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Thirty Days Hath September

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 10 months ago

Disney, Dorothy Cameron and George Sessions Perry -  Thirty Days Hath September (1942)

 

Thirty Days Hath September (1942) resembles Death in the Back Seat (1936), in that the protagonists are a New York City couple who've rented a cottage in a rural area of New England. Both mysteries have as a victim a visitor from New York City. Both couples are also hounded by the local police, who are sinisterly determined to pin the murder on them. Both also have many strange events invading their home. These stories can be contrasted with Strawstack, The Balcony and The Hangman's Tree, all of which take place in a large family mansion somewhere in the South. These stories tend to take place among relatives, whereas the New England stories involve a lot of unrelated neighbors in a small town. The New England tales tend to feature some working class local residents prominently, whereas the Southern tales tend to have everyone but the servants on one social plane.

 

Thirty Days Hath September is unusual in that the narrator is a man, the husband in the couple, and that he is the one that has the frightening HIBK encounters in the middle of the night. This is very non-sexist. He behaves in exactly the same way as the heroine-narrators of countless HIBK novels. He experiences exactly the same fears and terrors, too. While I applaud such equal treatment, I also have to admit it seems really odd to me. I am really unused to seeing a male in such a role. He conceals evidence from the police to protect his friends, just like a HIBK heroine. The hero also does all the grousing one expects from HIBK narrators about the difficulty of social events, tensions at gatherings, the struggle to keep up appearances after losing money and so on, the sort of comments almost universally restricted to females in HIBK novels up to this point.

 

Thirty Days Hath September is also unusual in that all three main male characters are unemployed. By contrast, the women seem to be far more dynamic and effective workers, both at home, and in the business community. One would have thought that by 1942 the US economy was beginning to expand again, and such massive male joblessness was declining. This is clearly part of this book's interesting role reversal between the sexes.

 

Thirty Days Hath September shows Disney's extreme skepticism about the police. Rinehart tended to show the police as decent, hard working, and nearly all knowing. By contrast, Disney's police are horrible human beings, always trying to pin crimes on someone innocent.

 

Mike Grost

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