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Lädt ... Das horchende Haus. (1938)von Mabel Seeley
Mystery & Detective (105) Lädt ...
Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. Sometimes I wish I had notes on my 'To Read' list so I could go back and reference what made me want to read a book. This was mildly enjoyable and the writing witty but it belabored nitty details far too often. Why in the world did I want to read a murder mystery from 1938? Only my past self will ever know. ( ) Plucky Gwynne Dacres gets into all sorts of scrapes while solving a perplexing murder in the boarding house where she lives. I enjoyed the authentic 30's atmosphere and the dialogue between Gwynne and the other characters. The back story was surprisingly twisty and illustrative of the adage "old sins have long shadows." Despite some false starts, head bashings, and pervasive sexism which prevents any male from taking her seriously, Gwynne wins out in the end. Very slick little 1930s mystery, with an alarmingly gruesome crime scene (thankfully only implied, not graphically depicted) and a horribly tragic back-story. And yet, for all that, the narrative stays pretty light and stylized and readable. If you're in the mood for something that puts you squarely in the middle of a fast-talking black-and-white movie where the heroine is plucky and her main man needs a good hard kick for how often he calls her "baby," you'll probably enjoy this. After hooking me on Cornell Woolrich, my friendly local librarian handed me this one with a grin. And yes, it's another mostly enjoyable, crisply-written, plot-heavy mystery from the 1930s, which manages to combine a "closed population" setting (a boardinghouse with a set of characters in close quarters) with a locked-room (more than one, actually) puzzle. The main pleasure in this is the narrator Gwynne Dacres, a sharp, sardonic, intelligent, competent - and divorced! - young woman, who fetches up in this peculiar household because a pretty nice room is available cheap and she's just lost her job over a screwup her boss actually committed, but he fired her instead. She's what they used to call "plucky." A corpse appears at the base of a bluff behind the house, written off as a gangland hit, but then the creepy landlady is found dead, locked in her basement with a very hungry dog and a couple of cats (Seeley seems to have no appreciation of cats). Gwynne and the pushy guy upstairs end up working with the local cops to figure out what happened, as the back stories of the other tenants start to leak out. Gwynne is rescued from deadly peril twice, but is also the one to unearth and figure out significant clues - in spite of suitor Hodge from upstairs constantly belittling her "little noodle" and calling her "baby." There's a lot of that sort of smart-alecky 30s dialog, and Gwynne gets chops for handling it with some class...though the culminating marriage is downright icky. The plot goes in all kinds of directions and twists and complications involving multiple staircases, closets, door and window locks, train tickets, and assumed identities - which at some point, gets a little tiring. Still, a fairly fun period piece with a likeable heroine. Zeige 5 von 5 keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
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"Down-and-out in the Great Depression, Gwynne Dacres moves into a seedy-and-sinister boardinghouse, where she exposes deadly secrets in this classic mystery by Mabel Seeley. After losing her copywriting job, young Gwynne Dacres seeks a place to live when she stumbles upon Mrs. Garr's old boardinghouse. Despite the gruff landlady and an assortment of shifty tenants, Gwynne rents a room for herself. She spends her first few nights at 593 Trent Street tensely awake, the house creaking and groaning as if listening to everything that happens behind its closed doors. A chain of chilling events leads to the gruesome discovery of a mutilated body in the basement kitchen, dead of unknown circumstances. Was it an accident or murder? Under the red-black brick facade of the old house on Trent Street, Gwynne uncovers a myriad of secrets, blackmail, corruption, and clues of a wicked past. As she closes in on the truth, the cold, pale hands of death reach for Gwynne in the night. . . "-- Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.52Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1900-1944Klassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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