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Death of a Beauty Queen

Page history last edited by PBworks 18 years, 3 months ago

Punshon, ER - Death of a Beauty Queen (1935)

 

 

Review by Nick Fuller

3/5

A pleasant little Punshon more notable for its place in the author's output (a return to the complicated jigsaw puzzle of morbid psychology that shows the author at his best after the excessive melodrama of earlier works, paving the way for the masterpieces of the late 1930s and early 1940s) than for its intrinsic value. Bobby Owen and Supt. Mitchell are competent as they investigate the stabbing of a beauty queen at a suburban cinema; the story moves quite quickly; and there are moments of real (Doylean) horror in the treatment of the Irwins (c.f. Ch. XVIII). The horror is so skilfully built up that the reader cannot help but be disappointed by the solution, for the numerous references to the Irwins' changed appearance and behaviour seem to be building up to a revelation of fili- / patricide. The solution offered is regrettably tame and doesn't quite ring true from the point of human behaviour, for we do not know enough of either the victim or the murderer to account for the motive. The fact that we are allowed to be 'on' to the murderer from halfway through (or earlier if the reader is familiar with Bailey's "President of San Jacinto") also adds to the feeling of disappointment, for Punshon lacks Sayers's gifts.

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