The Blunderer (1954)

Patricia Highsmith’s third novel made it into the Library of America Women Crime Writers series, but a lot of reviewers find it flawed. I do too. In some ways Highsmith’s dim view of humanity makes it work anyway. No character in this novel is likable, but there’s something about that perversely that I like. The main problem is an insanely unlikely story involving the similar deaths of two characters who are otherwise unlinked. They take place several weeks apart. Our title character is Walter Stackhouse. Highsmith never used the term “henpecked” to describe his marriage, but I will. His wife Clara bosses him around a lot and is never happy with anything he does. Walter is kind of a fool, but he doesn’t really deserve the treatment. He loves her in spite of it but, as the story begins, he’s finally getting to the end of his rope. Any discussion of separation, however, leads to his wife making suicide attempts. So it’s a pretty harrowing predicament. The form that the two murders take is the wife is traveling alone by bus, the husband follows until the bus makes a rest stop, and then he leads his wife away and kills her. We see the first one, committed by a Melchior Kimmel, at the start of the novel. The death of Walter’s wife is more ambiguous. It’s probably a suicide, a fall from a cliff. That’s certainly all Highsmith gives us, but Walter followed the bus and a witness saw him at the rest stop. I’m pretty sure Highsmith intended him to be not guilty. But his strange—and unlikely—interest in the Kimmel case makes him look suspicious. Highsmith never makes any of this very convincing, which is ultimately fatal to it as a “suspense” novel, the way Library of America is selling it. I have to say it’s no page-turner. In fact, the labor to connect these plot points ends up making it practically the opposite of a page-turner and it turns toward the sloggy in the last third. What works for me here is Walter’s marriage, which is over at the halfway point. But it is a wonderfully sardonic view of marriage until then. Highsmith is not exactly adroit about showing the dynamics, but she makes it clear Walter loves her until he is finally driven away. His wife Clara is never satisfied with him even when he does exactly what she asks. In fact, a weak point here is that, for the sake of the plot, Highsmith tries to make the marriage fail in the space of the narrative. Walter seems more like the kind of guy who would stick it out no matter what. I think The Blunderer would have been a better novel if it had skipped all the noir, with murders, cops, and even blackmail, and instead made it a portrait of a bad marriage. But maybe it wouldn’t have been commercial that way? Approach with caution.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)