Beast in View by Margaret Millar was my pick from the latest Classic Club Spin. I have already read four books by Millar and enjoyed them all, to different degrees. I had avoided this one so far because I thought it would be too tense and scary (for me). It did not live up to my expectations, but it wasn't that tense and scary either.
Helen Clarvoe is a rich young woman who inherited all of her father's money but lives in a low quality hotel. Her mother and brother live in the family home, but don't have enough money to maintain it. She gets a threatening call from a woman from her past that she does not remember, and calls in her father's old investment counselor to help. That is all the overview of the story that I want to share because I think it is best for new readers to read this story knowing very little about it.
Events get very weird after that and and the author kept me guessing throughout. I guessed what was going on very early in the book, but then was fooled by the author's clever writing into considering other options.
This is a very brief book. My edition was close to 250 pages, but most editions are around 170 pages. The action takes place over a short time, a few days. The story could easily be read in one sitting or in one day. I started it later in the evening and finished it the next morning, and I am a slow reader. The book was published in 1955, and won the Edgar for Best Novel in 1956.
Here is an excerpt from the first chapter, following the threatening phone call:
Miss Clarvoe hung up. She knew how to deal with June [telephone operator at the hotel] and others like her. One hung up. One severed connections.
What Miss Clarvoe did not realize was that she had severed too many connections in her life, she had hung up too often, too easily, on too many people. Now, at thirty, she was alone. The telephone no longer rang, and when someone knocked on her door, it was the waiter bringing up her dinner, or the woman from the beauty parlour to cut her hair, or the bellboy, with the morning paper. There was no longer anyone to hang up on except a switchboard operator who used to work in her father’s office, and a lunatic stranger with a crystal ball.
She had hung up on the stranger, yes, but not quickly enough. It was as if her loneliness had compelled her to listen; even words of evil were better than no words at all.
The entire first chapter is available online, at CrimeReads.
As I noted, I did not find the story that tense but it was very dark. Most of the characters were damaged in some way. Evelyn's mother's treatment of both of her children when they were young and in their adulthood was upsetting. She was not a major character but she had a prominent role. Attitudes toward homosexuality as depicted in this book were archaic, although those attitudes can be found now as well. (I am assuming that those attitudes are not the author's.) Although I did not enjoy reading Beast in View, I thought it was a worthwhile read and very well done. It just wasn't a pleasant read for me.
I have read other books by Millar, and I liked all of them more than I did this one, even though this one won the Edgar for Best Novel. However, this is a book that I would recommend, for two reasons. First, many reviewers liked it much more than I did. Also, it is a groundbreaking novel, although the plot can be seen as stale and overused now; it is familiar because it as been copied so much. At the time it was very original.
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Publisher: International Polygonics, 1983 (orig. pub. 1955)
Format: Paperback
Setting: Los Angeles, California
Genre: Mystery, Psychological Suspense
Source: On my TBR piles since 2016.
