Veena’s review of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense by Sarah Weinman
Mystery, Thriller and Suspense published by Penguin 27 Aug 13

I expected dark and twisted, especially since twisted is a part of the title, but this collection of short stories totally blew me away and I do mean that in a very mixed sense. Some of the stories are spine-tingling psychological thrillers of the caliber of Alfred Hitchcock and yet others left a sad after-taste.

Starting from the sad mentally ill governess, who so wants to love and protect the children in her care that she causes them irreparable harm to the twisted dynamics of jealousy and greed in Sugar and Spice, where one cousin is rich and handsome and the other is poor and beautiful, can jealousy and greed lead to a clever murder that will allow one cousin to set the other up to take the fall for murder? You’ll have to read this one to find out who actually committed the murder and even then you might not be totally sure.

A Nice Place to Stay features a young woman who only wants a place of her own and does all she could to nurse and care for someone else in trade for having food and a roof over her head. What is infinitely sad is that when she’s imprisoned for an accidental crime, she finally finds her safe place and ultimately has to commit murder to be able to stay there for the rest of her life.

Louisa Please Come Home is the annual plea of a mother who wants her runaway daughter to come home, and, yet when said daughter stands in front of her, she refuses to recognize her. A poor little rich girl who loves her governess “Lavender Lady” such that she draws a veil over kidnapping and murder until her eyes are opened. It’s only fair that the annoying person who does so should take the fall for his actions. Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree gives us a husband who discovers his wife’s indiscretion and punishes her with a life time of torture and regret for making him see that his idol has clay feet.

The stories go on, every one of these featuring women as wives, mothers, daughters, cousins, sisters and so on. What really gets me is that these stories are so low key and so clearly belong to a slower time, along with the punch they pack. I think I am so blasé and can read through the lines and solve the mysteries before they occur that I actually find myself questioning what really lay beneath the waters that seem to be so crystal clear but on further reflection are rather murky.

I highly recommend it to readers of the genre with a word of caution that these stories are not for the faint of heart.

Grade:A

Summary:

Fourteen chilling tales from the pioneering women who created the domestic suspense genre

Murderous wives, deranged husbands, deceitful children, and vengeful friends. Few know these characters—and their creators—better than Sarah Weinman. One of today’s preeminent authorities on crime fiction, Weinman asks: Where would bestselling authors like Gillian Flynn, Sue Grafton, or Tana French be without the women writers who came before them?

In Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, Weinman brings together fourteen hair-raising tales by women who—from the 1940s through the mid-1970s—took a scalpel to contemporary society and sliced away to reveal its dark essence. Lovers of crime fiction from any era will welcome this deliciously dark tribute to a largely forgotten generation of women writers.

No excerpt available.