Product Description

A 1947 thriller about a mother who shields her daughter from a
blackmailer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #408879 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

The Daily Telegraph
'The mix of the everyday and the extraordinary is deft...A most welcome return to print.'

The Observer
'A classic of suspence fiction.'

Synopsis
'A suburban matron, harassed by wartime domestic problems - her husband is overseas - finds herself implicated in the murder of her young daughter's extremely unattractive beau' ("The New Yorker"). An outstanding example of the psychological thriller genre, 'worthy of the great Patricia Highsmith herself,' as Lady Antonia Fraser said in the "Spectator". "The Blank Wall" (1947) was filmed as "The Reckless Moment" in 1949 and as "The Deep End" in 2001, starring Tilda Swinton. In 1950 Raymond Chandler asked his English publisher, 'Does anybody in England publish 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.' This tense and fast-paced novel is about maternal love and about the heroine's relationship with those around her, especially her children and her maid.

Customer Reviews

A delightful thriller
This book should come with a warning: make sure you have an entire afternoon free to read this, because you won't be able to put it down. Honestly.

The Blank Wall, first published in 1947, is a nail biting thriller set in the United States during the Second World War. I read it in a matter of hours and felt myself holding my breath much of the way through it, as I was never certain what was going to happen next. It is, as the Observer called it, a "classic of suspense fiction".

Lucia is a 38-year-old housewife and mother. Her husband, a Navy man, is away at war in Europe, and she is left to run the household, comprising her elderly father, 17-year-old Bee and a 15 year-old David, with help from her faithful maid, Sibyl.

The family has recently moved to a new house by a lake and are still settling in to the neighbourhood, when Lucia discovers that Bee is going out with a "quite sinister-looking character" more than twice her age. This throws Lucia into a kind of spin: she makes a special trip to New York to warn off the boyfriend and then, one morning, finds him dead in the motorboat moored behind the family's boathouse. She immediately suspects her father has murdered him and then embarks on a not very well thought out plan to cover up the crime...

This is a thoroughly entertaining read about one woman's struggle to manage events that are seemingly beyond her control. Lucia is a charming all-too human character, whose honourable (if naive) intentions to protect her family adds a distinctly domestic edge to the drama. Her interior monologues, which form much of the narrative, provide an insightful glimpse of her sometimes tortured mindset: she wants to safeguard her family's way of life but is all too aware that it could all go wrong if she makes one little slip-up.

Sanxay Holding imbues the text with much social commentary -- including the role of women, class, race and educational background -- but this never feels heavy. Indeed, it's the opposite: effortless and seamless.

As strange as it might sound to describe a thriller as delightful, it is the first word that springs to mind when I think of The Blank Wall. A wholly gratifying and pleasurable read.