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Maggie Joel
Felony & Mayhem
May 16, 2012 / 978-1934609996 / Reprint edition
Contemporary Literature & Fiction
Amazon
Reviewed
by Beth E. McKenzie
There is not much that can be said about the plot without giving
it all away. The setting is post-war England in an upper-crust environment.
The central family, Cecil and Harriet Wallis and their two children
and staff, seem to have it all. Cecil invites his colleagues to
view the televised coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in his home,
purchasing a television and champagne for the occasion. While the
Queen stands on the balcony of Buckingham Palace greeting the populace
and the party cheers, Harriet's finely polished veneer cracks and
she shoots Cecil in front of all of his friends. The bulk of the
book ferrets out the conditions that cause Harriet to vent her frustrations
in such a violent manner and become the second-last woman to receive
the death penalty in England.
It needs to be said that this is not a true story, nor is it based
on one. At no time has the author insinuated that it is and in several
online interviews has explained how she developed the idea. The
REAL second-last woman to be hung in England was Styllou Cristifori,
and she strangled her daughter-in-law. This is an example of the
"nobody remembers who came in second" theory. We've all
heard of Ruth Ellis.
There is one facet of the work that just pisses me off. There is
a homosexual character in the book. Why can't the poor gay man just
be gay? Why does there have to be a "childhood tragedy"
to explain his orientation as an excusable aberration? I feel the
interactions and relationships related to the subject matter are
treated correctly in the context of the historical period being
observed, but the author's final excuse for the PROBLEM is egregious.
It reminds me of a period of time when, to show our open-mindedness,
it was important to add a "colored" or "negro"
as a sympathetic character in a story and then explain that he is
a good person in spite of his heritage. It is just so condescending.
While I am not gay and really have few opinions about how other
people enjoy themselves safely, having homosexuality reflected in
literature as a sickness or mental problem is very uneducated and
getting very old. We should be beyond it as a culture. There is
no shock value left in just having somebody be gay. It is a mainstream
topic now, not surprising or uncomfortable which may be why the
euphemistic "childhood trauma" is required. At least that
will raise some eyebrows.
And finally, the publicist recommends this book to people who enjoy
Jane Austen; I don't agree. Jane wrote about women who are constrained
by the opinions and limits placed on them by society and how they
either worked within them to be happy or chose to press the boundaries
to achieve satisfaction. She did not have characters that were pressed
to the breaking point until they killed somebody. Comparing this
book to a Jane Austin novel is like comparing cruise ships like
Royal Caribbean's Majesty of the Seas to the Nina, Pinta and Santa
Maria because they all carried passengers.
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