The Abductor/The Bank With the Bamboo Door

by Dolores Hitchens, Curtis Evans (Contributor)

THE ABDUCTORIt begins with a name whispered to a teacher in the schoolyard… “Marion….Marion.” Someone is lurking in the bushes, but they run off before Miss Moynton can confront them. There is indeed a Marion in her class, so she tells the principal about the event. She even goes the parent’s house to ask if someone was supposed to pick up Marion from school. But Marion’s mother has other concerns, and doesn’t take the question seriously. However, another nearby family, the Trents, have a daughter named Marilyn, and they have every reason to fear this schoolyard stalker. They have been living in fear of a man who blames the husband for his wife’s death, and keeps threatening them on the phone. When the new substitute teacher, Marion Kennick, is kidnapped with one her students, it looks like the stalker has finally decided to strike. THE BANK WITH THE BAMBOO DOORMarlie Renick lives in a town full of secrets. Her own secret is tormenting her. She is pregnant by a man who is not her husband. Then there is Dr. Ferrie, who carries the secret of temptation. He is being blackmailed for his affair with a young woman he refers to as “the barracuda.” His wife holds another, much darker secret, one that changes her entire life. And Jim Griffin, the young man who appears so innocently in Karen Evans’s gardening store, is anything but what he seems. Their lives, and many others, all intersect when a conniving lothario leads them to a bricked-up cellar wall that hides the greatest secret of them all.

276 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2021

About the author

Julia Clara Catherine Maria Dolores Robins Norton Birk Olsen Hitchens, better known as Dolores Hitchens, was an American mystery novelist who wrote prolifically from 1938 until her death. She also wrote under the pseudonyms D.B. Olsen, Dolan Birkley and Noel Burke.

Hitchens collaborated on five railroad mysteries with her second husband, Bert Hitchens, a railroad detective, and also branched out into other genres in her writing, including Western stories. Many of her mystery novels centered around a spinster character named Rachel Murdock.

Hitchens wrote Fool's Gold, the 1958 novel adapted by Jean-Luc Godard for his film Bande à part (Band of Outsiders, 1964).

Although she was known as Julia as a child, she later said Dolores was the only one of her five given names she liked. Robins was her maiden name; Norton and Birk were two previous stepfathers; Olsen was her first husband; and Hitchens was her second husband.

Reviews

[L J Field · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review for The Abductor.

A nice, efficient thriller with a few character studies that were enjoyable. This is a basic setup. A man wants revenge on a person who was involved with his wife’s death. There is an abduction.

Very nicely written.

[Carla Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

11/2021

The Bank With Bamboo Door
From 1965
Sort of good, sort of boring. I don't know what to say.

The Abductor
From 1961
Even a revenge kidnapper confuses the names Marion and Marilyn. This is a good Hitchens story. Of course it involves children but, to me, has more in common with her The Watcher, Stairway to an Empty Room and Nets to Catch the Wind. Some of her others I've found various degrees of boring.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am beyond grateful to Stark House for my copy; these people are the best!

full post here at my reading journal:
http://www.crimesegments.com/2021/03/...

The two novels offered here are The Abductor, from 1962 and The Bank With the Bamboo Door from 1965. Let me just say that Hitchens doesn't mess around in either of these books -- there is nothing cozy to be found here. Not at all.

Re The Abductor : I have to admit that I don't particularly care for novels involving child abduction, so I was a bit iffy about this one, but I needn't have been. What I discovered is that what happens in this book is anything but your standard kidnapping story, as Hitchens delves into the lives of the main players here, setting up a high level of suspense and asking serious questions about moral choices and responsibility along the way. As the story winds down it definitely becomes an edge-of-your-seat reading experience that lasts until the very end of this very twisty, taut story.

The Bank With The Bamboo Door is set in a "town full of secrets," the exposure of which for the people in this book would be devastating. As more than one person reveals in this story, their woes can be traced back to a single source, without whom their lives would be far better off. Reading this book is like being a spectator at a plate-spinning act, wondering how in the world someone manages to keep them all going at the same time without at least one crashing down. I would think that it's difficult to juggle so many storylines, but from the very few books I've read by Dolores Hitchens, I've noticed that one of her strengths as a writer is in her ability to begin with several different elements of plot and keep them under control individually even as they begin to merge together. Here not only does everyone have secrets but there's also the matter of the "bank with the bamboo door," where a robbery took place in the past; word has it that not all of the money was found and that what was left might just still be there behind that bamboo door. And then, of course, there's a murder that absolutely no one is sorry about.

In both books in this volume however, it is really her focus on small-town people that makes all the difference, and there she is a master. I tend to focus more on human nature than on plot when reading crime, so she's a great fit for me. It wasn't until after I'd finished this volume though that I understood why she is so very good at what she does, discussed in the informative introduction by Curtis Evans. After a brief look at Hitchens' life while growing up and then as an adult, he makes a great case for her "tangled family life" making its way into her novels. Both books go far beyond just straight plot, so that you get caught up in the lives of the characters before you. While I liked both of them very much, I will admit to being a bit more caught up in the suspense of The Abductor, and more focused on the outcomes of the people than the plot in The Bank With The Bamboo Door, but both are, as Evans notes about "Hitchens' crime concoctions," most certainly "criminally addictive." One caveat: it was often cringeworthy reading references to Chinese people in the second book, so beware.

I hope Stark House is planning to publish more of Hitchens' novels in the future. They won't be for everyone, but I love them. Absolutely.