Mr. White's Confession

by Robert Clark

St. Paul, Minnesota, 1939. The body of a beautiful dime-a-dance girl is found on a hillside, and Police Lieutenant Wesley Horner, struggling and alone after his wife's recent death, heads the investigation into her murder. His chief suspect is Herbert White, an eccentric recluse and hobby photographer who spends his days recording his life in detailed journal entries and scrapbooks. In Mr. White's Confession , Robert Clark illuminates the complex relationships between truth and fiction, past and present, faith and memory.   Mr. White's Confession is the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Best Novel.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Book Club, Historical Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Crime, Historical

360 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1998

About the author

Robert Clark is a novelist and writer of nonfiction. He received the Edgar Award for his novel Mr. White's Confession in 1999. A native of St. Paul, Minneapolis, he lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.

Clark's books touch on several genres but often return to questions centered in God: "Is there a God? Does he love us? Is he even paying attention?"

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Robert^^^Clark

Reviews

[Becca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very mixed book. On the one hand, Clark is stunningly good with a metaphor. There were some places where the writing in this book really blew me away. It's a full step above mystery novels generally, and it usually doesn't feel too pretentious either. Clark captures the feel of an old school noir mystery. I also love the idea of including the suspect's journal (although the "memory problems" are a little contrived}and Mr. White is a sympathetic and likable character despite being so weird.On the other hand, his detective character, while being sympathetic, fails to make any significant progress towards solving the case. The villains are so un-nuanced and evil that you're waiting for something to happen to them the whole book and the way it comes out is incredibly unsatisfying. I don't mind an unresolved ending, but it felt like the whole plot just fell apart. In the end, frustrating and unsatisfying despite the obvious quality of the writing and numerous creative ideas.

[Trux · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE this book; it's so much more than I expected. And I'm just the kind of person who loves a character like Mr. White.

Managed to be urgently suspenseful AND explore philosophical issues in an accessible way that only got tiresome for a few paragraphs (for me) and well after I was deeply into it, thinking it's "just" going to be an entertaining crime novel. You wade into it gradually (at least I did, maybe because I didn't expect to be led into any deep water, thinking it was just kind of endearing at first).

It managed to not piss me off which is pretty amazing for a crime novel, especially one with young women working as companions of sorts, and portraying a kind of customer and different kinds of love with such understanding. The main characters were all treated with respect and compassion, and you see how sexual shame contributes to injustice, and how sexuality is not a barrier to love or beauty; shame is what ruins stuff.

I'm enjoying thinking about one of the major frustrations/tensions you could have with this story, and how perfectly the faith problem is embodied with the corrupt cop vs. the semi-stupid cop (weary and suspicious but not suspicious enough, still blinded by faith).

I felt some Faulkner moments and sweet-side of Capote in Mr. White.

I want to read more from this guy and more about this book, but am afraid to ruin it/be disappointed.

If I read books like this all the time I might get sick of it, but haven't read anything like it in recent memory so . . . perfect!

Also loved: my home state/places popping up in Minnesota story: two places/peoples I love.

I probably loved this more than I would have if I'd have read all of the praise about it beforehand. I'm glad the love and spiritual dealings were a surprise to me.

