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A review by neven
The Fiend by Margaret Millar
4.0
It’s always unsettling to be reading a sympathetic portrayal of a pedophile, even in a book written by a woman, in the 1960s, and without too much naive hand-waving around how serious a subject it is. While this is not a gratuitous work—nothing graphic really happens—the dark nature of the subject is there.
This is also a page-turning mystery by a master of the form, and the juxtaposition between the earnest and realistic psychology and the plot machinations is sometimes a little unsavory. Without spoiling the ending, and with the understanding that fiction doesn’t have to mirror the realities and statistics of the real world, I can’t help feeling that it’s a little disingenuous to resolve the story of a potential child predator with a shock twist.
Still, it’s respectable that the book understands how its protagonist’s disease is not something that just gets cured (and that’s on top of even taking the sympathetic approach, in the 1960s, no less). It’s a well done book, if uncomfortable to read and discuss.
This is also a page-turning mystery by a master of the form, and the juxtaposition between the earnest and realistic psychology and the plot machinations is sometimes a little unsavory. Without spoiling the ending, and with the understanding that fiction doesn’t have to mirror the realities and statistics of the real world, I can’t help feeling that it’s a little disingenuous to resolve the story of a potential child predator with a shock twist.
Still, it’s respectable that the book understands how its protagonist’s disease is not something that just gets cured (and that’s on top of even taking the sympathetic approach, in the 1960s, no less). It’s a well done book, if uncomfortable to read and discuss.