The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis

[randy_byers]

Comments

[holyoutlaw]

I get a better sense of the passage you quoted in your review than in the QOTD on Facebook. It sounds like an interesting novel.

[kalimac]

Fridging? If that means what I think it does, it's a common characteristic of genre mystery novels. The victim in the conventional type of this story is not a human being, but serves the sole function of a plot point to kick off a puzzle. This is for a practical purpose, to prevent the reader from being distracted by sympathy for the victim. A novel featuring grieving over a death would be a different kind of a story, and that and a mystery-solving puzzle would get in each other's way. Dislike this convention if you prefer (I do, which is why I read few novels of this kind), but that's why it's there.

[randy_byers]

You're right. I was trying to be clever, but I was missing the obvious. The term (from a website called Women in Regrigerators) apparently came out of comics fandom. Although I will say that both novels in the LOA omnibus that I've read so far portray considerable empathy for the murder victim, not all of it altruistic. David Bordwell says they are psychological thrillers more than typical murder mysteries, very much concerned with detecting the emotional state and relationships of the characters rather than just who done it.