Patricia McGerr

• Born: December 26, 1917
• Birthplace: Falls City, Nebraska
• Died: May 11, 1985
• Place of death: Bethesda, Maryland

Types of Plot: Amateur sleuth; inverted; espionage; psychological

Principal Series: Selena Mead, 1963-1982

Contribution

Patricia McGerr’s stories featuring the intrepid Selena Mead are stylish, entertaining, cerebral puzzles. Although there is much action and the character development of these stories is quite good, their chief appeal lies in their intellectual challenge to the reader. In each of the episodes, Selena is faced with a problem that must be solved through brains, not brawn. Is the handsome young congressman who courts her a Russian agent or an innocent dupe? Is the vacationing scientist planning to defect behind the Iron Curtain? Which of several trusted aides and family members is plotting to assassinate the visiting monarch? Selena must analyze the words and actions of all these suspects and set hastily devised intellectual traps for them. The reader is challenged to outthink Selena and the criminal. Written in the 1960’s, the Selena Mead series presented the reader with a strong, resourceful, intelligent female spy who solved cases by using her brains at a time when James Bond was the model espionage hero and female characters in typical espionage novels were disposable ornaments who distracted the macho agent from his bloody feats of derring-do.

The Selena Mead stories, however, are not McGerr’s most original and creative efforts. McGerr will be best remembered as the author who reworked the whodunit into the “whodunin,” a plot in which the identity of the killer is known from the start but the identity of the victim remains a mystery until the very end. The reader is invited to decide which character out of a large cast is the most likely to be murdered. In yet another twist on conventional plotting, McGerr presents a murderous wife whose suspicious husband sent for a detective just before his untimely and most unnatural demise. The murderess must then determine which of several new acquaintances is the detective who has come to prove her guilt. Like the Selena Mead stories, these unconventionally crafted novels have a strongly feminist undertone.

Biography

Patricia McGerr, daughter of Patrick Thomas McGerr and Catherine (née Dore) McGerr, was born December 26, 1917, in Falls City, Nebraska. A practicing Catholic all of her life, McGerr attended Trinity College in Washington, D.C., before receiving a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska in 1936. She then went on to receive a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1937. She returned to Washington for her first job as publicity director for the American Road Builders’ Association, where she worked from 1937 to 1943. In 1943, she took a job in New York City as assistant editor of Construction Methods magazine, where she remained until 1948.

While working for Construction Methods, McGerr published two of her most original and experimental crime novels, Pick Your Victim (1946) and The Seven Deadly Sisters (1947). In 1948, the success of these books enabled McGerr to leave her editorial job in New York and return to Washington as a full-time writer. From 1960 onward, McGerr also served as a lecturer and consultant to the Georgetown University Writers’ Conference.

Never married, McGerr devoted herself to her writing career and to various liberal political and social causes. Her Catholicism found its literary outlet in two biblical novels, Martha, Martha (1960), the story of Lazarus’s domestic sister, and My Brothers, Remember Monica (1964), a novel about the mother of Saint Augustine. McGerr was an active member of the Mystery Writers of America and served several terms on its board of directors. She was treasurer and later president of the Catholic Interracial Council of Washington and treasurer of the Northwest Washington Fair Housing Association. She was also an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic National Committee of Washington, D.C. McGerr’s literary honors include first prize in the Catholic Press Association short-story contest in 1950, the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1952, and two awards for short stories from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (second prize in 1962 for “Justice Has a High Price” and first prize in 1967 for “Match Point in Berlin”). Patricia McGerr died of cancer on May 11, 1985, at the Carriage Hill Nursing Home in Bethesda, Maryland.

Analysis

To read a Patricia McGerr novel is to enter into an implausible world peopled with peculiar characters. Yet the reader who is willing to suspend disbelief, to leave real-life logic behind for the duration of the book, will find a realm of suspense, bafflement, and intellectual enchantment. Her characters and situations may not be true to life, but within the McGerr universe they function perfectly. McGerr was a consummate mistress of style, and she took risks with the mystery form that few other writers have dared to imitate.

Pick Your Victim

Pick Your Victim was a bravura start to McGerr’s career. Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, who edited a series of the fifty greatest crime-fiction works written from 1900 to 1950, included McGerr’s first novel to stand among such classics as Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-1902) and Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). According to Barzun’s preface to the book, McGerr devised a whole new mystery genre:

Unlike any other detective tale on record, Pick Your Victim challenges attention by a double reversal, that of the standard problem and of its form. Here is a crime fully understood, in no way mysterious at the time and place of its occurrence, yet it tantalizes a group of people 3,000 miles away; and if this were not enough, the element unknown to the distant inquirers is not the criminal but the victim.

