PSYCHOLOGICAL NOVEL

Evening Star, Issue 23687, 21 September 1940, Page 4

PSYCHOLOGICAL NOVEL

* The Guilty Party,’ by Mrs Ficto? Rickard, is described as a “ psychological thriller,” but the atmosphere created by the author is morbid rather than thrilling, and the further promise of an ‘‘ element of comedy ” is entirely unfulfilled. The evil or weaknesses in each of the characters in the story is fully exposed under the scalpel which writers of psychological novels know so well how to wield. In the case under review there is a repellent Frenchwoman, dominating, bittertongued, vindictive, with a penetrating —a psychological—mind, who marries a. young Englishman, only to quickly despise him, goad him with insults, and eventually revenge herself upon him and upon the girl he loves by winning, in an extraordinary hypnotic manner, the latter’s unswerving love and weaning her from the husband; after which, she coldly dismisses the girl. In all the circumstances it is difficult for one to be altogether shocked when the young man plans to murder his wife and is on the verge of doing so. It is a queer, and admittedly ingenious, example or the eternal triangle problem, if rather a painful one. Mrs Rickard’s women are here mostly unpleasant, “ catty,” interfering individual* full of the desire to thwart and otherwise hurt others, the one exception, being a kindly but rather dull lady. Among the male characters, too, one searches for something unwarped, and is relieved to find such a specimen, a vicar, who hastens to explain that ha is not a psychologist. With it all, however, this well-written story hold* the attention, for the reader become* anxious to know if and how the young heroine escapes from the spell of the hateful -Frenchwoman, and what becomes of the handsome, almost-criminal young husband. And most folk will be quite satisfied with the more or less happy ending. Our copy of the book is from Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.