Margaret Millar’s book A Stranger in My Grave is a reprint from the 1950s when the author was well known as a writer of psychological thrillers. This book came to me as part of my 2024 Advent Calendar of Books (see here for my initial impression) and introduced me to an author that I had heard about but never read. I am enjoying a lot of these reprints but this one was slightly unusual in that the author and the setting of the book are American.
Daisy is a housewife in suburban America who is suffering from a recurring dream. As she sleeps she sees a cemetery where there is a gravestone bearing her own name and a date of death four years in the past. Her husband urges her to forget this but she hires an investigator to find out what happened on that date and what secret she may have forgotten. Daisy is obviously suffering from traumatic amnesia and she needs to find out what happened for her own peace of mind.
This is a gloriously twisty thriller, despite being such a short book, and the investigation and the solution to the mystery are both worthy of such an excellent beginning and clever idea. This is a book of its time but not one where the author is happy about the world in which Daisy lives. The book is critical of racism, attitudes to mental illness and what society thinks is the role of women which, I think, makes it particularly interesting.
Definitely a book I recommend.
Anne Is Reading 