Dubbed a whodunin by several critics, the story develops through a frame narration. The year is 1944, and a group of soldiers stationed in the Aleutians are eager for any scraps of news from home. One of them, Davey Miller, receives a food package wrapped in newspaper shreds. The men devour the clippings as eagerly as they do the treats, even reading the fashion advertisements. Pete Robbins, the narrator of the tale, comes across one torn fragment dealing with a murder that has occurred at the Washington, D.C., office where he worked before being drafted. According to the truncated news story, Paul Stetson, managing director of the Society to Uplift Domestic Service (SUDS), admitted to strangling one of the other executive officers of the organization with a brown wool scarf. The newspaper is torn at a crucial point in the story, so the identity, even the gender, of the victim is a mystery. There were ten officers in the organization, seven men and three women, when Robbins left. Management by turmoil was the organization’s hallmark, and on any given day any two people might be sworn foes or best friends. Depending on how matters went on the day of the murder, any of the ten executives could have been the victim.

The soldiers decide to organize a betting pool on the victim’s identity, and Pete agrees to write to his girlfriend, Sheila, who will send him the information. It will take approximately two weeks for her answer to arrive, and for the next ten days, Pete, like Scheherazade, tells the tale of a different organization member, holding his audience spellbound with the byzantine inner workings of an outfit ostensibly dedicated to aiding American housewives and paid domestic help.

Founded by Bertha Harding as a newsletter of domestic tips for maids, the tiny organization was taken over by Paul Stetson, a venture capitalist who turned it into a nationwide chain of women’s clubs and a political organization that lobbies for various women’s interests. From an inexpensive mailing service for domestic workers, SUDS grew into a representative group for the five million or so upper-middle-class housewives who can afford to hire maids. The leadership of the organization was taken over by a group of men who agree that “it’s still a man’s world, and even women have more confidence in a setup that is conducted by men.” Bertha Harding, the founder, was relegated to a secretarial position, and Anne Coleman, Stetson’s mistress, became the only woman in the group with real power. Coleman’s queen-bee supremacy among the men became threatened, however, by Loretta Knox, an unpaid officer who had organized the West Coast contingent of SUDS and added temperance work to the SUDS agenda. The seven male officers vied with one another to be Stetson’s right hand, and each one secretly longed to dethrone Stetson, even though it was his money and organizational ability that had transformed the nickel-and-dime newsletter into a multimillion-dollar outfit.

The betting among the men changes with each new story Robbins tells, and when Sheila’s answer finally arrives, all the soldiers have picked their victim. A lucky few have chosen the right one, and oddly enough, the clue to the victim’s identity lies not in the Machiavellian infighting Robbins has described, but in Stetson’s choice of murder weapon. Pick Your Victim is delightfully plotted, and the reader’s interest is captivated not only by the murder but also by the bizarre people Robbins describes. McGerr’s characters may not be realistic, but they are certainly riveting.

The Seven Deadly Sisters

McGerr repeated her ingenious plotting in her second novel and second whodunit, The Seven Deadly Sisters. Once again, physical distance and incomplete communication separate an interested party from knowledge of a murder victim’s identity. This time both killer and victim are unknown, but they are so closely linked that to know one is to know the other. Sally Bowen, the narrator of this story, is in England with her husband when she receives a letter from her friend Helen in New York. The letter offers sympathy in the light of tragic events that have befallen Sally’s family—her aunt poisoned her uncle and then committed suicide. In writing the note, Helen is apparently unaware that Sally’s family consists of seven unhappily married aunts, and Sally has received no news from any of them. Helen’s note mentions that she is leaving for a vacation, so Sally cannot get in touch with her to find out which aunt is the suicide-murderess. She is reluctant to call any of the aunts for fear of reaching the bereaved household. Sally’s husband proposes that they wait until morning, when the London library will be open and they can look at back issues of The New York Times until they find the story. Unable to sleep, Sally tells her husband the story of each of her aunts, and in the course of the night they try to deduce which aunt is the most likely culprit.

Orphaned at an early age, Sally was reared by Clara, the oldest and bossiest of her aunts. Married to a rich, tolerant, spineless husband, Clara has dedicated her whole life to making respectable matches for her six younger sisters, with predictably disastrous results. Bert, young and handsome, abandons plain, aging Tessie shortly after their marriage. Agnes divorces quarrelsome Walter and goes on to a second, equally contentious marriage with Steve. Spendthrift Judy tries to bankrupt her well-meaning but frugal George. Edith cannot cope with Phil’s interfering mother and becomes an alcoholic. Molly is pathologically terrified of sex and refuses to have relations with Tom, who follows Clara’s misguided advice to force the issue and rapes her. Molly aborts the child she has conceived as a result of this violation and breaks down completely. Doris weds Mike out of spite because she cannot have Tessie’s Bert and then proceeds to sleep with most of her brothers-in-law. Throughout this domestic turmoil, Clara tries to pretend that the family is happy. She quarrels with Frank when he finds the courage to stand up to her and tries to stop her from forcing the incompatible couples to stay together.

Recently married and newly pregnant, Sally is afraid that the familial neuroses, unhappy marriages, alcoholic tendencies, and homicidal urges may be hereditary. When the killer’s identity and motives are finally revealed, Sally’s anxieties are relieved, and the reader’s theories and expectations are completely yet logically reversed.

