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Discuss the murder mystery. Were you surprised by who was murdered and by whom?
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I thought that Grace had been murdered because the first body was in 4B which was her apartment. I thought the body downstairs was Fliss’ because Angela was screaming and the detective asked where Angela’s mother was. Another misdirect occurred when the detective asked who owned a baseball bat which made Bea look suspicious. “The corpse with its red hair surrounded by a halo of blood.” Claire had red hair. Was she the corpse? Another misdirect. So, I was really surprised when the two victims were the real villains of the story: Barrett Sutherland who controlled and abused his wife and Kirill/Bob McDowell who was a thug, a bully and Grace’s former partner. Grace protected herself and her friends by getting Kirill upstairs where she slit his throat in self-defense. Arlene using Bea’s bat on Barrett Sutherland because she thought he was another Communist was a surprise.
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I was most definitely surprised. I figured all along that Grace was the first victim; as Nancy said, she was the resident in 4B. And I was poised to be very sad because Grace was such an amazing woman, smart, witty, generous, empathetic and capable of eliciting peoples’ stories. I was equally in the dark about the second victim.
And, I found a certain justice in the death’s of the two actual victims, men who were cruel and violent.
That Grace could kill in self-defense did not surprise me. Arlene was a surprise. In the context of her belief that Sutherland was, like Grace, a communist, and therefore needed to be eliminated and believing the police would not get there in time, I could picture her impulsive attack. Still, clubbing him in the head with Bea’s baseball bat was incongruent with the Arlene I pictured.
I really enjoyed the way the story was told, weaving the plot into the characterizations and personal stories of the women and the other characters. At times, I almost forgot it was a murder mystery, except for the “Interstitial” sections that reminded me there was more to come. And I really enjoyed the way the narrator in the “Interstitial” was the house itself.
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I immediately thought the murder victim might be Arlene as she’s portrayed as a McCarthy zealot right from the start so there’s motive to kill her if someone in the house is a communist. But of course the red hair put that theory to bed. Bea’s baseball bat certainly led me to believe she might be a prime suspect in one of the murders although I suspected Claire at one point. The downstairs murder victim I didn’t have a clue who that was. I thought it might be someone related to the mobster Nora was dating or possibly Grace or maybe Fliss. But as the story progressed I did suspect that one of the victims just might be the nasty Barrett, which would account for why everyone was so silent with police. I admit I didn’t see Arlene being one of the killers. Like Jane her extreme violence seemed a bit unlikely (she’s more passive aggressive) but it did resolve the mystery. Quinn did a great job dropping red herrings throughout the story and keeping the suspense going right until the end. Also, like Jane, I didn’t see the book as heavily leaning into the murder mystery. It seemed it was more of a framework on which to tell the stories of the Briarhouse residents.
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