Kings and Queens of Crime

Essays on major Crime Writers

Judith Rhodes on Ursula Curtiss

Recently widowed Kate Barlow, living with her husband's seemingly sympathetic family, is involved in a minor car accident. Distracted by a wasp as she is driving, she swerves and knocks over a small boy; the child is apparently unhurt, but this is the beginning of a nightmare of psychological tension for Kate.

This, in brief, is the plot of Ursula Curtiss' The Wasp, published in 1963. I read it a few years after this, at the age of 12 or 13, and it left an impression on me quite out of proportion to the intrinsic significance of the book. I never forgot it, tried to track it down years later (her other titles were quite readily available but for some reason The Wasp proved peculiarly elusive) and finally acquired a battered and discoloured paperback copy with as much joy as if it were a first edition Jane Austen. I re-read it with as much pleasure as it had given me 25 years before, but have puzzled as to why it made such a huge impact on 13-year old me.

At that age, I was eagerly exploring adult fiction ('teenage fiction' hadn't been invented then); my mother was and is an avid reader of crime fiction and so my literary intake included those of her library books which she deemed 'suitable' and for a while my diet consisted of Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, John Buchan, John Creasey - admirable fare, but not exactly emotionally involving. And involved is, most emphatically, what the reader becomes from the very first page of virtually any Curtiss novel.

The daughter of American crime writer Helen Reilly and the sister of Mary McMullen (the style of whose novels bears a distinct resemblance to Curtiss' own), Ursula Curtiss wrote over a score of gothic / romantic suspense novels between the late 1940s and the 1980s. She specialised in the depiction of innocence threatened by hidden evil - the title of her 1979 novel The Menace Within could serve equally well for any of her books. And the menace is all the more sinister when it hides behind a familiar, even friendly face - as it so often does.

Her heroines are sensible, practical and pragmatic, but vulnerable physically or emotionally or both; they are usually single - sometimes widowed, sometimes recovering from a broken relationship, but in any event destined not to stay single for long. Many of the later novels are admittedly formulaic - other oft-repeated themes include the heroine doing a favour for somebody else: looking after a house or a small child or both; she is often visiting New Mexico (where many of the novels are set and where Curtiss herself lived) from the East. Although there has often been a domestic crisis (the illness of a relative, a close friend being called away) the books generally start with an atmosphere of domestic calm; the heroine's tranquillity is disturbed either by one shattering event or by a gradual seeping of malevolence into her life.  Generally a past crime is at the root of the present wrongdoing and the heroine gradually uncovers this; she investigates discreetly, aware of the peril in which she has been placed. Frequently a parallel investigation is carried out by an eligible young man who, in the general way of such things, is suspected by the heroine of being the villain. Only a few of the novels reveal from the outset that something wicked this way comes, and just a couple disclose the identity of the malefactor at the very beginning.

Many of the early novels, and some of the more recent ones, are more distinctive. In Letter of Intent (1972) Celia Brett is a most unlikeable character - cold, calculating, manipulative, she causes the deaths of three people. Yet it is her fortunes which we follow; she is the main character and the whole narrative unfolds from her viewpoint. The Noonday Devil (1951) is one of Curtiss' few novels to have a man as the main character. Andrew Sentry, learning that his brother's death as a Japanese prisoner-of-war was deliberately engineered by a fellow- prisoner, seeks to avenge that death; he has to discover which of 3 suspects is the guilty man. Into a plot which could be that of a conventional action thriller Curtiss introduces her hallmark atmosphere of menace concealed behind seeming innocence - and of course the obligatory stormy male/female relationship.

Curtiss writes with an instantly recognisable style; most notably a judicious and very distinctive use of adverbs and adjectives. In The Forbidden Garden (1962) (filmed, incidentally, as 'Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice' and fairly regularly aired on television), jellied fruits 'glowed coolly' through their sugar coating; this is not a phrase which would leap instantly to mind, but once read it seems absolutely right and it is one which, like many of her favourite words ('poised', 'delicate', 'consideringly'), could be applied to her own prose.

I suspect that these books appeal more strongly to women than to men; women are, I think, more likely to empathise with the isolation and vulnerability of the heroines - and it is this empathy which is the key to enjoyment of the novels. They are not very widely available - only 8 are in print in the U.K., of which 7 are in large print; 5 are available as audio books. However, your local library will probably have a reasonable selection, or at least will have access to them. A word of warning - don't read too many at once, as I did when preparing this article - they can become very predictable. I recommend one every 3 months or so and then they'll seem quite fresh!

Judith Rhodes.