Marilyn's Mystery Reads

John Wilkins and his wife May are most definitely a mismatched couple.  Given his background dealing with a controlling mother and her background as the daughter of an alcoholic ex-convict father, they didn’t have a healthy framework to guide their marriage.

The two met at a dance and started dating.  John is a very good tennis player, May doesn’t like the game; May likes to play bridge, John thinks it’s a waste of time.  May is socially ambitious, John is not.  In this way they slowly drift apart.  As he put it, “What can you say about a marriage?  You peel off the years…like the skin of a onion, and there’s nothing inside.”  Still, he doesn’t think he is really unhappy until he meets Sheila.

John is immediately attracted to Sheila, a librarian at the local library, where he takes takes books out for May but tells Sheila they’re for his invalid sister.  He pretends to have gotten complimentary tickets to a local theater production and invites Sheila to go with him, which she does.  As is usual with John’s luck, always bad, he runs into his mother’s friend at the play, and of course she’s aware that the woman he’s with is not his wife.  He’s certain that she can’t wait to give the news to his mother.

Then, after a disastrous day with Sheila at the tennis club, she tells him she knows he’s married.  Somehow he convinces himself that if he were single things would be different, then he and Sheila could become a couple.  At that point he starts thinking about murder, although he tells himself it’s nothing he would ever do.

The novel is divided into two parts.  In Part One, John is giving his statement to Dr. Max Andreadis, a consulting psychiatrist, and he tells the doctor the story of his marriage and his infatuation with Sheila.  In Part Two, a young couple comes across Sheila’s body, and John is put on trial.  We see the inner workings of John’s mind, or at least as much of it as he himself is aware of.  One of the issues in his life is recurring blackouts, after which he has no memory of what has occurred during those times.  That, of course, makes any legal defense very difficult.

The Colour of Murder was written in 1957 and won that year’s Gold Dagger Award, given by the British Crime Writers Association.  It was republished in 2018.  The novel is a deep look into John Wilkins’ life, or at least the part he tells both the psychiatrist and himself.  The characters–including John, May, John’s mother, and Sheila–all have hidden parts of their lives that don’t allow them to fully function as adults.  Reading it, one is struck by the emptiness and futility of their lives and their inability to address what is holding them back and to start anew.

JULIAN SYMONS (1912-1994) was a notable writer of British crime fiction from the 1940s and ’50s until his death, publishing more than thirty novels. He served as President of the prestigious Detection Club, won two Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, and is well known as the author of Bloody Murder, a classic history of crime fiction.  You  can read more about him at several sites on the web.

One Response to “THE COLOUR OF MURDER by Julian Symons: Golden Oldies”