Robbie's Wife

by Russell Hill

IN A FARM ON THE EDGE OF NOWHERE LIE THE SEEDS OF MURDER

Jack Stone fled Los Angeles, a failed marriage, and a failing career as a screenwriter to spend six months in the remote English countryside, hammering out the new script that would put him back on top. But what he found wasn’t solitude and peace – it was temptation. Because Maggie Barlow, the wife of the man putting him up, had something irresistible about her. Something that could drive a man to kill…

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Fiction, Thriller, Noir

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published February 27, 2007

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Washed up screenwriter Jack Stone goes to England to get away from things and hopefully get back into the swing of writing. However, the wife of the man Jack is staying with proves to be a much more interesting distraction. Interesting enough... to kill for!

Robbie's Wife is a tale in the mold of The Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity, the tale of an affair that leads to murder. The first two-thirds of the book are worthy of James M. Cain himself. Robbie's wife is something else and you can't really blame Jack Stone for falling for her, at first anyway.

Cricket and baseball both have batsmen but it isn't the same game, is it? That's a quote from the book and I'm using it to illustrate why I thought the last third of the book sucked. Hill had me going, right up until the big event happened. Then the book slows down to a snails pace and all comparisons to Cain and other greats go right out the window. Seriously, the last 60 pages tempted me to quit and/or tear the book in half. The twist at the end made it worthwhile to finish it but it was a chore getting there.

I'm giving this book a three despite my misgivings. I liked the first two-thirds enough not to give the book as a whole a two but I was sorely tempted. Not my favorite Hard Case but not terrible either.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jake Stone is a screen writer from LA who finds himself on a farm outside London seeking inspiration to cure a severe case of writers block. However, the serene and quiet country escape he wanted turns out to be anything but. Embroiled in an affair with the farmer's wife, charged with murder, and assaulted by gypsies, this is one vacation Jake shouldn't have taken.

This is the second time I've read Robbie's Wife and it's even better the second time around. I love character driven stories and this doesn't fail to deliver. Jack Stone is a character ripped from the pages of a Jason Starr novel who makes accidental murder justified and par for the course; an event bound to happen that's still no less shocking when it does.

Robbie's Wife is well plotted, populated by multidimensional characters and a perfectly executed. I highly recommend this. Think James M Cain with a more modern flavor. An easy 5/5 stars.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has a well-done, dreamy style and a stunning sense of place--it's obviously rare to see a noir novel set on a Dorset sheep farm, and Russell makes me wish there were more. The best parts of the book are all grounded in that fatalistic setting. The landscape is beautifully evoked, and Hill uses it well, letting you see the natural beauty and sense of community at the same time as he makes you feel the profound isolation and the sense of being trapped. He also gets some great set-pieces, apocalyptic and unusual, out of his milieu, as when an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease leads to quarantines and animals being almost indiscriminately slaughtered and burned. All that is great and gritty. You've got faulty electric shears and drunkenness and vandalism and casual racism; you've got bad food and good tea. Basically, all the parts of this book that could have been written by modern day Thomas Hardy are exceptional.

I'm just... less enamored of the crime plot. It's a standard "boy meets girl, boy decides to kill girl's husband, complications ensue" plot--that's a classic for a reason and Hill does some nice things with it later on, but the execution, however clever, just fell flat for me, maybe because I never entirely felt the hypnotic, erotic lure of Maggie. She's a reasonably complex and well-developed character--Hill is good at characterization in general--but I just never felt the full force of Jack's attraction to her or bought that it would have led to him committing murder, especially as he seemed mostly mild-mannered, as opposed to the kind of guy who (like Walter Neff) is secretly looking for an opportunity to enjoy his own cleverness. (I also hated the rhythms of Maggie's speeches, which never sounded particularly human to me, so that didn't help.)

