A Crime in the Neighborhood [Hardcover]

Suzanne Berne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 1997

A New York Times Notable Book. Set in the Washington, D.C., suburbs during the summer of the Watergate break-ins, Berne's assured, skillful first novel is about what can happen when a child's accusation is the only lead in a case of sexual assault and murder. A BOOK -OF-THE-MONTH CLUB and QUALITY PAPERBACK BOOK CLUB selection.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A murdered boy, a runaway husband, a family spinning out of control--Suzanne Berne's A Crime in the Neighborhood is no ordinary coming-of-age novel. The narrator of this dark tale of 1970s suburbia is 10-year-old Marsha, who lives with her mother and older twin siblings in a suburb of Washington, D.C. In the spring of 1972, a young boy is molested, murdered, and then dumped behind a shopping mall. That the child was not particularly likeable is just one of Berne's deviations from the expected, as clear-eyed Marsha recalls the boy's many character flaws, even as she relates the details of an undeniably horrifying crime. Though murder is the most visible crime in Marsha's neighborhood, it is by no means the only one; when Marsha's father and aunt run off together, their enormous betrayal sends Marsha's mother into a tailspin and Marsha into a strange dalliance with Mr. Green, the neighbor next door.

A Crime in the Neighborhood is a deft and provocative first novel that turns many of the coming-of-age conventions on their heads. There is nothing sepia-tinted about Marsha's recollections of her childhood--the lives of 10-year-olds are mired in the mistakes of adults and the cruelties of other children. The pitiless eye Marsha brings to bear on the friends, family, and acquaintances of her youth makes A Crime in the Neighborhood an unusual and worthwhile read.

From School Library Journal

YA. In the summer of 1972, a suburban neighborhood of Washington, DC, is rocked by the molestation and murder of a 12-year-old boy. Marsha Eberhardt, then 10, begins to gather clues and information. Told by the adult Marsha, the story uncannily depicts the reasoning and thought processes of a vulnerable and confused girl. As the nation sifts through the Watergate disillusionment and Spring Hill tries to deal with the gruesome murder, Marsha is trying to accept the fact that her father has deserted the family for her mother's youngest sister. Struck by the observational powers of Sherlock Holmes, Marsha decides she will begin recording facts, observations, and clues about her family and neighborhood. When a new neighbor moves in, Marsha begins to record his every movement in her "Evidence" notebook. Anyone who has suffered through a family breakup, or knows someone who has, will relate to the youngster's thoughts and decisions. Dealing with an anger she cannot articulate, the girl becomes caught in a lie she cannot stop herself from telling. The adult Marsha considers the "what if" possibilities that may have prevented an incident that haunts her life, but the child was inexorably caught in the lies that took on a life of their own. A compelling book that will easily capture the imagination of YAs.?Carol DeAngelo, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1st edition (January 6, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565121651
• ISBN-13: 978-1565121652
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,221,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very good book, unfairly maligned, November 18, 1999

By 

Peter Blauner (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Crime in the Neighborhood (Paperback)

As another author, I would highly recommend Suzanne Berne's novel under any circumstances. A Crime in the Neighborhood is subtle, stylish, and memorable, without any self-conscious literary histrionics. I read it two years ago and still remember scenes and lines of dialogue vividly.

The fact that I knew Berne in college may have influenced me to pick up the book in the first place, but had nothing to do with keeping it in my hands. This is a page-turner for people who actually know how to read.

Which is why I'd also like to respond to some of the more suspiciously negative comments posted here. It seems perfectly obvious that several of these reviews have been written by the same person using different addresses. The dead give-away is that the word "sleeper" is misused over and over to denote boredom rather than to indicate an unexpected pleasure, as is the common usage. Whoever is doing this probably spends most of his or her time alone in a small dark room.

They should find better things to do with themselves there.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A SENSITIVE RENDERING OF THE HUMAN HEART, September 19, 2000

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Crime in the Neighborhood (Hardcover)

A contemporary poet asked, "What is our innocence, what is our guilt?" Echoes of that question reverberate throughout Suzanne Berne's deeply affecting first novel, A Crime In The Neighborhood.

In the hands of a less perceptive writer, the crime would be the rape/murder of a young boy in a peaceful suburb of Washington, D.C. during the summer of 1972. However, that is only one of the offenses recorded in copious notes kept by Marsha, the story's 10-year-old narrator.

