Worse Than Murder
FTER listening to 3YA’s broadcast of the play of this name by Norman Edwards, I am still a little uncertain as to what was Worse Than Murder. I am not even sure whether the climax was insufficiently brought out, or whether I had merely been lulled into a state of admiring somnolence by the excellent tediousness of the court scenes. The play promised well from the start: a deceptively slow-moving and casual investigation of a 45-year-old murder case, an amiable old housekeeper who freely offers her drawerful of press-cuttings and old letters to be perused and some flashbacks to the trial where, as we later discover, the wrong man was found guilty. Under different circumstances one would immediately have pounced on the housekeeper as the guilty party simply
because, in the tangle of intrigue surrounding the murder of Lady Palfrey, she was the only one who appeared. to have no motives. But here the details of the trial help to prevent such a suspicion forming until the very end, when the housekeeper places the incriminating letter (which for 45 years she has believed burnt) into the hands of the investigator, This revelation hit me in the middle of a tentative mental balancing of husband v. lover for the role of murderer, so naturally I was annoyed. If there is anything worse than a murder play where you can spot the murderer before you are supposed to, it is one where you can’t.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19470808.2.18.7
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 424, 8 August 1947, Page 9
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245Worse Than Murder New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 424, 8 August 1947, Page 9
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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