Wednesday, March 17, 2010

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 52

Title: The Swimming Pool
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: Carl Bobertz

Yours for: $6


  • Uh ... I don't think she's "swimming."
  • Ross Macdonald had a novel called "The Drowning Pool" ... You should take titling lessons from him, Mary.
  • "... as the rare yellow octopus sucked the last ounce of life from Judith's brain."


  • Just one question: if she is safe "in the solitude of a padlocked bedroom," then how could "her private terror" spread "to all around her?" No One Is Around Her.

Page 123~

Only three of us went to the inquest the next day, Phil, Bill, and myself. For Judith was sick. She had worked herself into a fever, I suppose because she always hated the idea of death.

"I suppose." Well, thanks for the not-at-all medieval diagnosis, doc.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

4 comments:

Frank said...

"Robust" is definitely one adjective I've never seen in a review before. And though sometimes use of a sentence fragment is an effective writing technique, that "For Judith was sick" makes ME sick! It's just so unnecessary! It would have been perfectly fine as a prepositional phrase in the preceding sentence. Two diamonds out of Mary's crown for that!

Alix said...

The Swimming Pool: she's soaking in it!

Michael5000 said...

I'm having trouble with the earring and the eyebrow each looking as much like an eye as the eye does. At first I thought it was some crazy refraction thing, but even now I've figured it out I still get a kind of crazy cubist effect going.

Is the Cincinnati Enquirer distancing itself from the notion of Rinehart having "mastered" mystery, or does it just have to use quotes because she's female?

Tulse said...

After reading their blurb, the St. Louis Post Dispatch's title, as most awkward writer of grammatically tortured reviews, remains solidly intact.