SPIDER WEBS

by Margaret Millar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 1986

Millar, once a compelling pioneer in the field of serious psycho-suspense (Beast in View), is trying something interesting here: courtroom-drama as a study in interlocking psychological portraits. Unfortunately, however, with unconvincing, dated characterizations dominating, the result is more creaky soap-opera than intense psychodrama. Cully King, the Caribbean captain of a private yacht, is on trial for the murder of prim, well-to-do housewife Madeline Pherson--who joined the sexy black captain for an impulsive fling when the yacht was docked near San Diego. (He picked her up in a hotel bar.) Did King really strangle Madeline, steal her jewel-case, and toss her body overboard? Or did she perhaps die by accident or suicide instead? The facts in the case--including some intriguing medical evidence--offer a modicum of involving mystery. The primary focus, however, is on the courtroom personalities. The judge is a crusty sort, fading into boozy senility. The coroner's health is failing. The D.A. is a cartoonish stuffed shirt who's obsessed with turning his young sons into future lawyers and politicians. The defense attorney is a closeted homosexual whose rich wife has gone over the edge into pill addiction. The court clerk is a busty feminist, a repressed spinster. So defendant Cully--whose supposed super-charisma is never made even half-believable--is soon being creepily wooed by both the court clerk and his own attorney. . .while one of the key prosecution witnesses (the yacht's crew-lad) also turns out to be under Cully's ill-defined spell. And the finale is an implausible mishmash, with the defendant recoiling from his adoring suitors (""Don't let them get at me"") before a dollop of clichÉd melodrama renders everything moot. Despite stretches of solidly sketched courtroom testimony: an odd, unsatisfying hybrid--too thin in its did-he-do-it? suspense, too scattershot and farfetched in its psychosexual byplay.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1986

Categories: FICTION