Lady Killer

by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Honey was no ordinary ex-chorus girl.

Genres: Mystery, Noir, Fiction, Thriller, Mystery Thriller

159 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (1889-1955) was born and brought up in New York and educated at Miss Whitcombe's and other schools for young ladies. In 1913 she married George Holding, a British diplomat. They had two daughters and lived in various South American countries, and then in Bermuda, where her husband was a government official. Elisabeth Sanxay Holding wrote six romantic novels in the 1920s but, after the stock market crash, turned to the more profitable genre of detective novels: from 1929-54 she wrote eighteen, as well as numerous short stories for magazines. In 1949 Raymond Chandler chose her as 'the best character and suspense writer (for consistent but not large production)', picking The Blank Wall (1947) as one of his favourites among her books; it was filmed as The Reckless Moment in 1949 (by Max Ophuls) and as The Deep End (with Tilda Swinton) in 2001. After her husband's retirement the Holdings lived in New York City. Her series character was Lieutenant Levy. Holding also wrote numerous short stories for popular magazines of the day.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a delightful fast read and such a glorious period piece. It seems like every noir writer working in the 40s had to write a twisted thriller set on board a cruise ship, which leads me to believe that they all let themselves get talked into cruising out of New York and down to the tropics in the winter, found themselves bored and in a bit of a constant dark drunk stupor, and invented bizarre murder plots set on cruise ships and tropical islands to keep themselves amused.

This book mentions a cocktail called the Carlito in Chapter 15. It was invented by one of the characters, which is fantastic, but we don't find out what's in the drink, which is not so fantastic. But you know what they do drink an awful lot of in this book? Champagne cocktails.

So here's what you're gonna do:

Champagne
Sugar cube
Angostura bitters

Get a bottle of nice French champagne. I don't think Honey would have been drinking California champagne in those days. Don't spend a fortune--something in the $15 price range will do. Failing that, get a good Spanish cava for $10-15 and you're good.

Get a champagne goblet if you can (the wide, shallow kind of champagne glass) but failing that, a flute will do.

Drop in a sugar cube and douse it with about six drops of Angostura bitters. (Angostura is most certainly the brand the ship would have served.)

Give the bitters a minute to soak in, then top with Champagne.

Drink a toast to Honey and Weaver. They're going to need it.

[K.A. Laity · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raymond Chandler was right to gush over Holding; wow. She makes it all look so easy. For psychological mystery the choice of narrative voice is primary. Honey Stapleton is perfect. A former chorus girl who’s spent her life so far focused on maximising the power of her surface, she eschews the need to look very deeply at others, though she imagines herself to be a good judge of character. Her new husband — chosen for his ability to provide her stability and a certain cultural cachet, and not for love. Mercenary she might be, but having thrown her lot in with Weaver, Honey does her level best to make the most of their union despite his increasingly twitchy behaviours.

Honey isn’t the first woman to find that the upper crust is every bit as sordid as the one she’s clawed her way out of, but Holding makes her completely natural and believable. As the cruise begins to reveal more sinister elements — is the husband next door really trying to kill his wife? Is Honey’s own husband arranging an assignation with a former lover? — her growing bewilderment and genuine sympathy for those in danger completely captivate. I am in awe of Holding’s masterful ability to surprise with revelations that nonetheless prove completely believable. The mysteries are satisfying yet complex; Honey may not seem likeable at first, but her voice compels and her curiosity and sharpness thrust you into the middle of things completely.

I already have another book by her (Net of Cobwebs) and plan to get them all. Read more about Holding, “The Godmother of Noir,” at Criminal Element or in various entries at Ed Gorman’s blog.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm definitely the outlier here. I can't see why readers think this was so. darned. good. The characters are cardboard, and even second-grade cardboard at that. The writing doesn't even evoke a speck of atmosphere. In my opinion, the entire book was written from the wrong point of view. If you want a psychological novel, the person from whose perspective you view the story should be feeling threatened. There was nothing of the sort here.

A woman gets on board without any luggage. None. It was left behind. Her clothing changes are reported even before the ship makes a stop where she could have picked up a few things. Then she turns up with a mink coat. Where does all this come from? It isn't reported that her luggage was forwarded and picked up at a stop along the way and no one has reporting anything stolen. I guess the author forgot about the luggage not getting on the ship. There is a lot of fashion in the story. Filler, filler, filler.

This doesn't fall quite as low as 1-star, but close.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always enjoy Elizabeth Sanxay Holding's novels, but Lady Killer is one of her best. The title and cover are wildly misleading in this case, though. Rather than being a hardboileld detective novel, this is a slow, quiet, and tense thriller about a young woman, Honey, trying to deal with the restrictions placed upon her by her role in society. There is murder, and there is mystery, but all of it is secondary to Honey's attempt to create an identity for herself. On those terms, it's really excellently written, with the same sharp character writing present in all of Holding's wok that I've read, but with the cover being such false advertising, I imagine a lot of readers will be disappointed. I do recommend this book, and strongly at that, but as a slow moving character study rather than a potboiler.

[Vasilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it to bits. The descriptions are wonderful, the mood is super-noir and suspenseful, and the plot twist at the end isn't obvious from the beginning. The ending is properly ambiguous, and - the best element of noir - the solving of the crime is the least important aspect. My only complaint was that this was a print-on-demand edition, and there were many typos and sometimes lines of dialogue from character A were added onto character B's actions, so you had to do a bit of deductive reasoning yourself as you read. Not important however - thoroughly enjoyed the story.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding was one of the very few contemporaries that a cranky Raymond Chandler praised. This 1942 volume is fairly good, though a bit dated. The first half, in particular, left me feeling a bit dissatisfied; it was all somewhat clichéd. The husband, Weaver, is comically dated. But at the mid point I began to see the intelligence and bleakness seeping in, and many of the expectations formed early were eventually subverted. The rest of the book was a rather satisfying read then.

[Sarah Koz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! She really captures that spinning, frantic mindset so beautifully. Deserves to be widely reprinted.

[Huw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding’s Lady Killer is a nicely paced piece of pulp fiction. While the murder mystery itself isn’t the most inventive in the world, what’s interesting here is the psychological state of the main character, Honey Stapleton, a socialite who has married into money, but trapped in a loveless relationship with a weak and shallow man. Honey becomes obsessed with the seemingly doomed Alma Lashelle, who exhibits a few nasty traits of her own. There are a few twists in this tale, set on a luxury cruise ship heading for the West Indies. Definitely worth a read, even if you’re not a fan of pulpy murder mysteries.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A taut, well-written thriller from one of the great authors of hard-boiled crime fiction