Miss Lizzie [Hardcover]

Walter Satterthwait (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1989

When her neighbor is brutally hacked to death, the infamous Lizzie Borden becomes the prime suspect. In her search for the real killer, she uncovers not only the secrets that lie beneath the sleepy surface of a small seaside town, but finally the truth of what happened thirty years before, when her own parents were viciously murdered.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Using the notorious Lizzie Borden as one of its characters, this competently written novel is set in a Massachusetts seaside resort three decades after Lizzie has been acquitted of the axe-murder of her father and stepmother. Narrator Amanda Burton recalls the events of the summer when she was 13 and established a friendship with the infamous, ostracized Lizzie, who lived next door. When Amanda awakens one morning to discover that her own dreaded stepmother has been bludgeoned to death, it is to Lizzie that she turns. With the help of some colorful secondary characters--a dapper local lawyer, a well-meaning Pinkerton man, the one-armed police chief who holds a longstanding grudge--Amanda and Lizzie battle the thickets of small-town prejudice and innuendo to uncover the murderer, though Miss Lizzie herself remains everyone's favorite suspect. Though Satterthwait ( Wall of Glass ) is sometimes clumsy in his effort to evoke the atmosphere of the 1920s and its flapper culture, he delivers an entertaining amalgam of memoir-cum-murder mystery that rehabilitates (however improbably) the reputation of a woman who has become an enduring legend.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Walter Satterthwait lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 342 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (August 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312034008
• ISBN-13: 978-0312034009
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #218,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was raised by wolverines. The wolves wouldn't take me.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent until end..., then even better, March 23, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Miss Lizzie (Paperback)

A great, insightful read throughout, but Miss Lizzie ends as surprisingly and satisfyingly as any mystery I've read. Squeamish readers may be put off by the very grisly murders, but the novel works as a mystery, as a reconsideration of history and as a coming-of-age story.

I understand that original hardback versions of this are much prized and very hard to find, but the price of the paperback does seem curiously high.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars shocking ending to a compelling mystery, November 28, 2001

By 

Miss Ivonne (Louisville, KY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Miss Lizzie (Paperback)

An excellent fictionalized account of what happened to Lizzie Borden after the notorious trial. On one level, it's a bittersweet story of an unlikely friendship between a shunned old woman and a child, and, on another level, it's a compelling tale of a suspenseful summer. The sly ending will surprise you!

Whether you've read a lot about Lizzie Borden or nothing, you'll really like this finely crafted mystery.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing on many levels, February 25, 2005

By 

F. J. Harvey "Cricket ,country music and a go... (Birmingham England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Miss Lizzie (Hardcover)

The eponymous Miss Lizzie is non other than Lizzie Borden ,but this is not a novel about the events that propelled her into national notoriety ,the murders in Falls River ,Massachusetts ,for which she was tried and -controversially -acquitted .Rather it is set a generation later , in 1921 ,in a small coastal resort where she is now living .
The Burton family take up residence for the Summmer ,and the narrator of the novel is 13 year old Amanda Burton -bright ,inquisitive and lively of mind . Her father is frequently absent in Boston and the rest of the family consists of her older brother William , plus her stepmother Audrey .Audrey is disliked by the children and she in turn dislikes them neither parety being unduly concerned to conceal their opinions from each other .It is a loveless marriage on all sides .
Amanda is thrown much upon her own devices and befriends the reclusive and notorious Lizzie who teaches her card tricks ,her experise being the result of hours of solitary practice ,a bye product of loneliness and social ostracisation .
The ,one hot August day ,murder rears its ugly head .The stepmother is murdered -cut to pieces with an axe .The local police chief suspects Lizzie ,based on past experience ( he was an officer in Falls River during the Borden murders).There are other supects however .William and Audrey quarrellled violently on the day of the murder and he has gone missing ;nor does Mr Burton have a watertight alibi .The town has racial tensions and some would like to pin the crime on a local black tradesman seen in the area while others are persuaded it was the work of anarchists ( The book makes explicit the fear of anarchism and Bolshevism that wracked America after WW1 -alluding to the Sacco and Vanzetti case ,explicitly )
Employing a shrewd local lawyer ,and a Pinkerton agent Lizzie resolves to uncover the mystery as much for her own safety as anything else --she is pelted by the mob who hover ghoulishly outside her home )It builds to a climax whose grand guignol qualities are slightly at odds with the tone of the bulk of the book ./
The author shrewdly teases us with the possibility of her guilt both for the crime in the book and Falls River -similarities between the two are pointed out ( The death of a step-parent ;the modus operandi .the very hot weather ;the physical similarities of the dwellings in which the murders took place )
It is satisfying as a mystery ,has a convincing narrator and leaves the figure of Lizzie Borden what it should always be --a fascinating enigma .

Well written and satisfying on every level