Described as "one of those little girls who never said much but who was always there," Marsha is a reticent child, an inveterate observer of events that have shaken her once secure existence. Infrequently tolerated, often deprecated by her older brother and sister, twins, who shoot Marsha's questions back at her with acid mimicry, she turns to obsessively writing in her "Evidence notebook."

Lois, her mother, is one of four sisters raised by a widowed mother and grandmother who "took in sewing, did some typing" and ate corn flakes for dinner. The sisters, known as the Mayhew girls, were intensely loyal to one another. Out of necessity they wore underwear made out of old linen pillowcases, out of experiencethey deemed men lacking in character and strength.

Thus, a vital bond is severed when Lois learns that her husband is having an affair with her youngest sister, Ada. A wrenching betrayal, it is all the more painful because Lois believed in Ada "as one trusts someone fully comprehended," while her husband's infidelity was something "she had more or less expected."

The other two sisters soon arrive for a visit. If they cannot effect a reconciliation, they hope to at least understand. Their convergence only adds confusion to Marsha's topsy-turvy world: "Suddenly our house filled with raspy whispering female voices, a sibilant, maddening sound to a child who is afraid to know why her father drives off to work red-eyed every morning, while her mother spends her mornings vacuuming ferociously..."

As her personal drama is played against the background of the Watergate break-ins, Marsha wonders if the entire world has gone awry. Her father and Ada run away together, and she witnesses her brother shoplifting a carton of cigarettes from the mall drugstore. She duly notes infractions of both global magnitude and yard sale insignificance in her "Evidence notebook." "A kind of lawlessness infected everything," Berne writes, "... eight-year-old Luann Lauder decorated herself with toothpaste one Sunday morning and ran across the lawn in only her underpants." When a Mr. Green moves in next door, Marsha dismisses him as inconsequential. He is balding, perhaps 45. And, as she carefully pens while watching him build a barbecue pit, he has a bare-breasted maiden tatoo "just below the shoulder, where his bicep bunched."

As the torpid summer progresses, Marsha connects the young boy's murder, Watergate, and her father's departure. These events are opaque yet related in her mind. While present, her mother is remote, struggling to survive by selling magazine subscriptions. "My father left to find himself," we read, "and a child got lost." Perhaps the lost child is both the murdered boy and the bereft Marsha.

When the twins are visiting friends, Marsha searches their rooms. Finding a foil packeted condom under her brother's bed, she takes the "pale balloon" and drops it on the sidewalk in front of Mr. Green's house. She tells her mother that their new neighbor is disgusting, weird, that he "looks" at her.

Deftly moving the narrative to its inexorable conclusion, the author writes of Marsha, "Once I have lied, I've propelled myself into a story that has its own momentum. It's not that I convince myself that I'm telling the truth, it's that the truth becomes flexible."

As the story closes, Marsha is an adult. She reviews the events of that summer, wondering what makes people hurt each other, what makes them need to be cruel. "Like pictures from a flickering projector" scenes from the past appear to her. As she says, "...they are always there...they are what I have."

In A Crime In The Neighborhood what the reader has is a spare yet richly detailed exposition, a sensitive rendering of the human heart. With Marsha, the author has created a child we will not soon forget because Marsha may speak for the child in all of us.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling & wonderfully written, April 20, 2004

By 

A. Kelly "lorrainecooke" (Ireland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Crime in the Neighborhood (Paperback)

I am about 2/3 thru' this book and am already looking forward to reading "A Perfect Arrangement" also by this author.

Yes, there are faint echoes of Anne Tyler here, but I think that rests more in the setting & characters rather than the actual writing.

From the opening page, I found myself absorbed in the ensuing story, finding it deceptively accessible yet very well written.

As with another reviewer, I laughed until I choked at the description of the "sordid exploits" of Roy and Tiffany - the modified Barbies belonging to the 8 year old girl next door. Maybe I was a strange child, but together with my best friend, my dolls engaged in some strange activities too!

As I am reading, the book is moving into darker territory with allegations being made against an innocent(?) neighbour and I'm sensing that things will get very ugly indeed.

But still, it's a book that I hated being wrenched away from when my lunchbreak was over.