[Pamela_b_lawrencemsn.com · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an edited review written seven months after I read the book. In my first review, I did not think highly of this book. I said it was unsatisfying on many levels. However, several months later (helped I admit by a trip to St. Paul and seeing the key locations), this book sticks with me, so I picked it up again. I did not reread the whole thing, but I reread passages. And I change my ranking (the least useful part of any review) from two to three stars. I can't give it higher marks, but it is a thoughtful juxtaposition of two stories. One protagonist has limited memory, unfortunately becoming a suspect in a murder. This makes him unable to answer questions. The other protagonist is the police officer, a man who has suffered many disappointments. I did guess the solution - which is never actually revealed - early on, and the police officer is Hammett-manque with many too-clever metaphors to describe the depth of his world-weariness. A third character, a tough teenage homeless girl, demonstrates the depths of the Depression during which this novel is set. The device of the memory-challenged protagonist allows the author to write a few lyrical passages about faith and memory. A couple of examples: "That is the sad thing about memory, I suppose. It goes without saying that search as we will we cannot know the future; but it seems we cannot even know the past, however much we search it; and so we are always longing for it and seeing it beyond our reach, anticipating what is past as though it were to come. In that way, having a memory is terribly sad, like visiting a graveyard where even at the loveliest of times one must finally confess that underneath the verdure there are only the dead and gone, that which is lost to us, the things we once loved, that we still love. Now that I have it, I suppose that is all memory really is, for the most part: the hunger for what we have loved." AND "Perhaps all our striving and hunger in this world is for such signs, for that which is beyond memory, which is eternally present. And where we see it mostly, where it lays its finger upon us, is in beauty, which we know without prompting or recollection is as the smoke of the fire of creation, the word that immemorially recalls the memory of God." I have not read a book like this before, so I guess its uniqueness led to the Edgar award. In retrospect, I would recommend it to readers who will appreciate being guided through these shadowy worlds.

[Marsha · Rating 1 out of 5]

In my opinion, this book had neither likable characters nor a satisfying conclusion. Well, I did like Mr. White, but even he got boring after awhile. I could tell it was written by a man--I think his fantasies were played out in some of the situations. It is about two murders in the 1930s. The policemen investigating are corrupt and don't care if justice is done--they just want an arrest. Thus, they barely try, and end up arresting an innocent, sweet, and naive man, Mr. White, who has severe memory lapses. He confesses because he can't remember not doing the murders and is sentenced to life in solitary confinement. Meanwhile, the main investigator, who is in his 40s, starts to have second thoughts over his shabbily conducted investigation, but only because he is prodded into it by his 16 year old lover (the author's fantasy, perhaps?). Horrible things happen to Mr. White in prison, horrible things happen to the people outside of prison, nothing is ever resolved, and the book ends. Apparently some people really liked it--maybe it was too deep for me.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did he or didn’t he? Did hapless, memory-challenged Herbert White murder two of the dance hall girls that he worshipfully photographed in his rooms, or is he a perfect patsy - a sacrificial lamb doomed to suffer for another’s crimes? That is the question that pulls you into Clark’s evocative psychological suspense, a question that Mr. White himself could not tell you the answer to. Once immersed in Clark’s evocative depression era Midwest, a hard-edged world through which innocent and guilty alike make their tenuous way, no simple solution will satisfy us, and psychology itself has become just another trap for the unwary. E.M. Forster once described rounded (as opposed to flat) characters as being ‘capable of surprising in a convincing way,’ and Clark’s characters fill that bill, bringing a haunting complexity to a genre too often given to the simplistic morality of sorting the good guys from the bad. This is a literary mystery in the best possible sense.

[Tom Foster · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm still thinking of how I feel about this book, and I want to give it four stars but the ending leaves too many loose ends that I can't resolve even by writing my own ending for some of the characters. I don't want this to be a spoiler because I think it's a story worth reading, but just be prepared for something different than what you might expect, keep an open mind and enjoy the writing. The other reviews are mixed and the criticism is also mostly about the ending, but we are so accustomed to a happy or at least satisfying resolution to a story. There is nothing wrong with escapism for reading enjoyment, but we know life is not always like that and some questions and longings go forever unanswered.
I would read something else by Mr. Clark.

[Todd Berger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written book set in the first half of the twentieth century, largely in St. Paul, Minnesota. Explores the validity of confessions, the sensationalism of media, and how our society latches onto lurid half facts and catchphrases created by the media that endure for many years.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review to come.

