Hush!: Story 15 in the “Tales of Suspense” Series

by Jerry Jamison

When two aging sisters—old maids from another era—share a crumbling mansion on a hill, one of them decides that “daddy’s house” is no longer big enough for the two of them. Tired of being the caretaker of her feeble sibling and anxious to find a husband to care for her, Miss Myrna—of the famed Boston Collingsworths—decides that it’s time for her needy sister Vera to be gone and begins to lay the framework for her disappearance.

Tired of being told to “Hush!" Vera may not be as slow and trusting as she seems and soon the two enter into a cat-and-mouse game from which only one will emerge. Filled with unexpected twists and turns, this story—in the mold of “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”—will have readers guessing until the final moments. Called “a mental exercise in tension, this is an unexpected gem in Jamison's “Tales of Suspense” Series.

97 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 12, 2023

About the author

The author of more than 40 published full-length fiction novels, Jerry Jamison has been an award-winning advertising copywriter with over 60 national writing and creative development commendations during his career. As the principal of a California-based advertising agency, he has helped create and guide successful and memorable campaigns for a wide range of clients throughout the country. The “Tales of Suspense” Series (currently 25 stories), is his first foray into the mystery/thriller genre.

Reviews

[G. Gaynor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book. I’m a fan of good thrillers, and enjoy a female-led story. Unfortunately, I didn’t find what I was looking for here. The book could use a good editor. Throughout the entirety of the prose, the author uses superfluous words which frankly come off as though he is attempting to sound more intelligent than he is. Constantly peppering in such tags as “well” “after all” “yes, yes” “of course” and others diminished the readability of the book.

The characters are caricatures and, in the case of Myrna, inconsistent. The author introduces her as a 38-year-old socialite who is frequently about town… a real “somebody”. And then later describes her as a 40-something recluse who wants nothing but solitude and lives in a crumbling mansion. The dialogue needs serious work. While I understand the author was attempting to portray certain mindsets in the characters, there was barely a single line that I found authentic.

There was also no suspense. I had the entire story figured out by the first line of the second chapter. It wanted to be a psychological thriller, but the entire weight of the story rested on the relationship between the twins which was wholly unbelievable and jumped around in a muddled and inconsistent manner.

I also suspect that the author was heavily influenced by the 1962 film ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ and possibly the 1964 film ‘Hush… Hush Sweet Charlotte.’