Paul: September 2007 Archives

I read another story from the Best American Mystery Stories of the Century anthology last night. It was Jack Ritchie's the Absence of Emily. The story has a couple of interesting features.

The narrator is the only suspect in the murder of his own wife. He is, more or less, an unreliable narrator. He never explicitly lies to the reader, but he does lie to other characters through words and deeds. Which is not to say that Ritchie is above throwing in a couple of red herrings just for the reader. The narrator explains that, despite owning a mansion, his wife has little money. The reader thinks, "ah! Then he has scant motive to murder his wife." However, the narrator then goes on to imply that he murdered his first wife for less money still. So, the unreliable narrator plays with the reader a little, but Ritchie keeps things pretty fair.

The other interesting thing about Emily is how closely it follows a pattern with which the reader is bound to be extremely familiar. It reads like every husband-kills-wife-her-family-suspicious story that airs every night on any one of a half dozen true crime TV shows. And Ritchie works it. He uses that true crime template to firmly guide reader expectations.

As a longer story it wouldn't work, but at eight or nine pages it's pretty sweet. I wonder if this story could get published today by an unknown author, or if an editor would toss it after only reading the first two pages.