But there's plenty here that rewards thought, even if some of it is part of what pushed me away from the novel as I was reading it. Hill pulls off an interesting meta trick here by having his screenwriter protagonist effectively write his way into becoming a murderer--first he turns his reality into fiction and then, as those fantasies start to become reality, eventually can't resist the urge to turn darker and more dangerous fictions into action. He winds up in his plot because he starts writing the story down, and he knows the way this story goes--doesn't everyone? This is done lightly, but it's a nice background thread. And Hill is good about showing the ways in which Jack's reality doesn't mesh nicely with the noir movie he's writing/imitating. When Jack's attempt to murder Robbie isn't successful, it's unsuccessful in a particularly horrible, tragic, hard-to-read-about way, stranding Robbie with all his mental faculties about with a body completely out of his control, both paralyzed and prone to spasms that affect even his eyes. It feels like Hill is highlighting the awfulness and unfairness of this plot--Robbie is a basically good guy who in no way "has it coming," and both Maggie and Jack know it. He's a loving father and a good husband, and he suffers horrific agonies because of Jack's actions... and Jack is too overwhelmed with love and lust to really care. He's not especially horrorstruck at Robbie's fate, instead he just sees it as an opportunity to slot himself in as Robbie's caretaker so he can wait for Maggie to come visit. He taunts the helpless Robbie--both implicitly, by his presence, and explicitly, by talking to him about his affair with Robbie's wife. At this point, I would have happily fed Jack to crocodiles. Justice for Robbie!

Anyway, the severity of that outcome breaks some of the traditional conventions, as does the fact that Jack descends not into doom and regret but into further meanness and brutality. Other things, too, don't go the way he expects, or the way conventions would dictate. The traveler who could inform on Jack but would ordinarily not talk to the police... does go ahead and talk to the police. Jack never talks to Maggie again after Robbie's "accident." Jack doesn't really face justice for Robbie's eventual death, but only an extremely watered-down version of it. And Maggie, whose manipulations were too subtle to be actionable, escapes completely. Even the dog dies.

So--clever and great in spots, but with weak pacing and a central element--the attraction and love between Jack and Maggie--that just didn't convince me.

[Soul longings · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pulp fiction story About a writer from america involved with a farmer's wife in england .it has romance, lies , deceit, the description is nice, loved the writing style , i found it a fascinating read

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill is a fascinating, well-crafted book that I highly recommend. Why do we need another remake of the tried and true themes of Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity? Well, for one thing, it simply isn't accurate to call this a remake even though the themes of jealousy and murder are there.

This story is about a washed-up sixty-year-old Hollywood screenwriter who, as Fitzgerald once said, just woke up one day and ran out of ideas. There was nothing left for Jack Stone to write about. Not that he had been all that successful to begin with, but he simply had nothing left in the tank. He seized upon the idea of writing in a different climate, a different atmosphere. Perhaps if he traveled halfway around the world, he could find the peace of mind that would allow him to burst forward with new ideas. So Jack Stone finds a cottage in the English countryside and, with about six months worth of cash in the bank, flies to England and plans to spend his days writing in the quiet solitude of the fields and the crashing waves. It turns out that the delightful little country cottage that he rented was no more than a barely functional shed with an attached outhouse and, within a few days, he breaks his contract with the farmer and sets out without a destination in mind.

Jack could have headed back to Los Angeles, but he didn't. He finds himself, instead, drinking with the guys in a small-town pub and, while they head back to work, he is barely functioning. He inquires and finds that a sheep farmer up the road often puts up lodgers. And, he head there and meets Maggie and Robbie. Maggie used to be a dancer and had dreams of dancing in the Royal Ballet Company before she met Robbie, a Cambridge-educated man who married her and returned to his father's sheep farm to help out when his father took a turn for the worse and never left. With his parents gone, Robbie tends to the sheep and Maggie gracefully in her bare feet dances around the kitchen. Jack Stone, as Maggie always referred to him so as not to confuse him with their dog ("Jack"), can't take his eyes off Maggie as she waltzes around the kitchen making shepherd's pie and a cuppa of tea. He is transfixed by this forty-year-old married woman and falls in love with her.

One day leads to the next and Jack can't seem to leave the sheep farm. Maggie tells him that she has seen how he looks at her and they take long walks in the countryside while Robbie is off looking to buy a calf or getting supplies. Jack and Maggie's illicit affair is told in a tender manner and it is clear in this story that they are not just lustful and indecent even when Maggie tells Jack one morning when they are alone that she considered hopping in his bed and jumping his bones.

Jack seems to find excuse after excuse to stay on as a boarder at the sheep farm and grows close to the family until it reaches a point where Maggie appears to be begging him to leave. It feels like Postman by James Cain at some points here, particularly where Jack and Maggie worry about the future and Maggie says she couldn't just leave her husband and her son, although she feels trapped on the farm as if all her dreams were dashed and she dreads becoming like Robbie's mother and the hens she sees gathered in the village, gossiping. Maggie begs Jack to leave and he seems willing to, but his resolve always seems to fall apart when he looks at her.

