The Queen of America

by Russell H. Greenan

Elle a seize ans. Elle est belle, jeune et charmante. Blanche de neige, elle arrive de nulle part et a besoin d'un toit ; on lui donnerai le Bon Dieu sans confession. Ig, avec son bon cœur, l'invite chez une amie. Elle y reste. On ne sait rien d'elle. Personne ne se méfie. Personne n'a vu la baïonnette cachée au fond de son sac.

Genres: Horror

215 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Greenan grew up in the Bronx, had a tour of duty in the US Navy, and after attending Long Island University on the G.I. Bill, went to live in Boston in the early 1950s. For several years he worked as a traveling salesman selling industrial machine parts in remote corners of New England. His savings enabled him to travel to Nice, France where he stayed for a year to write. On his return to Boston he married Flora Bratko and opened an antique shop in Harvard Square. The business was short-lived but the experience provided an abundance of material for his subsequent career as a writer. In 1966, by then aged 40, he left his job as a ball bearing sales manager and traveled with his wife and three children to return to Nice with the intention of taking a year to finish a novel. This work was eventually published by Random House in 1968 titled It Happened in Boston? to significant acclaim.

Greenan maintained his career as an author by dividing his time between Europe and the U.S.A. and concentrating exclusively on writing novel-length works. To date ten novels by Russell H. Greenan have been published in the U.S.A. and France. Over 40 different editions of these novels have appeared in five languages.

Reviews

[oddo · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not entirely the psycho slasher the cover and tagline promises, Russell H. Greenan's colorful thriller, The Queen of America, is still a fantastic tale—something of a parable—telling of sophisticated dysfunction set in Cambridge, MA with a sixteen-year-old motorcycle-riding hippie murderess as its focal point. Incredible cast of characters; everything from a teenage voyeur, his father, a crazed and reclusive scholar, to a young mathematical prodigy, an amateur pornographer enchanted by voodoo, and a drug dealing idealist.

[Anthony Hains · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just reread a novel I last read over 40 years ago. The Queen of America by Russell H. Greenan was published in 1972 and was marketed as a horror story at the time. When I read it back then, I enjoyed the novel for its edgy plot and memorable characters. The fact that I recalled it fondly says a lot about the story line and characters within. The protagonist is fourteen-year-old Ignacio (Ig) Never who lives with his father in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dad is a famous Spanish historian who is becoming increasingly anxious and paranoid—which has prompted him to seclude himself in his bedroom. He only communicates to his son by intercom and hand-written notes. Which no adult supervision, Ig roams Harvard Square and surrounding coffee shops and student hangouts with his dog Ripper. He befriends an assorted mix of adolescents and young adults (a 15-year-old mathematics genius attending MIT, an 18-year-old movie porn director, a 19-year-old drug dealer, and a 19-year-old furniture maker). Into this mix appears 16-year-old Betsy, who walks into the coffee house frequented by the characters after riding through a snowstorm on a motorcycle. She’s beautiful with blonde hair and a delightful personality. She’s also a serial killer who loves slashing to death anyone who insults her, regardless of how minor the insult was.
I won’t go any further in my discussion of the plot. By any stretch of the imagination, The Queen of America would not cut it as a horror story in today’s market. There’s no unique twist to the murders or to the killer. Nonetheless, the story was as enjoyable as I remembered it. The characters are great and pretty unique. I cared about them and wondered what the heck was going to happen to them (and the outcomes for many of them are unexpected). Boston circa 1970 is described in a way that is now almost nostalgic—and which probably wasn’t intentional at the time. The technology and dialog are almost quaint which add to the book’s charm. The scenes of horror, while few and far between, are jolting and gory and were probably brutal at the time of publication. They still had the effect for me, most likely due to the rich cast of characters for whom I cared a great deal.

[🐴 🍖]

nice! i was real hard on keepers but i'm thinking me and ol russ just needed a little time apart. the strands here (whiz kid tinkering w/ electronic bugs; amateur pornographer believes he's under a voodoo curse; girl on motorbike has dark secret; paranoid spaniard owes a mysterious debt) never 100% coalesce but they're engaging enuf that this reader was unperturbed. jury's still out on the ending which was so straightforward that its twistlessness was almost a twist in itself. q for the group: did anybody else hear ig's dad's voice as brak's dad from the brak show?

[Jill Flanagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I barely remember this book but was just thinking of the disturbing ending with reverence, a bizzare little known gem

[Jessie Kenyon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Creepy! Unexpected ending