Mr. White's Confession: A Novel - Softcover

Clark, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312204264 ISBN 13: 9780312204266

Publisher: Picador, 1999

Synopsis

St. Paul, Minnesota, 1939. The body of a beautiful dime-a-dance girl is found on a hillside, and Police Lieutenant Wesley Horner, struggling and alone after his wife's recent death, heads the investigation into her murder. His chief suspect is Herbert White, an eccentric recluse and hobby photographer who spends his days recording his life in detailed journal entries and scrapbooks. In Mr. White's Confession, Robert Clark illuminates the complex relationships between truth and fiction, past and present, faith and memory.  Mr. White's Confession is the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Best Novel.

About this title

Review:

In Robert Clark's second novel, Mr. White's Confession, two men grope through real and metaphysical mysteries in post-depression Minnesota. A pair of girls, taxi dancers at a local dance hall, have been murdered. It seems obvious to everyone involved that the killer is Herbert White, a quiet eccentric with a taste for glamour photography--particularly after portraits of the dead women are found in his apartment. Yet police Lieutenant Wesley Horner finds himself obsessed with the oddities of the case, starting with the fact that the suspect is afflicted with a faulty memory. Literally unable to recall anything but the distant past (and intermittent patches of the present), White cannot confess to the murders. Did he in fact commit the crime, or is he merely a convenient scapegoat? Agonizing over these questions, Horner also begins to ponder the role that memory plays in understanding the past--and the present.

Part of the narrative consists of Herbert White's journal, and this is the best part of Mr. White's Confession. Here Clark creates a voice that is both innocent and formal and, most of all, blind to its own desires. Recalling a visit by Ruby Fahey, one of the eventual victims, the photographer writes: "She went back to my bedroom to change, and I must say I felt a huge sort of breathlessness at the idea that she was in my room shedding and then donning her garments, rather as if some mystery of great enormity were taking place right here in my humble quarters!" Horner's half of the narrative, alas, is weighted down by tired lyricism, and populated by a hard-boiled cast straight out of Raymond Chandler. The result is a gripping mystery with an anticlimactic ending--less a philosophical resolution than the tail of a shaggy-dog story. --Emily Hall

From the Publisher:

PNBA Book Award for Fiction/Edgar Award Winner for Best Novel

"As thrilling as it is unnerving....Could have been written by Dashiell Hammett or James Crumley--at their best." --Greil Marcus, Esquire

"A pulsing tale of redemption and original goodness." --Pico Iyer, Time

"Strong, brooding...Clark's most striking achievement is Herbert's ambiguity, making it appear at once vulnerable and threatening." --Dan Cryer, Newsday

"Complex...intriguing...a fascinating and timely journey into the American psyche." --Barbara Lloyd McMichael, Seattle Times

"A novel of substance...reveals the subtlety of [Robert Clark's] artistry and the profundity of his vision." --Merle Rubin, The Wall Street Journal

"The long ruminations of Mr. White...give the book its intensity and mystery." --The New Yorker

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0312204264
• ISBN 13: 9780312204266
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 360