Bury Me Deep

April 27, 2009
Edgar-winner Abbott (Queenpin
) explores gender inequality and its sometimes tragic results in her well-crafted fourth crime novel, inspired by the true story of Winnie Ruth Judd (aka the “Trunk Murderess”). In 1931, Marion Seeley, a young woman whose husband has gone abroad on undisclosed business, secures a clerical job at the Werden Clinic in the capital of an unnamed Midwest state. From a veteran nurse, Louise Mercer, Marion learns that doctors have been misbehaving with the clinic's nursing staff. Marion becomes involved with Joe Lanigan, a close friend of the doctors and a reliable source of entertainment and money for the often cash-strapped nurses. When Louise and Ginny Hoyt, Louise's roommate, confront Marion about her relationship to Joe, the women get into a heated argument that leads to murder and a startling predicament for Marion. Readers should be prepared for a lot of backstory before the pace picks up and hurtles to a shocking ending.

Starred review from May 15, 2009
A neglected young wife falls hard and fast in this hard-boiled Jazz Age crime novel.

Dr. Everett Seeley should never have left Marion alone. After losing his medical license due to his morphine habit, the good doctor took a job in Mexico and assumed his young bride was too fragile to follow. Instead, as this fast and furious noir opens, he sets her up in a tiny Phoenix apartment with a job in a private clinic, where she is soon taken under the wing of Louise, a tough but caring nurse, and Louise's giddy roommate, the tubercular Ginny. At first, their companionship is comforting and their wild parties fun. But before long Marion falls hard for one of their regular male visitors, the wealthy Joe Lanigan. Drink and a peroxide bob lead to cocaine and sexual degradation, ultimately ending in murder. But where Lanigan and Everett saw the delicate-looking young woman as a fragile doll, Marion finds in herself an inner resilience that might just help her survive. Working once more (as in The Song is You, 2007) from a true crime, the infamous Brighton Trunk Murders of 1934, Edgar-winner Abbott brings the era to life, inhabiting the"bright-eyed and twitchy-tailed" party girls in all their enthusiasm and desperation. Her nearly stream-of-consciousness narration is direct and powerful, straight from Marion's addled and passionate brain. As such, it is full of repeated phrases:"It was like a saber lain before. It was a saber, a gauntlet, somehow." But for all the classic-noir simplicity, such as the use of repetition rather than elaboration for emphasis, her prose carries an urgency that brings hard-boiled crime fiction kicking and screaming into the modern age.

Abbott takes readers on a wild thrill ride with an utterly believable and strangely sympathetic heroine.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from June 15, 2009
"Get me Bette Davis on the blower, and make it snappy," says the old producer. "This property by Abbott is made-to-order for her: a frail young gal looks like a million bucks (back in the 1930s, when that meant something), but she's stuck out in the boonies, so she marries an older doctor for security. Turns out he's on morphine and heads off into Mexico to clean up (Wonder if John Barrymore would be interested? Or is he dead?). Left to her own devices, she gets involved with a couple of fast girlfriends whose hen parties sometimes end in invites to the foxes. One such fox, as well as an Elk and a Lion, is a well-connected local businessman who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. VERDICT It has to end with Kleenexes all 'round and something for everyone: true crime (it's based on a notorious 1930s trunk murderess' case), plus it's a women's story with noir embellishments. It has tough times, drugs, and pandemics. It screams 'today!'only retro. Done in that rat-a-tat delivery that Bette has a lock on, it can't miss." Recommended heartily for fans of Edgar Award-winning Abbott's retro-noir crime fiction (e.g., Queenpin). [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ" 3/1/09.]Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2009
In 1931, Marion Seeley takes a clerking job at a clinic in the desert city of Phoenix, where tuberculosis sufferers dry out their lungs. Her own husband is a doctor but, due to his morphine addiction, can find work no closer than Mazatlan. Lonely, Marion falls in with strong-willed nurse Louise Mercer, Louises consumptive roommate Ginny Hoyt, and sugar daddy Joe Lanigan. Good times lead to wild times andwell, the title foreshadows the mayhem to come. Abbott (Queenpin, 2007) is a retro original, and her reimagining of the true story of Winnie Ruth Judd, the Trunk Murderess, is a frothy mix of character, plot, and period detail. As good-girl Marion finds what she is really capable of, her psychological portrait is as carefully imagined as the nightmarish world that lurks beneath the communitys caring faade. Some readers may be turned off by the relentless period detail, and the dialogue, a sort of poetic Jazz Age patter, isnt for everyone, either. But if you like time-traveling crime fiction, youll want to bury yourself in Bury Me Deep.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)