Customer Reviews

The suspect

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a wonderful, near perfect crime novel: a beautifully crafted story about murder, and evil that is perhaps worse than murder. The characters are all memorable. You will not find a more sympathetic murderer in all of literature. The author expertly leads you to a conclusion that is both satisfying and disturbing. Top notch, this ranks among my favorite mystery novels. A must read.

I came across the third book in this mystery series at a used book sale but wanted to read all of them in order in case they turned out to be good. I'm glad I did. This book is not so much a murder mystery as it is a character study of individuals touched by murder: the perpetrator, his friend, and the cop intent on solving the crime. All are involved in an uneasy relationship and Wright does a wonderful job of conveying the emotions and thoughts of all of them as they lead themselves to the inevitable discovery of why the murder happened.

I've started the second book and it is equally as absorbing. Wright is a wonderful storyteller.

A friend just recently introduced me to RCMP Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg and the lovely librarian Cassandra Mitchell. I love mysteries so I was disappointed when in the first chapter I learned the identity of the murderer. But the characters are so well crafted that I was hooked. The setting on the sunshine coast of Canada is unique. The plot is not so much of a 'who done it' but rather a 'why'. The motive is doled out a crumb at a time. This first book in the series has me hunting for the others.

After five years of tearing my way through all sorts of detective fiction and variously nuanced "policers," I discovered L. R. Wright's novel sitting on a short shelf in Powell's Books here in Portland, Oregon. The conscientious staff had put together a small set of Edgar Award winners, almost all in paperback -- and I'd say half of them displayed a thin layer of dust. Looking for an author new to me, I threw this used (nicely discounted) title into my growing pile. What the heck, right? Just a few bucks ... couldn't hurt. And so began a real appreciation for "The Suspect." If you are an ardent fan of Rankin, Mankell, Ellroy, MacDonald, Bruen, and others in the genre who can write realistic characters, those who you find yourself compelled to follow to a cathartic conclusion or personal epiphany of sorts ... then you will truly enjoy this well-told tale by Ms. Wright. Hopefully, there are more in this series (as hailed by previous reviewers above) that will keep me enthralled. As we fans of this fiction know, not all titles have the content and genuine quality to sustain us to that final page. This one does. Ha-lay-loo-yaaaaaaaaa.

I credit my mother for turning me into a reader. Even when we didn't have a lot of money for things, and she was working multiple jobs, she always made sure that we had plenty of books around. Over 30 years later we still exchange and recommend books with one another. A large chunk of wrapped presents between us have the familiar heft and density of a nice hard-backed novel, the two ridges that wrap around from the spine clearly felt. And it doesn't spoil the fun knowing that a book is inside; the thrill is discovering which book it is.

This holiday my mother gave me L.R. Wright's The Suspect. Despite the mad success that Wright has had with her series of mystery novels, this was to be my first one. And it was a perfect place to start. The Suspect was Wright's first stab at mystery after a successful career writing literary fiction. And her first attempt was enough to win the Edgar award for best novel that year. She followed this brilliant debut up with eight more critically-acclaimed novels featuring detective Karl Alberg, the last one written in 1998.

The writing quality in The Suspect reminded me a lot of Tana French's skill. In my review of her book In the Woods, I commented on the luck that mystery writers had in winning over someone who could obviously be winning Pulitzers instead of Edgars. I think our genre won a major coup, then, when L.R. Wright experimented with mystery and decided to stick around. Her skill at crafting ideas out of words is so beautiful and flawless that the genius of it washes over you instead of bowling you over. Her pages are like beautiful gardens that serve as a quiet backdrop, completely unobtrusive; but if you choose to stoop and look closer, there are many layers and levels of brilliance to behold.

Proof of this skill is the banal plot of The Suspect-made riveting. This is the story of George Wilcox killing a man. George is an 80-year-old man living on the "Sunshine Coast" of British Columbia. His wife recently passed away, leaving him with no family save a distant daughter. His closest friend is the local librarian, who he sees several times a week as he exchanges his reads. These books and his gardening are just about all that George has left in the world. His life is a steady and slow march towards the inevitable.

And then he kills one of his neighbors in a rage.

What follows is the hauntingly realistic story of three people spiraling around each other and this murder. George is in a stupor, making the mistakes typical of criminals in a rush to hide evidence, vacillating between guilt and rationalization, working tirelessly to not be caught but dying to confess to someone. Where most authors take us into the brain of a mad serial-killer, Wright's genius is to show us the far more complex thoughts and emotions of one of us caught in this maddening web. It is overwhelmingly human and real and more powerful as a result.

The second person caught up in these events is the Mounty Karl Alberg. Divorced father of two, Karl is great at his job and takes much pleasure and pride in it. The pace of big-city cases, however, was rough on his family and his psyche; when given the chance he eagerly took a post at the quiet seaside town of Sechelt. He enjoys the pace of working a few B&E's and various small capers but the rest threatens to turn to boredom. Karl, feeling restless and emotionally recuperated, turns to the newspaper ads to find a companion in a cursedly small dating-pool.

He finds Cassandra Mitchell, George's librarian friend. Cassandra's longtime friendship with George and tenuous courtship with Karl put her in the middle of an investigation full of suspicion and weak circumstantial evidence. Her devotion to George is enough to ignore signs of guilt, even to forgive the old man if he did do it. Her loneliness as a middle-aged woman in a small town makes her eager to fall for Karl, but the strain of having her best friend investigated may be too much for her to bear.

This tight tension is wrapped in meloncholly for the duration of the novel. The pace of the book is soft and hushed, perfect for the seaside setting, for the whispering library, for the muffled sounds of gardening. It is an intensely introspective book, absolutely perfect for the big screen where three characters can fill our heart to bursting and conflict our brains with preferred outcomes, culminating in a final explosion of thought and emotion. Especially emotion.

