Unpunished

That man had been killed four times over. Or four ways at once. Or possibly five" is the intriguing conclusion of sleuth Jim Hunt to his lively wife and partner, Bess, early in Unpunished, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's first and only mystery novel. Gilman (1860-1935), best known for the classic feminist work The Yellow Wall-Paper, wrote this, her final novel, in 1929, but the manuscript languished in Radcliffe's Schlesinger Library until now. Gilman paints an evocative and anguished portrait of a household under the thumb of a ruthless blackmailer, all with powerful reasons for murder, and accomplishes a neat and fitting twist to the mystery at the end. While this novel is undoubtedly a mystery with a message about the abuses of patriarchal rule, the reader yearns for more from the Hunt Casebook and mourns the passing of this remarkable pen.

-Elizabeth Foxwell


Genre: Mystery