Wed 22 Dec 2021
An Archived Mystery Review by Jim McCahery: HELEN McCLOY – Through a Glass, Darkly.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
HELEN McCLOY – Through a Glass, Darkly. Basil Willing #8. Random House, hardcover, 1950. Dell #519, paperback, mapback edition, [1951]. Dell, paperback, date?
This is the eighth novel featuring psychiatrist-detective Dr. Basil Willing, recently returned from Japan after completing his military service. Willing is alerted by his soon-to-be fiancée and wife Gisela von Hohenems to the strange happenings surrounding Faustina Crayle at Brereton, a school for girls where they are both teachers — Gisela in German and Faustina in Art.
It would appear that Faustina has been seen bilocating more than once. When she is finally released from her teaching contract, Willing decides to investigate these “supernatural” appearances which he is convinced have. their roots in reality.
He soon learns that Faustina had been discharged from her first teaching position for the same reason. Further probing suggests that it is not just Faustina’s reputation that someone is out to destroy, and there are two deaths before a final confrontation.
This is probably the best use of the Doppelganger theme since Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Image in the Mirror. The title taken from Cor1nthians is very cleverly used here, but its significance does not become clear until the denouement.
The novel is an expansion of Miss McCloy’s 1948 short story of the same name which appeared in the September issue of EQMM.
December 23rd, 2021 at 12:08 am
I’ve read and enjoyed one other of Basil Willing’s cases, that being CUE FOR MURDER, reviewed here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=45328
In general, though, I find him too stiff and aloof — or is that an unfair assessment, based on reading too few of the books he’s in?
December 23rd, 2021 at 10:38 am
Sleuth Basil Willing is probably stiff and aloof.
But he convincingly plays a very brainy detective, like the Thinking Machine, Ellery Queen, etc.
And like his creator, he always has brilliant things to say on an amazing range of topics.
Through a Glass, Darkly is far from my favorite McCloy book. I’m a scientist, and can’t stand the paranormal or supernatural. They are a bunch of worthless garbage.
But around the edges the book has many interesting, intellectual passages. A running theme is what colors symbolize. This is part of McCloy’s ongoing interest in Cognitive Psychology. We learn about that McCloy interest, Ancient Greece. Willing’s favorite time of day is twilight, and we get two descriptions of twilight, once in the country, the other in Willing’s Manhattan neighborhood. Greece and twilight show up in nearly every McCloy novel.
The liberal politics explicit in other McCloy is absent. But the eerie, initially unexplained firing of Faustina Crayle offers a parallel to the blacklist going on in 1948.
IMHO Helen McCloy is a central figure in the history of the detective novel. So I wrote a 100-page book about her. It’s available free as a giant webpage:
http://mikegrost.com/mccloy.htm
December 23rd, 2021 at 1:58 pm
Thanks for the link, Mike. That’s a huge amount of stuff you’ve written about Helen McCloy. Makes me wish I hadn’t missed so many of her books. Until now!
December 23rd, 2021 at 8:54 pm
After Carr’s THE BURNING COURT this the best example of what Frank McSherry called the Janus Solution, where equal weight is given to the practical and supernatural solution of the mystery.
December 24th, 2021 at 2:18 am
Helen McCloy gets my vote as the most delicious-looking author of mysteries ever. She’s a saucy little minx. She’s what every authoress should look like.
But: with utmost respect, I say boooOOOooo to scientism. I’m of the opposite opinion than that expressed above. What would literature (or any of our arts) be without the supernatural? What would human life be, without mystery? Life IS mystery. I recommend Bruno LaTour for this question. Or, the more recent 5-HTTLPR scandal. Talk about egg on face.