The Innocent Mrs. Duff / The Blank Wall

by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Two novels of suspense in one volume.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Noir, Literary Fiction, Book Club

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (1889-1955) was born and brought up in New York and educated at Miss Whitcombe's and other schools for young ladies. In 1913 she married George Holding, a British diplomat. They had two daughters and lived in various South American countries, and then in Bermuda, where her husband was a government official. Elisabeth Sanxay Holding wrote six romantic novels in the 1920s but, after the stock market crash, turned to the more profitable genre of detective novels: from 1929-54 she wrote eighteen, as well as numerous short stories for magazines. In 1949 Raymond Chandler chose her as 'the best character and suspense writer (for consistent but not large production)', picking The Blank Wall (1947) as one of his favourites among her books; it was filmed as The Reckless Moment in 1949 (by Max Ophuls) and as The Deep End (with Tilda Swinton) in 2001. After her husband's retirement the Holdings lived in New York City. Her series character was Lieutenant Levy. Holding also wrote numerous short stories for popular magazines of the day.

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Jacob Duff has it all: A beautiful and much younger second wife, a young son, a nice suburban house a train ride from the office in New York City and a position in society he was born into that shapes him. Now one year into his second marriage, Jacob questions his decision to wed a woman he feels will never fit into his mold of the proper wife for a man of his social station, but he is cognizant that any decision he makes will face the stern scrutiny of his Aunt Lou, whose wealth Jacob will inherit upon her death. What to do....

My Review: A Canadian Book Warbler made me do it. She warbled so loudly about this book that, well, what's a mere mortal to do except give in, order one, and read the damned thing? And now, like Raymond Chandler before me, I am a fan and have several other Holding novels to read.

Boy do I owe that Canadian big for this. What a fun, exciting, and well-made psychological novel of suspense this is. I was completely riveted. Mr. Jacob Duff is our PoV character, and a more revolting, self-pitying, entitlement-driven piece of work is impossible to imagine. Mrs. Reggie Duff, young and beautiful but of a lower social class than Duff is, has a loving heart, a naive trusting nature, and a poor education. Jay Duff, scion of Duff's late wife and himself, is a typical boisterous boy and loves his stepmama Reggie a lot, while alternating between fear of and indifference to his father.

Not one of these folks will emerge from the novel unscathed. Duff the snob wants to divorce Reggie because she's not well-bred; his eccentric Aunt Lou won't hear of it, reminding Duff that he married Reggie for exactly that quality and now he needs to suck it up and deal. Whiny spoiled Duff begins to scheme, to cast about for ways and means to get his own stupid, selfish way.

In the course of doing exactly the wrong thing, Duff manages to kill, cause the death of, and/or ruin the lives of every single person in his way. He's despicable. And yet Holding writes this story, from his PoV remember!, in such a way that it's really unputdownable. I am delighted that I read this entertaining and suspenseful book.


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[Jeanette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is for The Innocent Mrs. Duff- I'll read The Blank Wall next and add it.

Rarely have I read a mystery/thriller/psych. piece like this that takes place on the home front during WWII. The timing was different. So was the style of the writing and the "eyes". It's thoughts narration of Mr. Duff throughout. And his advancing psychological and physical state reflects in these constant evaluations. But this is completely concurrent to the time of gas, food rationing and other wartime restrictions- just completely "at home" though, and without any "away" characters. That's extremely unusual in all of my reading.

It's got such an outlier approach to what is presently being published in associative genre too. VERY!

No swearing at all, for instance. And its all about social status, what the neighbors will think, self-pleasing and judgmental "place" in societal manners. As perceived by Mr. Duff for his own "happiness".

It's very slow and quite redundant, but at the end the frenetic tone and severe physical state voiced and described, is really effective in an sustained and unsettling mood. More than some zombies or vampires, or neighbors with a meth smoking daughter or similar dysfunction of novel present fare. So it jars.

I'm old enough to know that even in the 20 years after it was written, this bridges social gaps and names subject states of mind that were not common chit-chat talk or novel sense topics of the time.

But I'm sure the average reader of middle age and under in 2016 would find this stranger irking and slow and stark. Maybe even fairly boring.

Not I. It's strange. And truly a different taste of words and style to the present. I did enjoy it after a sluggish beginning.

Mrs. Duff IS extremely innocent. And not naive.

[Carla Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Innocent Mrs. Duff" is suspense melodrama more than mystery. It was dark in an interesting way; strong Highsmithian themes- except this is from 1946, some four years before Highsmith's debut with "strangers on a train." So that was interesting. But, truth be told, I was still rather bored.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The Innocent Mrs. Duff' - 5 stars
'The Blank Wall' - 4 stars

[Bill H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far, I've only read The Blank Wall (1947), Holding's most famous novel, twice filmed as The Reckless Moment and Deep End. A mother whose husband is in the Pacific during WWII has to deal with a blackmailer, who wants to sell her embarrassing letters from her daughter. He is found dead on her property and she becomes involved with his associates, all the time trying to keep what's going on from her family. The novel becomes a psychological portrait of a harassed middle class woman acting not always wisely, with the best intentions, and the effects of what becomes a hidden life on her character and the relationships with her family. Given the depiction of emotional swings in the protagonist, as a consequence of her involvement with crime, I can understand why some of Holding's contemporaries (including Raymond Chandler) valued her above Vera Caspary and Margaret Millar, even though both have darker plots.

