The Murderer

by Roy A.K. Heath

'For me life hasn't got dreams, success and all that damn nonsense. Life is full of some of them soft and others conceal a hammer.'Galton Flood is a lonely man, restless and ill at ease with his family. He leaves his home in Guyana's capital, Georgetown, for a remote township, and the first of a string of precarious jobs. Meeting Gemma, his landlord's daughter, appears to offer a first chance of meaningful connection - maybe even happiness. But there is a darkness inside Galton, and soon jealousy and paranoia lead him to fatally, violently unravel.With this haunting portrait of a mind undone, celebrated Guyanese writer Roy Heath evocatively recreates the country of his its rivers, townships and tenement yards, and the tensions shimmering below the surface of a community.

Genres: Fiction, Africa, Crime, Modern Classics, Novels

210 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Roy Aubrey Kelvin Heath was from Guyana, where he attended the Central High School. He came to England at age 24 to read modern languages at London University. He was a teacher from 1959, and was called to the English Bar in 1964, and the Guyana Bar in 1973.

His first novel, published in 1974, was A Man Come Home, and his 1978 novel, The Murderer won the Guardian Fiction Prize. The Shadow Bride (1988) made the Booker Prize shortlist, Kirkus Review commenting that, "It's hard to believe it didn't win."

Heath's writings were widely acclaimed, Arnon Adams calling him "truly one of the most brilliant story tellers ever"; Salman Rushdie described him as "a beautiful writer"; and Edward Blishen as "simply one of the most astonishingly good novelists of our time."

Heath died in London at the age of 81.

Reviews

[Michael Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

"guns don't kill people, but husbands do, and they do it by drowning their wives, all of them"

This is my first read of any Guyanese writer. Growing up I had one solid recollection of Guyana: the Jonestown massacre. It was gruesome and the details have never been fully explained to my satisfaction. I do remember that our government was put on the defensive by world opinion because the majority of the victims were African Americans.

I also recall a letter I received from a young lady (actually she lived in Surinam) who wrote, "I came into the beautiful world...(then supplying her birthdate.)

IN this book we are treated to the life and times of one Galton Flood. Galton has an older brother he is somewhat envious of. Galton realizes he is going nowhere in life so he tries to make something of himself. While lodging as a boarder, he is introduced to the owner's daughter; the owner is looking for a man to marry his daughter Gemma. Galton is attracted to Gemma but doesn't understand the situation even as the Walking Man tries to enlighten him. Galton applies to radio operator school by correspondence and this leads to his downfall as well as the death of his beloved. The writing is power, swift, active, fast, now.

[Francesca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read this book for a group and I have found it interesting. A lot for discussion. Well written but characters not so likeable.

[Louis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking at the reviews, it seems this is a widely misunderstood book.

What stood out for me was the blunt lack of justice for the brutal murder of a woman: a dark mirror of the harsh reality in many societies where systemic violence, especially against women, is normalized and ignored. There’s a subtle yet uncomfortable sense of injustice, coupled with a sheer lack of accountability that perpetuates tragedy, making it all the more devastating. Self-deception at the edge of annihilation.

[Bob Finch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit of a tough read (for me). Not often easy when the main character is difficult to relate to; harder still when he borders on repulsive. All the same, an interesting dive into the mindset of a sociopath.

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as strong as the other titles on McNally's budding list, but that's a very high bar. Galton Flood is a taciturn and insecure boy from the Georgetown, Guyana, middle class who constantly compares himself to his more outgoing brother Selwyn and his best friend Winston, for whom the transition to adulthood has been painless. Not so for Galton who chooses to move to sleepy little Wismar soon after his mother's death. There he falls under the spell of Gemma, his landlord's daughter, but hearing rumors about her he promptly gets a job in the jungle. A couple of years later, after much hesitation, he proposes to her and the couple move in with Winston and his wife and daughter. On their wedding night Galton discovers that Gemma isn't a virgin and their marriage is off to a bad start. Galton has so many sexual hang-ups that he forces Gemma to wear her underclothes in bed. Then in a fit of jealousy he forces her to leave Winston's house in the middle of the night and takes a poky apartment in a disreputable tenement where a supposed police informer spies on them all day long. Eventually Galton hears from him that Gemma has had a male visitor. He decides to kill her, lures her to the river at night and disposes of her body. Knowing that their marriage wasn't a success, most people accept his lie that Gemma has left him and gone back to Wismar. Galton himself leaves the tenement and moves back in with his brother although he hates Selwyn's wife Nekka and is disturbed by their young children. He starts dating another girl and things seem to work out between them until her father puts a stop to it because he realizes they have been sleeping together. Galton starts falling apart and confesses his crime to a former colleague of his who doesn't know what to do about this embarrassing information. Soon afterwards, Gemma's father and former lover, Mr Giles, come chasing after him and he confesses to them too, but strangely enough, they do nothing about it either and go away again. The lover reassures Galton that Gemma's father is too afraid of a scandal to involve the police. What his motivation is for keeping silent is not clear to me. Does he feel responsible because he kept seeing Gemma? At some point Gemma tells someone that she had a child with this man but Mr Giles doesn't mention this to Galton and the issue of the child seems oddly unimportant after all. Galton is simply allowed by everybody to become the town's eccentric, wearily supervised by Selwyn. I would undoubtedly have been less baffled by this book if I knew anything at all about British Guyana's culture. As it is I couldn't be sure whether Galton was supposed to be a kind of Meursault or somebody who more or less follows the accepted honor code of the place in killing an unfaithful wife. The extent of Gemma's duplicity is another thing that was unclear to me. I surmised that she was keen to marry Galton because Mr Giles was married himself and couldn't make an honest woman of her, but his status and social standing remain murky.

