The Woman on the Roof

by Helen Nielsen

THE WOMAN ON THE ROOFWilma Rathjen lives above the garage with a view of the apartments below. Her brother Curtis has provided this safe haven for her after her breakdown. The last thing Wilma wants to do is go back to the institution. So when she looks out of her window and sees the body of her neighbor, Jeri Lynn, lying dead in her bathtub, she doesn’t call the police. She waits—if the body is really there, one of the other tenants will discover it. And discover it they do. But is this really an accident? Sergeant Osgood is not so sure. Curtis himself was known to visit Miss Lynn. The young nurse, Ann Jenner, definitely has something to hide; the old gardener, Wallace Timm, is acting evasive; and pretty-boy Tony Carmen is decidedly defensive. And then there’s serviceman Phillip Blade, who shows up claiming to be Jeri’s husband. Only Wilma could have seen what happened—and that someone might try to kill her next!

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Fiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Helen Nielsen was author of mysteries and television scripts for such television dramas as "Perry Mason" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".
She studied journalism, art and aeronautical drafting at various schools, including the Chicago Art Institute. Before her writing career, she worked as a draftsman during World War II and contributed to the designs of B-36 and P-80 aircraft. Her stories were often set in Laguna Beach and Oceanside, California where she lived for 60 years.
Some of her novels were reprinted by Black Lizard, including "Detour" and "Sing Me a Murder".

Reviews

[James Thane · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Woman on the Roof was first published in 1954 and has now been published in a new edition by Stark House. At the center of the story is a woman named Wilma Rathjen who has just returned home from a sanitarium following a nervous breakdown. Her brother, Curtis, is a landlord and he has created a home for Wilma in a small apartment above a garage in a complex that he owns. Wilma lives there with her cat and has taken a job at a bakery, but she's still clearly nervous and unsettled.

Wilma is particularly unnerved when she looks down from her apartment one night into the window of one of the other units in the complex and sees a young woman lying dead in a bathtub. Or does she? Wilma fears that she might be imagining the sight and worries that if she reports it and it turns out not to be true, she could be taken back to the sanitarium.

Accordingly, she makes no mention of what she has seen and when the body is discovered, two days later, Wilma feigns ignorance. Initially it appears that the woman died accidentally when her hair dryer fell into the tub and electrocuted her. But then the detective investigating the death, a Sergeant Osgood, begins to notice a number of strange things going on in and around the complex where the young woman died. He also notes that poor Wilma Rathjen is not the only odd, strange and curious character who's living there. As Osgood digs deeper into the mystery, Wilma finds herself, or imagines herself, in increasing trouble and her own survival may be at stake.

This is a mystery that seems very much of its time, and as a crime novel it really hasn't aged all that well. There are no clues that would really enable a reader to anticipate the guilty party and, frankly, by the end of the book, it really didn't seem to matter, at least not to this reader, who the guilty party was. However, the book is a fairly interesting psychological portrait of a woman who may or may not be imagining the dangers that surround her. The author has very skillfully drawn the character of Wilma Rathjen, and the reader can't help caring about her and wondering what might become of her. An interesting read both for that and as a glance back to the nature of the mystery novel three-quarters of a century ago.

[Carla Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

05/2022

From 1954
Unusual and very good. I liked this better than the others I read by Helen Nielson.
About a mildly crazy woman and a police sergeant who lives with his mother. Who realizes the woman is being used and solves the murder.
Some parts, with the wandering woman, reminded me of Shirley Jackson. Her creepy stories like "Louisa, Please Come Home." Probably being from the same era.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

full post here, no spoilers

http://www.crimesegments.com/2020/03/...

I always love it when a previously-unknown woman crime writer pops up on my radar. This time it's Helen Nielsen, who not only authored nineteen novels but also wrote for television, including the old series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Perry Mason, and Tales of the Unexpected.

The titular "woman on the roof" is Wilma Rathjen, whose brother Curtis has set her up in a garage apartment that looks down onto the six-unit apartment complex below. We discover right away that Wilma has spent time in a sanitarium; she also has a job at a local bakery. It is actually a muddle with a certain birthday cake ordered by one of the apartment dwellers that not only has her in a bit of a tizzy as the novel opens, but also leads to the discovery of the same woman in a bathtub in one of the apartments that Wilma can see into from her vantage point. Because her previous trouble that had landed her in the sanitarium had to do with "tall tales" told to the police, and had upset her reputation-fearful, wealthy-businessman brother and made him threaten to send her back if it happened again, she keeps quiet about it, believing that someone else will eventually find the dead Jeri Lynn. When the body is discovered, the police at first view her death as an accident, until circumstances and a little more digging reveal that her death is actually a case of murder.

The list of suspects in this novel is a lengthy one, motives abound, and I never guessed the who. But my reading focus is always on the people in crime novels, so for me it is a win-win, and a vintage mystery I can highly recommend. The fact that Helen Nielsen was heretofore unknown to me but is now on my reading radar is also a plus, and my many and sincere thanks to Stark House for putting her there.

I love this old stuff!! A lot of it is so much better than what's out there right now and it's sad when people write it off just because it's old.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

A real whodunit where there are a lot of suspects, but no apparent motives and a somewhat unreliable main character.

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 3 out of 5]

A noir mystery originally published in the 1950s and recently reissued. I don’t often have this feeling while reading but I kept picturing this book as a movie - black and white with that very particular fast paced speech pattern that is so common in noir films. There were a lot of characters and a lot of details in a way that was sometimes hard to keep a grasp of. All and all it was enjoyable!

[Diane Gurman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mystery with interesting portrait of a mentally ill woman.

[Dave Robertson · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5*