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Whos' Afraid?
Susie Alban, travelling rep for a cultural course, was utterly inexperienced in the ways of the world, and had no idea why the people with whom she came into contact acted so strangely. Or why so many of them were interested in her movements...
175 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 5, 2013
34 people want to read
About the author
Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
91 books34 followersElisabeth 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.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 13, 2016
Susie Alban has just taken on a new job as a traveling rep for Gateways, a self-help home course, and is on her way by train to South Fairfield, where she'll be making her first calls. During the journey she's approached by a philosophy prof, Dr. Jacobs, and his two younger companions, Robert Carroll and Charles Ladon. They're all going to South Fairfield as well, and Jacobs persuades her to join them at the guest house where they're putting up, Mrs. Brett's. The two Bretts, Percy and Queenie, have a non-negligible part to play in the further proceedings.
Susie makes her first call, as advised by her boss, Vincent Chiswick, to the home of Mrs. Eve Person, only to be driven off savagely by Eve's much older husband, Alexander. Later that evening, walking back to the Brett house in the dusk, Susie discovers Alexander Person's body by the side of the road. Before she can investigate too closely, however, Charles Ladon turns up; he takes a closer look and decrees that Alexander Person is merely dead drunk.
Of course, as the cops explain a few hours later, Person wasn't dead drunk, just dead.
Over the next couple of days, the various characters -- including Eve Person and (my favorite character in the book) an oddly unsettling PI called Hobart Minck -- interact, each following their own agenda. We see most of the action through the eyes of Susie but also quite a few passages from the viewpoint of the unidentified man who has decided he must kill her. For he has completely misidentified her motivation, believing that she has been sent to track him down and bring him to book for the fraud he has been committing . . .
Who's Afraid? was first published in 1940, though it reached a far wider audience when it was reprinted as half of an Ace Double (the other half being Holding's 1953 novel Widow's Mite). It's one of her lesser works, but a minor Sanxay Holding is still very much worth reading; it has all her clever use of atmosphere and suspense and her ability to get into the minds of her protagonists. If you like Dorothy B. Hughes's novels, like In a Lonely Place, the chances are you'll like this.
Susie makes her first call, as advised by her boss, Vincent Chiswick, to the home of Mrs. Eve Person, only to be driven off savagely by Eve's much older husband, Alexander. Later that evening, walking back to the Brett house in the dusk, Susie discovers Alexander Person's body by the side of the road. Before she can investigate too closely, however, Charles Ladon turns up; he takes a closer look and decrees that Alexander Person is merely dead drunk.
Of course, as the cops explain a few hours later, Person wasn't dead drunk, just dead.
Over the next couple of days, the various characters -- including Eve Person and (my favorite character in the book) an oddly unsettling PI called Hobart Minck -- interact, each following their own agenda. We see most of the action through the eyes of Susie but also quite a few passages from the viewpoint of the unidentified man who has decided he must kill her. For he has completely misidentified her motivation, believing that she has been sent to track him down and bring him to book for the fraud he has been committing . . .
Who's Afraid? was first published in 1940, though it reached a far wider audience when it was reprinted as half of an Ace Double (the other half being Holding's 1953 novel Widow's Mite). It's one of her lesser works, but a minor Sanxay Holding is still very much worth reading; it has all her clever use of atmosphere and suspense and her ability to get into the minds of her protagonists. If you like Dorothy B. Hughes's novels, like In a Lonely Place, the chances are you'll like this.
November 19, 2014
A fine suspense novel, though I could wish for a smarter heroine. :)
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November 10, 2017The frustratingly clueless heroine manages to avoid getting killed, although she seems to do her best to find trouble. Sort of juvenile, but pleasant.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews