A Helping Hand, by Celia Dale. Pub 1966

I came to this book via the Backlisted podcast, and then found this new release from 2022 with a terrific introduction. Dale specializes in creeping suburban horror, nothing grisly but still ghastly. This novel was well written, gripping, and surprising, and like a good thriller makes you want to look through partly covered eyes at the slowly unfolding demise of a helpless victim.

We meet Josh and Maisie Evans as they are dealing with the death of their lodger, the elderly Flo. In the aftermath of that, they take a holiday in Italy where they meet the elderly Cynthia Fingal and her niece Lena, and thus spend their Italian idyll luring the old woman into their web. When they return to London, Cynthia becomes their new lodger and their wicked plan is slowly revealed to the reader. Then, just when you think it’s over, a surprising twist and the jaw-dropping conclusion.

This book was wonderful. The writing feels both ordinary and sublime. Dale manages to present the situations and the “care” given by the Evanses as simultaneously sincere and sinister. They are able to lie and tell the truth at the same time, in ways that make the reader feel almost complicit in their duplicity. The ending was jaw-dropping, and very clever. It’s not a mystery that the reader could have figured out, but once revealed, many other strange elements make sense.

I was reminded of the subtly thrilling story in Killing Stella, with its ordinary situations masking an extraordinary and horrible truth, and of Address Unknown, with its epistolary surprises and perfect comeuppance. In each of these, gradually and then suddenly, the true black heart of the story becomes known.

I will definitely look for future opportunities to explore Dale’s novels and stories.

Fate: little book library as I’m unlikely to read it again.

1 – murder
8 – female author
25 – new author to me