Killing Wonder

by Dorothy Bryant

Jessamyn Posey, an aspiring writer, joins forces with a handsome young homicide detective to investigate the poisoning murder of India Wonder, a celebrated author.

Genres: Crime

178 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Dorothy Bryant was born in San Francisco in 1930, second daughter of Joe and Giuditta Calvetti, both born in Balangero, a factory town near Turin, Italy, and brought to the United States as children. Bryant became the first in her family to graduate from college, and she earned her living teaching (high school and college) until 1976. She began writing in 1960 and has since published a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction. Her plays have been performed in the Bay Area and beyond.

Bryant is known for her mystical, feminist and fantastic novels and plays that traverse the space between the real world and her character's inner psyche or soul. Her book The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You was described by Alice Walker as "One of my favorite books in all the world".

Reviews

[Mary Cassidy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful! This is a tour de force, a great final novel by a great under acknowledged woman writer. Bryant took on the murder mystery and took it so much further, full of meta-references to her own writing, referencing her other wonderful novels, and also full of sly humor, beautiful recognition of the importance of women in many forms, just a delight. Will reread for sure. So well written.

[Naya Torres · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book is too silly. a 23 yr old falling in lust with a cop with 3 kids? stupid murder motives? women talking mad shit about one another and never lifting one another up? weird descriptions of the race of every brown person?? Had to put this down half way. Self care. I did love being transported to the Bay in 1981 though

[Philippa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gentle satire on second wave feminism and its proponents, the infighting and hero-worship and everything. Very much of its time but I liked it.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a few years ago, the author of this book and I were both members of a sadly now defunct "international journalism community" called BlueEar -- it's the site that commissioned and published the first version of my satirical novel The Dragons of Manhattan. At some stage Bryant mentioned in passing that, a couple of decades back, she'd written a detective novel that had been much admired by the feminists of the day. Naturally, out of interest, I went online and bought myself a copy. Before I'd gotten around to reading it, though, there was yet another tsunamic influx of books into the house and Killing Wonder was submerged. The other day, though, I spotted it . . . and its moment had arrived.

While the central character, the victim and almost all the major support characters are female, I'm not absolutely sure why this should have been hailed as a feminist book; perhaps the cultural climate in the US in 1981 was different from that obtaining in the UK. Leave that aside, though. After a slightly creaky start, this becomes a joyously entertaining cozy mystery that also has quite a lot to say about the matter of being a writer -- not about writing, not about the book trade, but about how authors interact with each other and and are supported and/or preyed upon by the reading public.

Decades ago San Francisco author India Wonder wrote a roman a clef that has been a bestseller ever since, the inspiration of countless young female writers including our heroine Jessie Posey. But India has never written a book since then, although it's widely acknowledged that she's in the final stages of a new book, again a roman a clef, this time eviscerating her closest literary associates . . . all of whom have been invited to the party where India, mid-declaim, drops dead of cyanide poisoning. Everyone there but Jessie has a motive.

Promptly recruited as aide by handsome cop Jim, Jessie begins probing the mystery, interviewing varyingly eccentric members of the dead author's circle and herself being threatened by an anonymous phonecaller who plagues those involved. The book dances cheerfully along -- a very funny seance is a highlight -- until reaching its three denouements, the first two of which are plausible but incorrect solutions and the third of which is the correct (and most satisfying) one.