Today we're talking about a little-known writer, at least in the sense of a crime fiction writer: Nina Bawden.
Who was she? One of the most prolific British writers of all time, who, after writing seven detective novels, found fame publishing numerous children's novels.
Nina Mary Bawden CBE (January 19, 1925 – August 22, 2012) was born Nina Mary Mabey in 1925 in Ilford, Essex, England. Her mother was a teacher and her father a member of the Royal Marines. Immediately after World War II, she earned a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Somerville College, Oxford. She was married twice: first to Harry Bawden until 1954, and then to Austen Cark in 1954. She had two sons from her first marriage and a daughter, Perdita, who died in March 2012, from her second. Bawden was seriously injured in a train accident that also killed her husband. She died in London on August 22, 2012. She was awarded the CBE, the highest British honor (Commander British Empire) in 1995. She wrote 55 novels. Of these, the first seven are mysteries, the others are children's books. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987 and the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010. She received the Golden PEN Award.
Her crime novels, in order, are:
Who Calls the Tune? (1953)
The Odd Flamingo (1954)
Change Here for Babylon (1955)
The Solitary Child (1956)
Devil by the Sea (1957)
Just Like a Lady (1960)
In Honour Bound (1961).
WARNING : SPOILERS
Venetia is a beautiful and passionate woman. She could have had it all, if a bomb hadn't crushed her leg during the war, which was later amputated. And so, at fourteen, life turned against her: while others her age were enjoying their youth, she began to hate it, because she had matured too soon. And her illness had changed her forever, for the worse: it had made her more cynical, tougher, even, in a certain sense, more evil. She had begun to exert a certain fascination on men. Her first lover had been Paul, but one day the two had gone their separate ways: Venetia, infatuated with Harry, had married him, while Paul had married Betty. Two failed marriages. But while Paul had accepted the end of the relationship, Venetia had not; she would never have tolerated a man dumping her, even though in the meantime she had accumulated affair after affair and lover after lover. So one day, she convinced her sister Brigit, whom she discovered was her husband's lover, to come stay at her house, just to torment them. Then at Christmas, someone tried to poison Brigit's son Sebastian with arsenic dissolved in his soup.
Venetia invites Paul to her home. Paul, remembering his great love, accepts the invitation, only to find her flirting with a certain Tom Augsburg, an Englishman who had moved to Austria during the war and then fled to America after 1945 (he had collaborated with the Germans to avenge his treatment in his homeland). There, he met Sophie, a young woman he had brought with him and passed off as his daughter, even though she was his lover.
As soon as everyone is together that evening, it's clear something is about to happen: the atmosphere is unhealthy, corrupt, due to Venetia's behavior. That night, Venetia disappears during a snowstorm. She is found frozen in a quarry. At first, people think it was suicide or an accident, but Tom, confiding in Paul, believes it was murder: her skin color is reddish, a sign of carbon monoxide poisoning.
After this, it's Tom's turn to disappear, only to be found hanging from the beam of a cabin near the house.
It's unclear what could have happened, how, or why Tom died (indeed, this is the darkest part of the novel, which isn't explained): let's just say Tom pays for the betrayal he gave Sophie. But then another inexplicable event occurs, which could have resulted in another death: someone poisoned with chloral a flask of cognac that Paul had on his bedside table, which Sebastian had secretly taken, swallowing a swig. In short, someone had wanted to stun Paul almost to death, but then nearly killed Sebastian.
A very intricate plot, with no clear solution—namely, who might have poisoned Venetia, who in turn had poisoned Paul's cognac and ended up poisoning Sebastian—until Harry is arrested on charges of having met Venetia on the night of the murder and murdering her. After all, when a wife dies from murder, the first suspect is always the husband. Sophie could now exonerate Harry by claiming Tom, because Tom and Venetia were supposed to meet that night in a room above the garage, but she doesn't because, jealous of Tom, she had managed to prevent him from meeting his lover, ending up in bed with him. So, in the absence of further developments, Harry is charged with premeditated murder, arrested, and awaiting trial. At this point, the narrative picks up pace, introducing past events shared by the murderer and Venetia, including Caroline's death, which is later revealed to have been killed by Venetia out of jealousy, leading to the tragic conclusion.
END OF SPOILERS
This is an unforgettable novel by Bawden. The narrative, written in the first person (we won't say by whom) from the very beginning, has the merit of making the reader identify with the narrator, who then experiences the extremely intricate plot firsthand: the novel begins as a mystery, continues as an increasingly dark noir, and at the end, with the identification of the murderer, a Christie novel is cited.
The Noir novel has some distinctive characteristics: a powerfully leaden atmosphere that from the first moment swirls around Venetia, her lovers' tormentor and victim at the same time, who we immediately understand will be the novel's dark side: she is, after all, the Femme Fatale. The detective, Winkler, is a completely unspectacular character, albeit a very insightful one. He's not the hero, however: the heroes are Harry, in his utterly hopeless life; Sophie, a kept woman full of love and compassion but also jealous; Paul, another star-crossed lover, stumbled into a relentless vortex that affects everything and everyone, even bringing to light old, bitter memories; Brigit, who until Sebastian's second poisoning was a completely dull character, then acquires a soul and remorse that finally establish her not only as a lover but also as a mother concerned for her son. The curious thing is that the four heroes, that is, the four figures around which the plot inexorably revolves, can also embody the role of the murderer.
The writing and style are exquisite, and indeed, nothing else could we have expected from an Oxford graduate: the psychological descriptions and intense atmospheres, brimming with pain and hatred, gradually create a jungle of conflicting sensations and feelings, disorienting the reader, who, until twenty pages from the end, is left unclear as to who the murderer might be. And after all, Bawden's novel is less a classic whodunnit than a family drama, constantly presenting different perspectives and ever-changing insights into the characters in the drama: essentially, the only one who isn't interested is the young boy Sebastian, who is instead a potential victim twice, while everyone else has excellent reasons and therefore a motive to be investigated for the murder: Tom, Harry, Brigit, Sophie, and even Paul: jealousy, hatred, various humiliations.
The ending, while a fitting conclusion to a spectacular novel, has almost psychoanalytic overtones: the murderer begins to behave paranoidly, with completely irrational behavior, which in theory should arouse Winkler's suspicion, but which in reality is due to nothing more than the weight of guilt, combined with an unconscious desire to be discovered: it is not just remorse for the murder, but also the excessive things he had swallowed over time for love of Venetia, to the point of even covering up a murder.
In essence, the novel is a noir of rare power, and if not noir, then at least a "noir" novel, brimming with atmosphere and constantly misleading developments. The only flaw, not fully developed, concerns Tom's death, which isn't even framed as the act of suicide, as a possible murderer overcome by remorse—unless, in a first draft, this wasn't the case and was later replaced by an even more complicated development.
An unforgettable novel, whose persistent presence of drama and melancholy reminded me of Lovesey's first novel with Diamond, The Lost Detective, and Pierre Magnan's Le Sang des Artrides.
Pietro De Palma