[Timothy Merrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading, Love Among the Ruins I decided to try another of Robert Clark’s novels, this time Mr. White’s Confession. Now, having read two of his novels, I probably won’t read more until I’ve been in such a happy, joyous state of mind and until our culture has become a magical and wondrous state of Arcadian optimism and civil cooperation, that my therapist tells me that I need a reality check; someone who can dampen my enthusiasm and remind me of the dark days in which evil happens, killers are not apprehended and law enforcement is corrupt. Then, I will pick up Clark again. I enjoyed this novel immensely — at first. The premise is interesting. There are some bad guys (crooked cops), and there is a protagonist whom I’m sure will be proven innocent. So, I’m confident the killer of two beautiful models and aspiring actresses will be caught, that the eccentric Mr. White will be exonerated and that good will triumph over evil. Then, as the book moved into the second half, I got the feeling that this would not happen, that Clark would need to remind us of what we already know: that the world is a manifestly dark place where corruption exists, where good does not always win out and where hopes and dreams often crumble to dust under the weight of bad luck or bad choices.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed most of this book. Several dance club girls are found murdered in St Paul, Minnesota in 1939. The main suspect is an eccentric and simple minded man named Herbert White. Herbert’s hobbies are photography, writing in his journal, scrapbooking and visiting the dance club girls. He has trouble with his memory and tries to write everything down to help him remember his daily activities. The journal is very entertaining to read and his thoughts when written on paper contradict his actions and appearance of a simpleton. As the story develops so does the evidence of police corruption as White is accused of the murders. This was a fast read until I figured out what was going to happen and I didn’t want to read it. I would recommend this book as I found myself thinking about so many things that White wrote in his journal.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Dashiell Hammett raised the orphaned child of Thornton Wilder and Marcel Proust (with some occasional baby-sitting by godmother Marilynne Robinson), this book would be the result.

I really, really enjoyed it and saw much of the things other reviews here complain about to be some of its primary strengths. What some seem to find cliche or two-dimensional, I saw as ingeniously manipulated tropes, re-fashioned from familiar forms toward exquisitely fresh ends.

I have rarely found myself so intimately engaged with a character as I was with Mr. White -- an Ignatius Reilly with the innocent naivete of Dorothy Gale. In short, it's a delicious mash-up that's admittedly not going to be to everyone's taste, but for the rest of us, an incredibly satisfying repast that resonates well past a breathtaking philosophical conclusion.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly good novel. It was one of many I received in a package of used books, and as the others had been so bad, I had low expectations for this one.

However, it definitely snuck on me as great writing. Set originally as following the murder one woman in Minnesota in the 1930's, the story morphs into a series of reflections by the author on life, and specifically love and beauty in life. I found myself to be very sympathetic to the characters in the book, to be somewhat moved by some of the thoughts and ideas about the world, and that I really enjoyed reading this novel. I'm holding onto this one, and it may be one of the few novels I read again somewhere down the road.

I would definitely recommend this novel to others.

[Sidney · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it's an Edgar Winner, Mr. White's Confession, is much more than a mystery novel. It follows a deeply depressed police detective and Mr. White, a man with no short term memory, through a grim 1939 landscape. Mr. White is unsure whether he's responsible for the deaths of two dime-a-dance taxi dancers, and he is more concerned with his quest for his own identity and memory.

Nothing is quite what you expect it to be in this book, an excellent work, especially for thoughtful readers.

[Aaron Guest · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure how I feel about this book's last section. But until that point I was entranced, ensconced (wrapped up In scone, if you will). I will read this again someday. I will be affected by the startling imagery, setting, and metaphor. As with Robert's novels, I won't forget them and they will linger for a long, long while. But the ending bothers me. It really does. Still, my favorite of his novels.

[Beans & Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where I found this book:
In a neighborhood "free little library" book box.

What I thought of this book:
What a fantastic, enthralling read that kept my interest piqued from the first page to the last. I must find out about other works this author has written! No wonder this book was an award winner - deep, engaging, twisting and turning - a satisfying read. Five stars.

[Rod Zemke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good effort and interesting story set in St. Paul.

[Elmer Foster · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three components drive this read:
1) murder mystery, 2) mental capacity/problems of the culprit, and 3) time period writing.

Clark does a serviceable job re-creating a pre-WW2 era, St. Paul and what is included of that period. The day to day is bland, the lives are mundane, and the story feels gray for the realism portrayed within. Time period notwithstanding, this is a common place story of crime, corruption, and vice.

