WISTERIA COTTAGE

by Robert M. Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

With a modulation which does not impede its momentum, with dispassionate precision, this pursues the emotional imbalance of a schizophrenic, his cumulative, criminal impulse to kill. Sustaining a facade of apparent normality, engaging if occasionally sullen, no one questioned. Richard Baurie --certainly not Mrs. Hackett, a widow he met by chance, nor her two daughters, Elinor and Louisa. Backgroundless, homeless, Richard moves in on the Hacketts, persuades them to take for the summer the house called Wisteria Cottage, attaches himself to the three women who provoke in him varying responses. From the earlier, idyllic days, the tenor of their relationships change as the moments of small tension increase, Richard is stimulated by imaginary humiliations, sexual fantasies, and is driven to kill brutually, senselessly, mindlessly.....An at all times efficient, at all times effective study of the intellectual, emotional mechanics of a disabled, disoriented personality....For the market interested in abnormal psychology, fictionized.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1948

Categories: FICTION