[Emma]

I'm gonna be so real, I just don't think I get it. I'm not even going to rate it because I believe fully that I have missed the point of this book.

I didn't like it. It was nothing like what I expected. For a book called The Murderer, there was a surprising lack of murder until more than halfway through the story. However, I thought the climax was written more in the style that I was expecting - more thrilleresque, creepy, psychological - and then it completely fell flat and went right back to the textbook-like narrative writing.

I was disappointed because it has a stunning cover that makes me want to read it, and the description sounded so good; but unfortunately, it was very meandering and, frankly, pretty boring.

I didn't like it, but I need someone else to read it so that you can either explain the point to me, or join in my misunderstanding so I don't feel quite as dumb. So, yes, I recommend, lol

[Sidorela Risto · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Murderer is an intriguing novel set in Guyana, centered on characters who follow a culturally prescribed script for life—one that culminates in marriage to a “good” woman and the obligation of supporting a family. Galton Flood deviates from this script, shaped by a repressed childhood lived under the shadow of a domineering mother. He does not seek a woman; instead, he is pursued by Gemma through a series of love letters. Trapped in marriage like a genie in a bottle, Galton enters this union without fully understanding what Gemma conceals. The result is his descent from quiet, fragile contentment into a suffocating well of sorrow, where a flood of long-repressed emotion finally erupts and overwhelms reason. Flood - It’s in the name.

[JennyB · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my quest to read one book from every country around the world, I have come across some spectacularly bad fiction. To my relief, the Murderer, by Guyanan Roy Heath is much better than that. It's readable, if not good. Definitely one of those books where you don't understand characters' motivation for anything they do... like, real people dont act like that. It also has a very abrupt and dussatisfying ending, and you'll pretty much loathe every character in it. But how many books have you ever read set in Georgetown? Plus the rendering of the spoken creole is interesting, ne? Overall, a solidly mediocre effort i was pleased not to despise.

[Joe M · Rating 4 out of 5]

'In the jungle the shadows sometimes kept him awake, while in town it was the dogs that woke him up. They roamed everywhere, making the long nights their own. No one else seemed to be disturbed by them, least of all Selwyn, who never once complained of being unable to sleep. Yet there they were, with their luminous eyes and dripping mouths, padding through the grey silence of the night, disturbing the quiet with petulant outbreaks of barking.'

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Murderer is about a man - haunted by the death of his overbearing mother, the success of his older brother, and the expectations not met in his new marriage - and his decent into madness. Paranoia with a Caribbean backdrop, I felt equal parts repulsed by the characters and their actions and astounded by the power and beauty in Heath’s prose.

[Marcus Todd]

It's funny seeing some of the reviews complain about the main character being mostly unlikeable, especially after a certain point. And while I definitely agree with them, it made me want to keep reading instead of putting me off. In a weird way, it's like a Guyanese book version of the movie "The Harder They Come"

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some good elements here, but ultimately, it never quite amounts to anything that piques my interest as a reader. I thought Heath's choice to rotate to different POVs was a nice touch, and helped color in some details, but nothing really happens here? It's very much a vibes book, and surprisingly subtle given the title and jacket copy. 2.5/5

[Muhammad Mehedi Hasan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A character who might have been created by Dostoevsky.

গ্যালটন ফ্লাড, একজন নিঃসঙ্গ ও অন্তর্মুখী ব্যক্তি, যিনি তার মায়ের মৃত্যুর পর গায়ানার লিন্ডেন শহরে চলে যান।সেখানে জেমা বারোয়েসের সঙ্গে পরিচিত হন এবং তাকে বিয়ে করেন। তবে গ্যালটনের ভেতরের অন্ধকার, সন্দেহ ও ঈর্ষা তাকে ধীরে ধীরে মানসিক বিপর্যয়ের দিকে ঠেলে দেয়, যার পরিণতিতে ঘটে এক মর্মান্তিক ঘটনা।

[Kayleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

"guns don't kill people, but husbands do, and they do it by drowning their wives, all of them"

The murderer tries to rid himself of emotions - emotion, he says, is the haze through which we see the world.'

