Forgotten Books Friday - A Private Inquiry

Jessica Mann, now 72, originally earned degrees in archaeology, Anglo-Saxon and law and worked in various fields in the UK, including as a Planning Inspector. She later turned her hand to writing crime fiction, and her novel, A Charitable End, was published in 1971, with some 19 novels published since. She's also a well-known and respected radio and television broadcast, particularly her radio program, "Women of Mystery", and authored a treatise on women crime writers entitled Deadlier than the Male.

She's been writing reviews for The Literary Review, and may be more familiar to American audiences from her recent comments in Standpoint Magazine that she would no longer be reviewing certain types of crime fiction due to the misogyny and violence against women. It's unfortunate that she be known more for those comments (taken way out of context by news agencies) than her writing, but the fact remains that very few of her novels are still available in print in the U.S.

A Private Inquiry was shortlisted for the Gold Dagger award in 1996, and is set mainly in St. Ives, in Cornwall, near where Mann herself has lived for several years. At its heart, the novel is a tale of psychological suspense involving four women whose disparate lives intersect in a twisted scheme of blackmail, missing persons, double identity, a perverse game of victim and oppressor, a child's death, and ultimately, murder.

Mann deftly weaves complex psychological characterizations into the mix, such as the following comment from one of the main characters, a child psychologist:

Men showed themselves as they really were in bed. No doubt women did too, but Fidelis had been strictly heterosexual. Children, however, she could understand while keeping a proper and professional distance from them, observing and interacting across a desk, on the playing mat, at the zoo. But to know an adult, she had always needed intimacy. Fidelis's sexual life was over now and she was afraid she might have become a bad judge of character as a result.

The adroitly twisted plot provides plenty of social commentary and an intriguing look into how the losses and sins of youth shape the dysfunctional adults we become.

Comments

[Patti Abbott]

Got it. Checked earlier but it wasn't up yet. Thanks!