This was originally published as a novella in a pulp magazine in 1945 before being expanded into a full-length novel and re-published in that form, and it feels somewhat padded in the middle. It’s a weird, rambly first person sort of thing that sounds like the author managed to get Raymond Chandler and Edgar Allen Poe stuck in his head simultaneously. Usually hyped as a mystery story with extra atmosphere, I would say rather that it’s a psychological horror story which uses mystery tropes to help ground itself. Above the cut, I will only say that Red Right Hand spends about a quarter of its length hinting in one particular direction, and the middle two quarters basically saying that possible solution out loud while simultaneously laying down markers for the actual resolution in the final quarter. More interesting than good, and not helped by the fact that the only truly sympathetic characters – the policemen and the damsel in distress – are pretty peripheral. But it’s very much its own thing, and if that counts for anything with you, it might be worth a try. Just remember, if you find yourself thinking that “obvious solution is obvious,” stick around to the end.

More detailed, spoilery thoughts below the cut. Leave now or be spoiled.

-Compare the cadence of the opening and some of the other core passages to Poe’s Ulalume. They felt vaguely similar to me.

-One of the more interesting period details is that people in the neighborhood exchange details of the crimes (which initially appear to be a couple of hit and run incidents) over a party line in somewhat the same way they would use Nextdoor today.

-The vague hint that the narrator of Red Right Hand is going to live happily ever after with the damsel in distress after an appropriate period of courtship didn’t work for me. In a film version, where we’re seeing the characters from outside, and can tell that she’s mostly skittish around him because of bad things that have happened to her, and that he’s attracted to her but respectful, it might work, especially if he angsts more about the possibility of having done bad things he can’t remember than he does in the book. Might get a nice Beauty and the Beast vibe going, especially with the right actors. But, in print, it just doesn’t work because we’ve had the narrator hyped up to us for far too long as an unstable person possibly suffering from what is now called dissociative identity disorder. The smug pleasure he takes in the idea of an attractive woman combing out her hair in the passenger’s seat while he drives doesn’t help either.

-I can’t exactly say that I figured out the mystery angle, because the actual solution is very complicated, being basically every single identity swap Agatha Christie ever pulled, rolled into one. I can say of this book, as I did on both my readings of Sad Cypress, that if you assume the obvious suspect didn’t do it, there’s really only one possible candidate who gets a lot of facetime with the reader, has the opportunity to commit murder, and is unpleasant enough to be a satisfying villain. In both cases, what the author withholds from us are the motive and some of the mechanics of the murder(s). In both Red Right Hand and Sad Cypress, those aspects were the parts of the mystery I failed to figure out.

–Said solution is hilariously loopy. If you like One Two Buckle My Shoe, or the more outlandish plot resolutions of ECR Lorac, you will most likely be happier than a tornado in a trailer park when you get to the climax of this book. Everyone else will just be relieved that the book’s not the blatant mashup of Roger Ackroyd and Jekyll and Hyde that it pretends to be for most of its length.