Even when Jack finally leaves the farm, he remains under Maggie's spell. The magic dust she sprinkled on him won't let him go. He only goes to the next town and begs her to come have coffee with him. She reluctantly joins him and they seem trapped in this hopeless love affair. She tells him to go back to Los Angeles and never turn back.

Jack can't leave her and, at some points, he almost becomes a stalker in quite the manner of the Damnation of Adam Blessing. His obsession with Maggie is clearly understandable from his point of view, but looks kind of nutty from the outside.

The themes pursued in this book are not new, they are indeed age-old noir themes. Yet, Hill is such a powerful writer that, even in the quiet timeless countryside, the reader feels the power of the spell that Jack is under and why he can't leave Maggie behind even when that is just what makes the most sense. The tenderness of their love affair is something rarely found in noir fiction. As Maggie once notes, Jack is so taken by her, he would do anything for her, even swim in the icy river below.
All in all, I found this to be a worthwhile addition to the Hard Case Crime series and I recommend it. Indeed, I knew this was going to be a good one from the very first page.

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jack Stone is a screenplay writer from Los Angeles. He's stuck for ideas, and decides to go to England to get inspiration. He stays at a farm with a family, renting a room and eating meals with them.
And he falls in love with the sheep farmers wife. Robbie's wife. Dumb man.

It's kind of an old man falls for a young woman romance until page 160 or thereabouts. And then a crime happens, though not really a 'hard case' one! And then, the story sort of falls of the shelf for about 80 pages or so. But just as I was starting to snooze off due to boredom, SLAP!, the plot twist smacked me wide awake! So much so that I think I still have a handprint on my left check from it!

"And this time no one is going to miss the clown suit." No, no they are not.

[Paperback Papa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 2007 crime/noir from Russell Hill has a fifties vibe. It's the classic triangle with a man who goes bonkers over a married woman and is willing to do whatever is necessary to have her, even if it means committing murder.

But this version of the story has a couple of very interesting variations. One is that the "other man" is not a handsome young drifter with a penchant for trouble, but a sixty-year-old author. The other wrinkle is that the story unfolds, not in a dusty small town in the American southwest, but in rural England where the author goes to work on a screenplay.

Mr. Hill builds tension throughout the book and really turns up the heat in the last thirty pages. One aspect of the ending is very predictable. You can see it coming from a mile away. But don't get cocky as you read because the author has cooked up a little surprise for you at the very end that you definitely won't see coming.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

ROBBIE'S WIFE is as good as a book can be and still remain mediocre. The writing is top-notch and the noir-ish atmosphere pitch-perfect, but the plot twists are underwhelming, the pacing slow, and the story--worst of all--hard to swallow.
A big problem with ROBBIE'S WIFE is that, despite being an emotional roller coaster of a tale, it is narrated almost without emotion. This is especially strange, considering it is written in the first-person. But apart from lust, I could never figure out exactly what the narrator was feeling at any given moment, making him impossible to relate to.
And yet, Robbie's wife seems to have little trouble reading him like an open book, sensing him capable of some wildly improbable behavior for a sixty-year-old writer.
In fact, many of the narrator's actions struck me as not just implausible but downright idiotic, especially in regard to the crimes he commits. It's as though he is just dying to get himself into colossal trouble. After all, this is a guy who writes a screenplay about his crimes and doesn't even bother changing the names. Gee, I wonder if that might come back to haunt him?
And what is the motivation behind his sudden downward spiral? Love? If so, I'm not convinced. To me, he never seemed truly in love, just blinded by lust for a woman way out of his league. I had a hard time believing this man would turn to crime so easily after living his whole life prior as a straight-laced writer of screenplays (who, if we are being nit-picky, doesn't seem to have a clue as to what an actual screenplay should look like).
ROBBIE'S WIFE starts out slow but interesting. The fish-out-of-water setting is very well done, and the characters are all intriguing and very true to life. But as things get progressively out-of-hand, the book becomes more and more absurd. Unlikely coincidences and ridiculous plot twists began to rear their ugly heads. ROBBIE'S WIFE starts out as a quasi-literary novel buts ends up a kind of male-oriented soap opera. Somehow it ended up being nominated for an Edgar Award, but apart from the excellent prose, for me it fell strangely flat considering the richness of its potential.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that I like more having finished it than I did while I was reading it. The first 150 pages are, indeed, slow, and I am not sure that they adequately prepare for the book's third act. But the more that I think about the flaws in this book, the less I am sure that they are flaws. For example, the book's narrator, Jack Stone, is an over-the-hill Hollywood screenwriter who takes a working holiday in Britain to revitalize his career. Occasionally in the novel, we see mediocre snippets from his screenplay-in-progress, and we see one long section, which is utterly incompetent. This long section is largely expository in a way that a professional screenwriter would never be. In other words, it looks like a screenplay written by someone who has never seen a screenplay. And readers are supposed to believe that this guy is a professional screenwriter? But Jack Stone is also a character in crisis, and the more that I think about his writing in the book, which he repeatedly proclaims to be "good" despite much evidence to the contrary, the more I think that it is an appropriate reflection of his psychological state. I'm going to keep thinking about this one. . . .

