The Pavilion

When I was a boy this book scared me half to death and recently when I picked up this Penguin edition the old frissons came back. It's a book that's difficult to describe, and something sets it off from Hilda Lawrence's other fine novels of suspense; perhaps because her dapper hero, Mark East, makes no appearance and the whole story has that "stand alone" feel that indicates the author wants to attempt something genuinely new without relying on the charms of a continuing character. It is a Southern Gothic book, in which a young woman, Regan Carr, returns to the house where she lived as a child under the invitation of an elderly, adorable cousin Hurst Herald. She packs everything she has in a single sack (the story seems to be taking place during the US depression) and boards the train in Chicago. When she gets to the mansion, there's a big black wreath on the door. Hurst has died. And nobody believes that he invited her in the first place. She's relegated to a little room by the attic where she meets a couple of allies, the pitiful, yet comic sisters, Katy and Jenny, who slave all day to keep the neurotic upperclass Herald family humming. There are dark mysteries in the book, and soon it becomes apparent that one of the family members is a dangerous lunatic whose crimes and mind are more twisted than even a modern villain like Hannibal Lecter or any of his dreary imitators. The scenes were Regan has to expose herself to pure evil are marvelously done. THE PAVILION is like what would happen if Flannery O'Connor had written THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and I wouldn't be surprised actually to find out that O'Connor read and learned from Hilda Lawrence, who had a short, tumultuous career of writing a handful of crime classics (say, from 1945-55), then she disappeared. One of her stories (from DUET OF DEATH) showed up as the basis for a memorable episode of Alfred Hitchcock's TV show, "The Long Silence" in 1963. And then what happened?