Short Story Wednesday: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding’s “The Stranger in the Car”

“The Stranger in the Car” is the fourth story that I have selected from Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives for Short Story Wednesday. The anthology was edited by Sarah Weinman and its subtitle is "Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense."

This story focuses on Carrol Charleroy, husband of Susan, father of two boys and two girls, now all grown up. The youngest daughter, Julia, is the only child living at home. Susan is in the hospital with the flu, Julia is out dancing with friends, and Charleroy is feeling lonely. Miss Ewing, a music teacher who sometimes comes to stay and take care of the household, is staying with them while Helen is in the hospital, but she has gone off to bed. When Julia comes home in the middle of the night, she has trouble getting upstairs to her room and this awakens her father. He can see that she has been injured; the next morning she has a black eye. She says she remembers leaving with a man but little of what happened after that. The man brought her home in a taxi. After more discussion, Miss Ewing suggests that she and Julia go to the Charleroy's home in the country, Meadowsweet, and Helen won't have to be bothered with what is going on. 

More mishaps happen and Charleroy ends up at Meadowsweet with a dead body. He is trying to get everything under control, but in truth it is the women of the family who are able to handle the situation and straighten it out. 

The story is longer than most stories in the book, at 69 pages.

In the introduction to this story, Sarah Weinman says...

The famously prickly Raymond Chandler said of ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING: 

"For my money she's the top suspense writer of them all. She doesn't pour it on and make you feel irritated. Her characters are wonderful; and she has a sort of inner calm which I find very attractive."

I was intrigued by this story and I want to read some of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's suspense novels. 

Here are some links for the author:

• The Godmother of Noir: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding at Criminal Element
• Two reviews of The Blank Wall at the crime segments and Reactions to Reading
• Net of Cobwebs at crossexaminingcrime
• Death Wish at Pretty Sinister Books
• The Obstinate Murderer at The Passing Tramp

Short Story Wednesday: "Sugar and Spice" by Vera Caspary

"Sugar and Spice" is a short story first published in 1943; it is about 60 pages long, close to novella length. Vera Caspary, the author, was the author of Laura, a novel that I enjoyed reading. Laura was adapted to film, starring Dana Andrews as a police detective and Gene Tierney as Laura.

In "Sugar and Spice," Mike Jordan visits a friend and tells her who killed a famous actor, Gil Jones, and how. Two women, cousins and life-long rivals, are the suspects in his murder. The two women grew up in the same small town where Mike Jordan lived, and the three were in high school together. Mike tells the history of their relationship, how it changes over time, and how they mature as they marry and have careers. The two women both fall for Gil Jones, and support his acting career and eventually one of them kills him.

It is the background of their childhood and how they competed with each other over time that explains how one of the women has become capable of murder. When they were teenagers, Phyllis was beautiful, but her family was poor; Nancy was plain and overweight, but her family was wealthy and she gets everything she wants. Their grandmother is a vicious old woman who sets them against each by constantly pointing out Phyllis's beauty and superior talent.

The narrative structure of Mike Jordan telling the story to his friend while waiting for a telephone connection to New York City to talk to one of the suspects is what makes the story especially interesting.

My description does not do this story justice, but I do recommend it and also the anthology that it is in, Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, edited by Sarah Weinman. See two previous posts on this anthology at my blog, here and here.

I did notice that Weinman's introduction to Caspary's story has the details quite wrong. But no matter, I enjoyed the short story a lot and am glad it was included in the anthology.

See two other reviews of this book by John at Pretty Sinister Books and Curtis at The Passing Tramp.

Short Story Wednesday: "The Splintered Monday" by Charlotte Armstrong

Yesterday I started reading Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, a book I have had on my shelves for five years. Edited by Sarah Weinman, this book contains 14 short stories by women writing from the 1940s to the 1970s.

I have read 6 stories in the book and the best one so far was "The Splintered Monday" by Charlotte Armstrong.

Sarah Brady is staying with her nephew Jeff, and his family, following the funeral of her sister Alice, Jeff's mother. Alice has always controlled her family with her poor health, and her family would often hide things from her. 

Now Sarah is feeling that something is off; information about her sister's death is being withheld from her, and she wants to know what is going on. She will be returning home with her daughter the next day. She queries everyone in the family and even Alice's doctor with no results. It seems that everyone will be relieved when she goes home. 

She does not give up and the resolution is unexpected and chilling.

 

I have also read these stories in the anthology:

"Everybody Needs a Mink" by Dorothy B. Hughes was a lovely story, shorter than most of them. I learned a new word in this story. Meggy Tashman, mother of two young children, is trying on a mink that she cannot possibly afford, and she describes it as "simple supernal." Supernal means "superlatively good" or maybe in this case "celestial." The story was not what I expected and it was very very good.

"The Purple Shroud" by Joyce Harrington: I had not heard of this author but Weinman's introduction to the story encourages me to look for more of her writing.

"Lost Generation" by Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a well-executed story but it was not a pleasant read. Several men plan to kill another man in the community for reasons not clear in the story, probably some taboo in their community that he had broken.

"The People Across the Canyon" by Margaret Millar is a story that I read earlier, in a collection of Millar's stories. I posted my thoughts on it here.

"Mortmain" by Miriam Allen Deford was very clever; I did not expect the twist at the end. This was another author I was unfamiliar with.