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this short novel of obsession, murder and intrigue. But at first it didn't really seem to fit the crime novel category. The novel centers around an American visiting England, and his obsession with himself, the novel he can't write, and (of course) a woman he can't have. The author's description of England (and his main character's reaction to people and locations) is well-written, and kept me reading when I should have been doing something else. The only weakness is in the motivation for murder: to me, it didn't seem realistic. But this is a fun read.

[Matthew Reads Junk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Noir, but not quite noir. Almost borders on romance, especially in the early third of the book. For a book in the Hard Case Crime series, there's a surprsing lack of crimes commited. But as typical with novels in the noir genre, there's desire, repressed sexual tension, and a woman out to make a man do wrong. Very little of excitemetn happens, and as usual, our bad choices catch up with us at the end.
I would have enjoyed the book more had it more suspense, danger, murder, sex, anything to make things more tense or thrilling.

[Urbaer · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very slow burn, nothing of any interest occurs in the first 3/5ths of the book and even after this point it's not that greatly interesting. The character of Robbie seems interesting as he seems to have two personalities that get switched on and off seemingly randomly, but this isn't explored in any great depth.

Mostly the first part of the book supplies the main character with enough information to get through the second part of the book, but it just seems too contrived.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh, this one didn't impress me. The plot is unoriginal and parts seemed contrived - I almost stopped reading about halfway through but then it started to pick up a bit. Unfortunately, other than enjoying a chapter or two the story fell flat again.

[Claudette Gabbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book read more like a romance than a crime book. Only until about 75% complete, did the crime part come in. Even then, it wasn't a very huge part. At most, this book is a 3.5 star book. It was meh. That's all.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lovely bit of pulp, it's basically The Postman Always Rings Twice but with a failed American screenwriter staying at a bed and breakfast in Dorset. Especially enjoyed all the local details!

[Ed · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess it’s not fair to rate books based on publisher but I chose this by gong through the Hard Case Crime series and I have a beef. While this is fitting as far as the A to Z story, it’s more misery than pulp or noir. The early going sets a very clear and fresh atmosphere and the relationships are well drawn. Problem is no crime of any kind is even mentioned until we’ll past the halfway mark. There is a detour that’s so miserable it must’ve been some sort of dare. Things sorta recover by the end but it’s way too late. This reeks of genre fraud to me, being sold an apple from an orange grove. Shame since there is a good book in here somewhere.

[Josh Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, old-fashioned pulp novel ... admittedly, it took a while for this one to get going (lots and lots and lots of set-up) but, if you’re in the mood for a slow-burn with an excess of sex, deceit, and attempted murder , this book offers all three, even if it does meander at leisurely pace to deliver. Also, I could picture no one but Anthony Hopkins as the antihero (Jack Stone) and Karen Gillan as the femme fatale (Maggie Barlow).

[Dan Seitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the one hand, Hill works very much within the tropes of noir. There's a man, a woman, and an inconvenient husband. And that can be a struggle when you know largely where a story is going.

On the other, Hill is such an expressive writer, and has such a unique setting and careful characterization, that it's still a fascinating book.

[Chloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book with its own way of a tale that's been done many times. Man's obsession with a women gone bad, good twists towards the end.
Good realisation with the characters and the settings, easy book to get through.

