The Horizontal Man

Publisher's Summary

Helen Eustis' The Horizontal Man (1946) won an Edgar Award for best first novel and continues to fascinate as a singular mixture of detection, satire, and psychological portraiture.

A poet on the faculty of an Ivy League school is found murdered, setting off ripple effects of anxiety, suspicion, and panic in the hot house atmosphere of an English department rife with talk of Freud and Kafka.

This classic novel is one of eight works included in The Library of America's two-volume edition Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & '50s, edited by Sarah Weinman.

©1946 Helen Eustis (P)2015 Library of America

Hardly Worth It

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Dated; but saved by a bravura performance.

What could Helen Eustis have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

(what an inane question!)

What does Barbara Rosenblat bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Drama and humor

Any additional comments?

Yeah - don't ask the question "What could THE AUTHOR have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?"

It's too stupid a notion - from every conceivable angle - to consider.

3 of 7 people found this review helpful