Beat in View by Margaret Millar

Last week I read Beat in View by Margaret Millar. It's a suspense novel written in the mid-50s in the USA

I liked it - it is short, well paced, well written, interesting. There is a twist which I didn't see coming, but I never do. It was reasonably well sign-posted. I am going to use the word killer because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who does want to read it.

However, mental illness is the reason that the killer does what they do. Multiple personality disorder, to be exact.

Which makes me uncomfortable. It always does, even though some peopel do kill and commit other crimes because they are mentally ill. But in life, it is uncommon, and in fiction, it is very common.

I think Millar handles it well, better than many other novels. There is an understanding of the killer's psyche and it is not rammed home either.

One of the characters is homosexual and the relationship between him and his mother is a bit stereotyped. Very much of its time.

A third thing that jarred was that one of the characters seems to fall in love with another, offering some sort of heterosexual resolution of some of the issues in the novel. There's a dynamic of an older, male, sane saviour of the younger, female insane character.

There isn't much online about the novel, and not much about the writer. I have reserved another of her books from the library.