Customer Reviews

House of Cards: A Novel of Suspense

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The Tarot, the Algerian war of independence and the Parisianvie boheme of the 1960s come together in a riveting tale ofintrigue. Stanley Ellin is known for his masterful ability to capture the tensions that exist between the members of a large extended family (see Very Old Money). But in House of Cards, he goes further, meshing the story of the aristocratic de Villemont family with a portrait of the upheavals in French society as the country's overseas empire in Africa and Asia crumble. The tale is told through the eyes of Reno Davis, a longtime Paris resident, former prizefighter and sometime nightclub bouncer who becomes a tutor to young Paul de Villemont. The boy's widowed mother clings to her son. Is she neurotic? Lethal? Certainly, the previous tutor died violently and suddenly. Suddenly, Davis is plunged into a world where reality is a nebulous concept. Who is Dr. Hubert Morillon and what is his hold on Anne de Villemont? Why is she so intent on escaping her Parisian existence? And why is Anne's brother-in-law so keen to introduce Reno to a publisher? Is it simply an effort to encourage his writing -- or a way to keep Reno's growing suspicions of the household in check? In contrast to some of Mr. Ellin's other writings, which rely principally on their characters for drama, House of Cards concludes with a compelling race across France and into Italy as Reno finally begins assembling pieces of the puzzle in order to regain control of his own destiny. As ever, Mr. Ellin emerges as a gifted raconteur. A vivid portrait of his characters emerges gradually, until the reader is unable to put down the book without knowing their real identies and motivations -- and their fates. A tour de force.

I picked up this book at a library sale knowing little about Stanley Ellin. The librarian told me that he is a Grand Master, and that was enough for me! So I had the interesting experience of picking up a book by a well-regarded writer I knew little about, and when I turned the first page I had no idea what to expect, as I usually don't read dust jackets for fear of them giving too much away.

Mr. Ellin was a fine writer. I'd put him (or at least this book) in the Hemingwayesque tradition of the rugged individual traveling through Europe rather aimlessly. The book's narrator and hero, Reno Davis, even shares one of Hemingway's passions: he is a boxer, though a failed one, passing the time in Paris and serving as a nightclub bouncer. Out of the blue, a wealthy and influential family invites Reno to live with them to serve as tutor to a frail ten-year-old boy, Paul. The money's great, so Reno signs on for the job and finds himself caught in the intrigue of the de Villemont family.

This set-up is a little hard to swallow - why would a noble family ask a boxer to tutor their much-indulged child? But I went along with it because the circumstances that Ellin sets up are intriguing indeed. The book is set following Algeria's bloody independence from France, and the politics involved in that struggle play a large part in this book. It was interesting to be taken back in time, four decades or so, to see the end of European colonialism in North Africa and ponder its lingering after-effects today (the Arab Spring?). However, I did feel that the book lost steam about halfway through, and the protagonist took on a "superhero" quality that I did not find believable.

So, I ultimately left the book with mixed feelings. I think I'll look for more by Ellin, because he certainly knows how to write and create characters. But HOUSE OF CARDS fell for me into the category of a book that I wanted to like more than I actually did.

An unlikely tutor, a spoiled child, a neurotic mother and an international plot to destroy civilization as we know it make a Hitchcock homage that's hard to put down. I have not seen the movie, but this has inspired me to look for the short stories by this award winning writer.