[Melissa]

DNF. Writing is flat and too much "tell," not "show." A grim plot that (from the summaries I've read) seems misogynistic.

[Neal Storrs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clinical, if not cold-blooded study of a Guyana man's descent from psychopathy to murder, reminiscent of Camus's L'Etranger, minus the nod toward philosophical vindication.

[Danny Inglis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book just took me a long time to read, despite the fact that’s it’s <250 pages.

I just never really found myself invested in anything.

[Katie Parsons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written.

[Bart Veldhuijsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Het is moeilijk te zeggen wat ik van het boek vond. Het was best moeilijk om te lezen door het dialect in de taal soms, en soms had ik niet helemaal door wat er gebeurde. Het was een verhaal wat vooral gebeurde en passief was. Daardoor ben ik vrij neutraal over de hoofdpersoon, maar ik heb geen medelijden. Het is vreemd dat er niet echt consequenties zijn voor hem, maar dat laat meer setting goed zien. Ik stagneerde best met dit boek maar het einde van het eerste deel en het einde maken het het lezen waard.

[Orlando Fato · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Patricia Highsmith had written a novel set in Guyana, it would have been "The Murderer"."The Murderer" is the story of Galton Flood, a man who was never allowed to be boy and who, therefore, and later on in his adult life, could not become a man. Galton Flood is the anti-hero of this novel. He is never a role model, either because of his behavior or his acts, and yet he was not a character I disliked. As a boy, he was deprived from experiencing his gender by his emasculating mother, and this, of course, caused him to be a misfit as an adult.

However interesting the plot is, I have mixed feelings about the way Roy Heath developed it. The novel kept me in suspense all the time, but it also kept me wondering when it was going to get even deeper and deeper into Galton's emotions. His relationship with his mother was crucial as to why he couldn't connect with the world around him, and yet it wasn't said enough about it. Besides, how come his mother's domineering personality emasculated Galton and his dad and not Selwyn, Galton's brother? This was not clear to me and was not made clear in the book. As for the murder in the book, it reminded me of Patricia Highsmith, an author whose anti-heroes commit murder and make you agree with it. Galton Flood is a sick man, but I was never disgusted or felt dislike for him. I sympathized and even liked him.

The book is set in Guyana. A very short part of it set in "the bush", which also had a huge impact in Galton's life. However, again, I felt that Roy Heath could have written more about it. The rest of the book is set between Linden and Georgetown. Although the descriptions are very subtle, this also gives the book, along with the always comprehensible dialogues in Guyanese English, a sense of place that added uncertainty and suspense to the novel.

While I think that the behavior of Gemma's father –Galton's wife– was very unrealistic at the end of the book, as well as that of Gemma's Godfather, the ending of this book is pleasently unexpected. It was the ending what what made me think "how come this is book is out of print?!" All in all, I was glad to have found and read this novel. Roy Heath is the third Guyanese writer that I have read, and I must admit that I am as impressed by him as I am by Edgar Mittelholzer and Jan Carew.

[Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw a review of this book before reading it that said it was like Crime and Punishment if it was set in Guyana. I definitely agree with this, however, I think it is more of a mix of Crime and Punishment’s themes/plot lines and the characterization of Meursault in Camus’ The Stranger. I kept thinking of how similar Galton was to Meursault and how his poverty echoed Raskalnikov’s. While both The Stranger and Crime and Punishment both end in returns to the justice system (there’s more to say about C&P’s epilogue, but I’ll refrain for now), The Murderer ends with a descent into insanity, which you cannot be sure is spurred from murdering his wife or if it is now just bubbling to the surface in more noticeable ways.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

in 1985 I said 'a strange, awkward deliberate style, over-emphatic, yet it works. Galton and Gemma, where they live near the wharfs. The murderer tries to rid himself of emotions - emotion, he says, is the haze through which we see the world.'
Don't really remember much of the book now though.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, moody, eerie, disturbing, unjustly forgotten. Highly recommended. I had never heard of Heath until McNally Editions republished this novel. Once I finished this one, I sought out and bought all his other novels. (McNally has done some wonderful reissues of forgotten masterpieces.)

[Crystal James]

I really want to read this amazing book

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the writing style but not so much the main character. A decent psychological thriller.

[Max · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gemma's letters were pretty cool but the protagonist confused me