This is the second appearance on this page by my fellow SleuthSayer,the late B.K. Stevens.
They'd brought him no joy, those first three murders...
So the story begins.
Where do you hide a leaf? In a forest. And of there is no forest? You create one. G.K. Chesterton had Father Brown say that that was a fearful sin. Ecologists might disagree, but now we are scrambling our metaphor.
Charles has decided to kill his annoying wife. He want to disguise it as the work of a serial killer. That means killing several other women first, creating his own forest, so to speak.
Of course, if you have read a few hundred crime stories you know something is going to go wrong with this clever plot. The question is: what will the fatal problem be? I certainly didn't see it coming.
My favorite part is that the event I expected to be the climax is tossed off in a sentence. Hell, in a clause. Lovely bit of misdirection there,.
I don't know if this will be B.K.'s last published piece. If so, it is a good note to go out on.
Rob,
ReplyDeleteJust read the story and have to agree (though I hope it isn't the last one) that if this is the last one, it is a classic piece of writing. Bonnie was one of the finest short story writers whose work I have ever read.
I loved this story too. The ending totally got me. Certainly, one of her best stories and bittersweet that it may be her last published piece. -Bob D.
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