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Typical Noir book with characters, plot and ending.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: Jack Stone fled LA to hammer out a script in the English countryside; he found the irresistible Maggie Barlow. Is murder next?

[Aniruddh Sudharshan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked well on my first crime fiction of the year!

I rock.

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really expected a better ending.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read some reviews on this and thought about skipping it but decided to try anyway...and it's not half bad. Not the best of the series by a long shot but it maintains the sensibilities of a HCC novel and there are some decent twists and turns. The one weakness of the book is that the love angle doesn't simmer like it should. Hill has a story but he needed to figure out a better way to write it. Still a decent book.

[Vlad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started to get more absorbed in the story half way through. The first half was dragged out too much but once you make it through that part, the rest is quiet interesting.

[Omid Yamini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! A textbook example page turner.

[Lukasz Pruski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard Case Crime is a line of hardboiled paperback crime novels that has set out to capture the mood of crime novels of the 1940s and 1950s, with their noir charm and pulp-style covers. Russell's Hill "Robbie's Wife" is the first book in this line that I have read, and I can only say (not very eloquently) "Wow!" It rarely happens to me that I read a book in one sitting, but I have not been able to put this book away.

Jack Stone, a 60-year old screenwriter from Los Angeles suffers from writer's block. He flies to England and drives to Dorset, where he plans to work on a new script in the quiet countryside. While staying at the Sheepheaven Farm Bed & Breakfast he falls in love with Maggie, the 40-year old wife of the owner and a sheep farmer, Robbie.

It is one of the most unusual mysteries or crime dramas that I have ever read in that almost half of the novel is a beautifully written love story. The prose in that part is sublime (for once, a blurb on the cover is truthful), and reminds me of J.L. Carr's "A Month in the Country" or L.P. Hartley's "The Go-Between". There is not even a hint of any crime. Then, quite suddenly everything happens. The military enforce a quarantine because of the foot-and-mouth disease. The scenes of slaughtering sheep and burning their carcasses by hundreds are unforgettable. A murder occurs as well and the remaining part of the novel is a captivating psychological thriller.

I find the ending a bit of a letdown. Still, it is quite enigmatic and invites the reader's interpretation. "Robbie's Wife" is a better read than the books by usual bestseller writers. It is so different, fresh, unclassifiable, and charming yet suspenseful. A really great read!

Four and a quarter stars.

[Matthew Lipson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I will admit I am addicted to the Hard Case Crime imprint and will read anything they publish. This book has put that philosophy into question. While well written, I found myself wanting to not finish it on numerous occasions. I did, though. So, let's get into it.

This is a long winded book about a whiny character no one in their right mind would care about. Most of the book reads like a romance novel with sex scenes that would make soft core porn look adventurous. Then it does a Vertigo style twist, which is at once predictable and disappointing. Why? Because, I could care less about what happens to this character. He got played and deservedly so. And let's not get into the ludicrous levels of serendipity that requires the end of this book to even work.

A lot of times I wonder how books get nominated for awards or even win them. This is an Edgar nominee, if not winner. I wouldn't even give it the time of day let alone a nomination. So, I'm taking a break and reading some Sci Fi and Biographies. I know the next one is going to be better.

Oh yes, the one star. It is very well written ... up to a point.

[Adam Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another example of a book I only read because it was a part of the Hard Case Crime series. I was not disappointed. Robbie's Wife has a slow start, and for the most part I was wondering why it was in the Hard Case Crime library at all, since there didn't appear to be any crime in it. But a well-written book holds the interest regardless, and certainly this is one of those.

It reminded me of Gil Brewer's the Vengeful Virgin, for it was a book I was enjoying without quite knowing why. It's only when I got to the end, had that "Oh, of course!" moment, that I promptly put it onto my "re-read sometime in the future" pile.

Now if only HCC would release more of Russell Hill's books, I'd certainly snap them up.

[Sam Reaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard Case Crime has been publishing new noir fiction in paperback originals that ape the old pulp formats. This is a good one, about a washed-up Hollywood screenwriter who flees to England in search of a place to go to earth and write a career-reviving screenplay undisturbed. He winds up at a rural B&B in Dorsetshire, where he becomes infatuated with the farmer's wife, with dire consequences for all... A twist on an old noir setup, distinguished by Hill's sharp depiction of contemporary rural England (complete with hoof-and-mouth outbreaks and random hooliganism) and tight, skillful writing.