(Later) The Innocent Mrs. Duff focuses on her husband who finds himself hard pressed to form a loving relationship with his younger, beautiful and loving wife. No particular explanation is given for his personality disability, except that his aunt says he's always been a loner. Alcoholism and a failed attempt to create a compromising situation for his wife backfires--because she really is good--and like Mrs. Holley in "The Blank Wall," he lies, conceals, and finds himself in increasingly desperate straits. I'm now reading her "Lady Killer" (1942) and begin to wonder whether she ever features a husband who is competent and loving.

[Mary Ronan Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This book crept up on me. I was doing laundry and noticed it on the shelf, picked it up and dusted it off, and started reading. I couldn't stop. I have no idea where I got it and I had never heard of the author before.

The Innocent Mrs Duff is a psychological novel of suspense, seen from the point of view of Jacob Duff, husband of the innocent Mrs Duff, a young woman half his age whom he has recently married. Since he was a child Duff has been easily bored and he has now become bored with his wife. Duff is an alcoholic, deceiving himself about how much he drinks and blaming his need for alcohol on his wife. He dismisses his chauffeur when he suspects him of having an affair with his wife, but has second thoughts when he considers he might be vulnerable to blackmail. He concocts stories and plans to protect himself and punish his wife but the alcohol makes everything increasingly difficult as he sinks into delusion.

A most unusual mystery. The murder doesn't occur until about page 165 in a book that is 200 pages long. And it's not at all the murder that you have been expecting. The last two pages are indescribable.

2011 No 7

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book I read because of a movie tie-in---The Blank Wall was the basis for the 2001 movie The Deep End, a psychological thriller featuring a wonderfully grim performance by Tilda Swinton as a mother caught up in a child's scandal while her husband is absent. The material is surprisingly fresh for a book written in the 1940s. This book led me to discover Persephone Books, a UK publisher that prints mostly "neglected" works by and about women. Too bad this book is still hard to find.

[Cerealflakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked both of these books. While the stories of each book were different, the themes were very similar. They were both upper crust people with servants who were worried about manners and how they appeared to those around them. They were quite concerned with keeping up appearances.

Holding's writing is quite good. With few words, she's able to set a scene and explain a lot about the characters. Both of these books would make for interesting movies, and I am surprised this hasn't been done. She's also very good at writing convincing dialogue.

I plan on reading more of Holding's books, unfortunately my library doesn't have any more. They will have to be hunted down in used bookstores.

[Bibliophile · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this suffered from my inflated expectations: having recently read an "appreciation" of the hitherto unknown to me Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, I thought she might be like a less well-known Vera Caspary (who's still my gold standard for women writers of noir in the 1940s! Laura the novel is even better than "Laura" the film and that's saying something.) But instead, I found these two novels kind of pedestrian, and they are supposedly Holding's best, so I'll pass on the rest.

[Elizabeth Sobieski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating portrayal of an alcoholic losing his battle with reality and resenting a divine young wife (The Innocent Mrs. Duff). Thrilling read, but with some forced plot holes!

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both of these stories are suspenseful and very well-written. The first story is not so much about Mrs. Duff as it is Mr. Duff; she doesn't even get to react very much. The second story is about a middle-aged mother of teens, but she is more of a reactor than actor.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the little books was an anthology of short stories such as he had never read, stories about men getting to other planets by rocket, stories of strange new races with new powers, stories of people projected into other eras, other dimensions. He was enthralled. - The Innocent Mrs. Duff (139)

Point of view is well handled, and the plot gets a bit incredible about halfway point. As much a story about alcoholism as crime. It's kind of midway between The Lost Weekend and Strangers on a Train. The application of the title hangs in the reader's mind through the story, as the book concentrates on Mr. Jacob Duff, the sole point of view character and Mrs. Regina Duff is prominent but secondary; there is also a first Mrs. Helen Duff, dead long before the novel begins. But the title never does get justified to my mind

Why is it 'housewife'? What would I call myself if I lived in a hotel? Nobody ever puts down just 'wife,'or even just 'mother.' If you haven't got a job, and you don't keep house, then you aren't anything apparently. I wish I was something else. I mean, besides keeping house, I wish I was a designer, for instance. The children would think a lot more of me, if I was a designer. Maybe Tom would, too.
No! Tom likes me the way I am. Only, if I could be even a little different when he comes back? I don't mean bustling off to an office every morning. He wouldn't like that. But if I could go to an office or a store now and then, meet outside people. Have interesting things to tell at dinner. Not be - just me, year after year ... - The Blank Wall (115)

This could have been an iconic work of domestic suspense. The intertwining of everyday details of housekeeping with danger and criminality verges on the comic at times but precisely defines the extremes the genre unites. The heroine, Lucia Holley, mother of two teenagers whose husband Tom has been in the Pacific theater for the past three years, returns from disposing of an inconvenient corpse to discuss the day's grocery shopping with her cook. Later she delays a meeting with a blackmailer to make her family's beds. The clue which ties her to a crime scene is a lost shopping list; an inquiring policeman's seemingly idle questions about cheese brands and the effectiveness of a certain cleaning product are actually ploys for soliciting incriminating statements.

