Customer Reviews

An eye for an eye: a novel of suspense.

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Leigh Brackett (1915-1978) is best known for her science fiction (chiefly the "space opera" variety) and for her movie screenplays, including THE BIG SLEEP (1946), RIO BRAVO (1958), and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1979, released after her death). She also wrote a handful of mystery novels, of which AN EYE FOR AN EYE (1957) is one.

AN EYE FOR AN EYE has three main problems, one affecting our sense of its unity, another affecting our feelings about its characters, and the remaining one affecting our overall satisfaction with the ending. First, Brackett has divided the focus of her story, so that it shifts round and round and round among five characters--the kidnapper (a truck driver, whose wife is divorcing him), the kidnapper's wife, the husband of the victim (a lawyer who helped the truck driver's wife file for her divorce), the lawyer's wife (the kidnap victim), and the main police investigator (a school friend of the lawyer)--without selecting any clear protagonist as a center of attention. Second, the details of the story fail to generate any real empathy for any of the characters, especially the victim and her husband; ironically, the closest we come to caring about any character is if we feel some lukewarm pity for the ignorant, drunken, angry truck driver, who is hoping to get his wife back. Finally, the story unfolds without any major plot twists or surprises, and the ending does not leave us with a sense that the author has tried very hard.

With the title AN EYE FOR AN EYE deriving from a biblical quotation, readers probably would expect one or even two special features in this mystery book that largely focuses on attempts to locate and rescue a kidnapped woman. The first would be "justice" of some sort, whether sought by the kidnapper or sought by the would-be rescuers. A second might be some sort of play on words that is somehow central to the plot (such as "eye" in part referring to a private eye or detective). Unfortunately, neither is the case.