What we receive is a written version, albeit human, of a hard boiled crime story that never gets its due, although there are fingers pointed, confessions taken, and a minor court room charade performed. The murders are off-screen, per se, and we get the police call to follow in their tracks. Circumstantial evidence handles the burden of proof, barely, to support the titular "confession" but do we get justice? Was that ever an option? I think not to both.

Mr. Herbert White is an every man, that blathers on at will in his writings, believes in the power of the silver screen and its' allure, and gives off the wrong man in the wrong place vibe throughout. I felt that Officer Welshinger was the killer/mastermind, but Clark wasn't up to the task of writing that type of story, and instead deferred to the "Aw, shucks"-version of nostaligia we got in its stead.

As for the arresting officer, Wesley came across like the father from "A Christmas Story (Darren McGavin) tree scene included, which isn't a compliment. Not if the story depends on a tough copper to solve this case. We never get that far because Wesley is too busy wearing the "stains" of humanity. Eloquence lost in translation.

This probably actually happened somewhere in America, probably more than once, during that time frame. Ultimately, the interest waned, life goes on, and the memory remains.

I have mixed feelings about this one, but glad I read it.

Thanks for reading.

[John Stanley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not as over-written as Clark's previous (and first) book, "In the Deep Midwinter." Only three or four similes and metaphors compared to over a dozen in the previous book. That said, I gave still gave up on this one after a little more than a hundred pages. There simply just wasn't much happening. There was no action, no suspense, but even worse (given that there was nothing really very much happening) the characters were just flat and uninteresting. Oh well, now I've got room for two more books on the shelf.

[Cartoisb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr White’s Confession is a murder mystery with an unusual dimension to it, in that it is really more of an exploration of the themes of time and memory than it is a mystery. While this is an interesting and entertaining read, the story has some flaws. In particular, the central features of the story are the suspect's memory loss and his lengthy diary entries, which makes the entire story feel contrived. That being said, the book is generally well-written, and the author does a good job of recreating the atmosphere of pre-WW2 midwestern America.

[Adrienne Hood · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book, but slow to start for me (in fact, I had to come back to it months later and start again). I enjoyed the storyline, time-period, setting, but felt the ending was lacking. Although probably more realistic, I would have preferred greater closure in regards to "getting the bad guy" in the end. Good detective novel more than mystery. Overall a good book, but far from a favorite that I would find myself re-reading.

[Wendy Johansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one turned out to be so much better than I anticipated. Starting out with a standard "who done it?" plot, it became a meditation on loss, memory and love, and how interconnected they can be. Is memory really just a longing for love in the past, present and future? Living in the area, my familiarity with the various St. Paul locations brought the story to life for me. The state of police investigation and suspects' rights in the '30's was the impetus of the action. Suspects had no rights; prisoners were brutalized. Are things really that much better today?

[Jeff Macey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book because it's an Edgar award winner. When I finished the book, I set it down and said "Hmm". It was a mystery book, but it also seemed to me a treatise on religion and love and the meaning of memory. Definitely one that sticks with you after you finish, which is probably why it won the Edgar.

[Therese Dotray-Tulloch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very difficult novel to read especially up at the cabin in the beautiful north woods due to the cruelty and violence and ugliness in the police department. Set in St. Paul in 1939, we meet the downtrodden and poor and mentally handicapped who are all at the mercy of an evil, corrupt policeman.

[Don Follett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Different type of book than I have previously read. Much of the book surrounds the writing of one of the cast of characters. I thought I had figured out the plot but in the end I had not. It was interesting but not a book I would want to read again.

[Masayuki Arai · Rating 1 out of 5]

What's the truth?

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read but no conclusion. Did he or didn't he kill the girls?

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this combination crime and literary style book that probes characters and the police force of that day.

[Sarah Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hardboiled thriller in the vein of Dashiell Hammett. Somewhat dated now. Well written and an interesting read.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid, good mystery read.

[DJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. I felt sorry for poor confused Mr White.