor do I follow her on social media. ( )

Another book I’m glad was collected in the Women Crime Writers set. I am not an expert, but this feels like the first or certainly one of the first crime novels that is more a connected series of character studies linked by a single death, than one linear narrative. There are so many ways to tell the story of a murder and these days crime fiction is more popular than ever. Eustis has a nice bit about it in a scene where Freda gets in Leonard’s face to make him tell what he knows about her and the dead man - “Personally, I think there are not enough murders. They feed us in some way. See how avidly we devour all accounts of crime, or detective stories! And after all, the responsibility of giving death is a small one which we regard so seriously in comparison to the responsibility of giving life, which we take so lightly.”

As meanderingly interesting as it is, a modern reader will work out the culprit ahead of anyone in the story and many will find Molly an exasperating figure; I certainly did. She’s such a pathetic ninny that it’s hard to read her sections. There is hardly any police involvement although their menace looms large for Molly whose confession is patently false. It falls to the good Dr. Forstmann to make sure she isn’t arrested and to find the real killer. Not that he does anything like serious detecting, he’s more a vehicle to show us various scenes in the suspects’ lives.

No, events in the book aren’t driven by the shrink, that falls to Jack and Kate who join in an uneasy alliance to find out what’s going on with teachers Freda, George and Leonard and which of them is guilty of killing Kevin Boyle. There are shenanigans and some vaguely insulting scenes where Jack bemoans the fact that Kate doesn’t get all dolled up all the time and might need to lose a few pounds. Also that she can’t be a lesbian because she isn’t flat chested. What?

Spoilers

Molly isn’t the only extreme character, George is a histrionic mama’s boy who is nearly insulting in his portrayal of the repressed homosexual. The scenes with the two of them are incredibly nutty. His sinister notebook is an interesting idea that must have been fresh in 1946, but for a modern reader the mysterious writer won’t be; it’s George himself, obviously. Eventually the Doctor works out that George has a dual personality and the writer is his other one; the hidden one. The woman. She was in love with Boyle and because she was trapped inside George’s body, that love would forever be unrequited. Better to kill him than suffer his affairs with real women. Again, the ideas here are not new, but are presented as highly deviant which can be insulting, but it’s fiction so I let it go. Not the best psychological thriller ever, but a good one. I can see why it shocked people when published. The ideas and tropes it uses have become part and parcel of the genre and so feels dated, but is written with lively language and things follow logically. Not a lot of silly coincidences or a pig pile of misery and mischance. ( )

This unremembered gem was probably rather shocking in its day, although the twist is now rather commonplace. Set in an elite women's college, a sexy young professor has been murdered, the police are morons and amateur detectives abound. There's a pleasant little romance and a host of stock academic types in various states of incompetence. The novel has lost some of its punch over time, but it's good storytelling. ( )