Dear Mystery Maven, I recently read a strange albeit
compelling mystery by a favorite author of mine - Ottessa Moshfegh’ s DEATH IN
HER HANDS. The novel seems in the beginning a
traditional mystery. A lonely
seventy-two-year-old widow, Vesta Gul, finds a neatly written note on the
ground near her home - an abandoned Girl Scout campsite. “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know
who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her body.” But there is no body, no evidence of a
murder. Vesta decides to solve the
“crime” and goes to her local library to find out how one goes about solving
mysteries. We soon learn more about
Vesta than we ever learn about Magda. At
first, she tells us in glowing terms about her husband Walter, an older
academic who has recently died. As the
novel progresses, we realize he was domineering, unfaithful, and cruel to
Vesta. With each presumption she makes
about Magda, we learn something of Vesta’s life. Her interactions with neighbors and even her
dog show us a woman of great curiosity and kindness, but also someone who has
lived an unexamined life. Throughout we
wonder how reliable a narrator Vesta is… but we always feel genuine affection
for her. Recommended!