The novel also raises, as the quote above demonstrates, questions of a woman's identity in society, generally, if not always specifically addressed, a feature of this genre's subtext. In facing the extreme situations she encounters, Lucia discovers in herself an unsuspected competence and self-assurance.

The novel has a few of the kinds of credulity-straining incidents common to thrillers: Lucia's unreflective sang-froid in taking legally compromising steps and her unwillingness to let either her 17 year old daughter or widowed father be even aware of the consequences of their actions let alone bear the responsibility for them. But the fatal problem with this novel lies the other character that is at its heart, Martin Donnelly.

Donnelly is one of the small gang of pornographers and blackmailers who Lucia has to deal with as a result of her daughter's indiscretion. Though he originally appears to deliver the gang's blackmail demands, he soon becomes a sort of fairy godfather figure, connecting Lucia to a reliable laundry service after he overhears her problems with her present provider and arranging generous delivery of free meats from black market sources, where he is evidently an influential macher.

In his conversations with Lucia, we learn Donnelly's early biography - from an impoverished Irish childhood to world travels, first with the merchant marine and later as a fairly wealthy tourist. His later behavior also shows him to be capable of both lethal violence and irrational and self-defeating superstitious beliefs. It is obvious that he is in love with Lucia, but it seems to be the chaste and undemanding courtly love of chivalric Romance, totally unselfish and totally unbelievable in the novel's context. It is contrasted at one point with another black market operator Lucia encounters on the train - a man who makes very clear the type of payment he expects for the merchandise he can provide.

Perhaps Donnelly is intended as, in the words of Raymond Chandler (whose praise of Holding in a letter to his British publisher is used as a cover blurb), a man of the mean streets, “who is not himself mean… a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it.” But I, at least, didn’t buy it; I think he would have to be a more central character, sharing the novel's POV with Lucia, for this characterization to work.

[Dick Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

The following review my contain what some would consider to be spoilers, so do not read on if you plan to read the book and want to be surprised. The title is somewhat misleading, in that the book is more about Mr. Duff than his wife. The first part of the book was not very enjoyable for me to read, because Mr. Duff is such a despicable character that he seems more a caricature than a real human being. He finds reasons to despise his wife Reggie that are so absurd that they seem more to be attributes than faults. Mr. Duff is totally self-absorbed, and makes excuses to justify his obnoxious behavior toward Reggie and toward many other people. He thinks Reggie is having an affair with Nolan, the chauffer. When than proves to be a false suspicion, he then shifts his attention to a Capt. Ferris, who turns out to be the half-brother of Miss Castle, his secretary. He then becomes a friend and co-conspirator with Nolan in an attempt to catch Ferris with Reggie. But Nolan double-crosses him and kills Ferris and makes it looks as if Duff did it. The police take Duff into custody. Even though it looks as if Duff will get off easily (because he actually did not commit a crime), he is so humiliated (and probably suffering from depression) that he commits suicide. Because Duff is such a jerk, the reader is tempted to say at this point, “good riddance.” The latter part of the book was more enjoyable to me than the first, because by this time I was used to Duff’s woodsy ways and was interested in how the story would be resolved. I rate this a 6 out of 10, the same rating I gave The Blank Wall, the previous book by Ms. Holding that I read.

[Stven · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've yet to read The Blank Wall, but The Innocent Mrs. Duff is good enough that I will. This peculiar story from the point of view of a man going off the deep end was nicely written and suitably lurid. I'd never heard of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, but she has a strong narrative style and it's not difficult to see why her books would have been bestsellers.

[Darrell Kastin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was okay, but after reading everything by Chandler he's ruined me for a lot of fiction written during that era. It's not fair to compare, but although it was an enjoyable read, everything seems a bit pale after Chandler.

[Kathleen Meehan Lorenzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two good stories in one - the edition I read even had one book on the flip side of the other - just like those books I had when I was a kid!

These novels (novellas?) were recommended on the Seattle Public Library blog, Shelf Talk, as great psychological thrillers. They did not disappoint!

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hello, brilliant interior monologues! Thanks to Sarah Weinman (Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives) for reviving my favorite genre ever. If you like this, also try Charlotte Armstrong and Margaret Millar.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb! These novels must be given a new generation of readers a thrill. Hopefull Holding's increased presence in print will be acknowledged on a greater level of American literature.

[Leslie · Rating 2 out of 5]

clever

[CJ - It's only a Paper Moon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favorite was The Blank Wall.

[Rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

easy read

two books in one

[Valerie]

The Innocent Mrs. Duff: Holding always keeps you guessing, and get inside her characters' heads like few others.

The Blank Wall: A little different, since it's the first of her books I've read from a woman's POV.