I cried, hard, at the end of the book. Big movie-theater tears. I wanted George caught for justice and to appease Karl's need for closure. But I didn't see the point of putting one old man in jail for killing another old man-and what does this tell me? Why should I care when the wrong-doer's friend is upset at the prospect of a law upheld? How could this possibly end with my satisfaction when I am torn about what is right and what is wrong? And beyond this confusion of justice, I also cried because of the tender and real relationship that Cassandra and Karl work clumsily on. And because Karl Alberg comes across as a lovable man that you wish the best for, but wonder if it is too late for him to have the happiness he deserves.

With all of these emotional conflicts, The Suspect would make a perfect film. They have tried to get it together once, but it fell through. Wright's fans are extremely devoted and patient and they hold out hope that this book will be adapted one day. I just hope they do it justice.

Sadly, L.R. Wright will not see this happen. The beloved author died in 2001 from breast cancer. But her books are still with us, and there are more Karl Alberg stories to read. I hope you guys pick this one up sometime and see what her fans rave about. It is a marvelous change in pace from other books we read which allows it to impart an entirely original set of emotions and conflicts. Drained and satisfied, I closed The Suspect with the feeling that only the best novels give me... the desire to give the gift of reading it to someone else.

We know right away who the murderer is. 80-year-old George Wilcox bashes 85-year-old Carlyle Burke over the head with a shell casing. The interest is all in the characters, and why George did it - and how anyone will ever prove George did it.

The setting is exotic, to me at least: Canada's Sunshine Coast. It's difficult of access and sparsely populated except in tourist season. It's a gardener's paradise because of the sunshine.

Gardening has made George exceptionally strong for an 80 year old.

The cop in charge of the case is a Mountie, Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg. He's forty-something, divorced, and tentatively easing into a relationship with the local librarian. Awkwardly enough, she's a good friend of George's.

Even Sergeant Alberg likes George, but Mounties have to get their man.

As Alberg digs into the case, unsavory secrets emerge. Yet this civilized murder mystery makes curiously pleasant reading, with no gratuitous sex or violence and no unbearable suspense. Be prepared to like everyone but the victim.

i have been reading for about 25 years now and have somewhat recently been making the attempt to become a fan of the mystery genre. mystery books always seemed too dot to dot in their formula, too lacking in strong character development for my tastes. this one, by l r wright, is the sort of thing that could win me over to the genre. not a whodunnit (the murderer is revealed right at the start), but a whydunnit? this is a strong, compulsively readable crime novel, with well drawn characters and none of the hackneyed cliche that hinders so much of this type of fiction. the authors prose is uncluttered, clear clean and smooth to read. though it won the prestigious edgar award for best novel in 1985, i'm afraid this is now a pretty obscure work, so my words may be like a tree falling in the forest with nobody to hear. be that as it may, as i fall i would like to shout out: "go on and read this book. it's very good entertainment."

Quite well written, particularly for a mystery. The characters are finely wrought and the setting, along the sunshine coast of BC, beautifully portrayed. This mystery, part of a series of mysteries of foreign lands where place plays a role, follows the days after George, an 80 year old, kills his neighbor Carlyle. At first, he plans on confessing but eventually he decides to just wait and see.

Meanwhile, the police as represented by ARgyle, the local Sergeant, is dating Cassandra, the local librarian, and George's closest friend. Argyle starts to discover that George did it, but in the process also figures out why (Carlyle abused George's sister, Carlyle's wife) and starts to appreciate the kind of man George is, he becomes less and less certain that he wants to go after him.

There are some weaknesses in the plotting--George's sister dies in a car accident, just like George's parents (after both the sister and mom had been badly abused); maybe we don't learn quite enough about Carlyle (although this is arguable because his character development is done so artfully that you almost aren't sure about it).

Certainly not your traditional mystery since you already know who did it from the get go. I guess the mystery, although this isn't in question either, really, is why."

"The Suspect" is an extraordinary 25-year old mystery novel reprinted by Felony & Mayhem Publishers who know how to rescue forgotten classics. The Edgar Prize winner for 1986, this is the story of the killing of an elderly man living on the "Sunshine Coast" of southern British Columbia. The killer is identified in the first few pages of the story--in fact the reader is a witness to the crime and all that follows as the police try to find motive and killer. The principal investigator is Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg, who has his own interesting personal background. While tracking the killer, Alberg is trying to put his own life back together and in doing so, meets Cassandra the local librarian who has her own issues plus a direct link to the murderer.

Although this is definitely a crime novel, it's much more the story of some interesting and basically very decent people living in a very small but special, out-of-the-way place sorting through the problems of life. The most fascinating character of all, not surprisingly, is the killer himself, a man who came from a truly wretched family background but who overcame that trauma and has enjoyed a satisfying professional life and long and loving marriage. Nevertheless, his life has also been haunted by his early family background and, in particular, the fate of his beloved sister who makes a disastrous choice in her own marriage.

Author L.R. Wright has wonderful insights into the human condition and how it affects relationships and behavior. Equally fine is the author's skill in evoking the geography and sense of place that are as much a part of the story as the characters themselves. Despite the early identification of the killer, the author cleverly constructs plenty of tension throughout by focusing his tale on discovery of the killer's identity by the police and whether, in fact, it would actually be true justice.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable novel that was fully deserving of the Edgar Award. Highly recommended.

I found this book, just by searching mysteries and since it was an Edgar award winner I tried it. I really liked it and the style is very interesting. I recently discoved the author died in 2001 which explains why getting ahold of some of her books is difficult. I would definitely recommend.