McGerr’s Women

Although McGerr’s stories are excellent studies in suspense and stylistics, they do seem to have a deeper purpose than mere entertainment. A theme of thwarted feminism underlies most of McGerr’s novels. Over and over again, women struggle to gain independence, only to be beaten back by society, by circumstance, and by the men in their lives. In Pick Your Victim, an entire network of working women falls prey to Stetson the venture capitalist and his group of female-scorning henchmen. The only woman who attains any power in the novel does so by sleeping with Stetson. In The Seven Deadly Sisters, Clara, the dominant sister, rules over her siblings because she has no other outlet for her executive abilities. She was born to rule, and the only dominion available to her is on the home front. Each of the other sisters struggles to avoid a domestic fate and goes down in defeat before Clara and social pressure.

Margot Weatherby of Catch Me If You Can (1948) is a thoroughly wicked and reprehensible woman. Nevertheless, she is driven to murder because one of the few ways for a woman to attain wealth is through inheritance. In Death in a Million Living Rooms (1951), Podge O’Neill, the murdered comedian, is the creation of his wife, Sarah Scott, who gets none of the credit for Podge’s success and all of the blame for controlling him. Sarah-Anne and Emily, the two career women of Fatal in My Fashion (1954), both fail miserably. Emily becomes a monster, feeding herself emotionally off her sister’s success. She is ultimately murdered. Sarah-Anne, the spunky young girl who dreamed of independence, becomes rich and famous but is at the mercy of her creators: Emily, who wants to control her sister’s life, and St. Pierre, who wants possession of Sarah-Anne’s body. Susan Wills of Stranger with My Face (1968) leaves a treacherous husband to fall prey to a treacherous stranger. When she is finally rescued from Pierce Manning’s machinations, it is only to fall into the arms of her rescuer, whom she will marry. In every McGerr novel women struggle to achieve sovereignty over their own lives. In each case they are either thwarted or they do gain control over their own fates but lose their souls and become murderous monsters in the process.

Selena Mead Stories

Selena Mead, McGerr’s series character, is the only one of her female creations who achieves full autonomy over her own life. Heroine of Is There a Traitor in the House? (1964), Legacy of Danger (1970), and more than twenty-five short stories (uncollected), she refuses the socially correct marriage her parents have planned for her and travels to Europe to revisit some of the scenes of her childhood as an ambassador’s daughter. While visiting East Berlin, she manages to save the life of a handsome journalist, Simon Mead, who is actually an agent for Section Q, a top-secret counterespionage group answerable only to the president of the United States. She and Simon elope, and they spend eight happy years together until he is murdered in the course of an assignment.

Beautiful, intelligent, multilingual, and socially well connected in the United States and Europe, Selena proves to be an even more valuable agent than Simon was. Assuming his cover as a roving reporter for Background, a respected, politically neutral newsmagazine, she goes to work for Hugh Pierce, Simon’s immediate superior at Section Q and their Georgetown neighbor. Pierce’s cover is that of an eccentric, bohemian, dilettante painter who lives off his trust funds. It is a shock to her friends and family when Selena falls in love with Hugh and is married to him. Yet their marriage does not end her espionage career. Although Hugh is reluctant to place her in danger, Selena insists on maintaining her position in Section Q and usually gets her way. The Selena Mead stories are not realistic—nor are they particularly well crafted. Indeed, they are rather mechanical puzzles with clues studded throughout the story like raisins in a bowl of oatmeal. Legacy of Danger is actually a rehash of several of the short stories strung together with a thin narrative thread. Revealing its short-story origins, the book jumps clumsily from one episode to another.

Despite their technical flaws, the Selena Mead stories are a pleasure to read. Selena is the one sunny, wholesome, autonomous female character in the entire McGerr canon. Courageous and resolute, she is able to maintain a career, a marriage, a healthy mind, and a loving heart. The women in McGerr’s other, better written works are not so blessed.

Principal Series Characters:

• Selena Mead is an agent for a secret federal counterespionage group, Section Q. She ages from her early twenties to her mid-thirties in the course of the series. Daughter of an aristocratic ambassador and his socialite wife, Selena rejects marriage to a young banker of her own social status in favor of elopement with a mysterious young man whose life she saves in East Berlin.
• Simon Mead , the mysterious young man to whom Selena is married, is ostensibly a journalist for Background (a rather staid, nonpartisan political journal) but actually an agent for Section Q. When Simon is knifed to death in the course of an assignment, Selena takes over his journalistic cover and his post at Section Q.

Bibliography

Barzun, Jacques, and Wendell Hertig Taylor. “Preface to Pick Your Victim.” In A Book of Prefaces to Fifty Classics of Crime Fiction, 1900-1950. New York: Garland, 1976. Preface by two preeminent scholars of mystery and detective fiction, arguing for McGerr’s novel’s place in the annals of the genre.

Britton, Wesley. Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005. Traces the evolution of the figure of the spy in espionage thrillers and other works of film and fiction. Sheds light on McGerr’s work.

Hepburn, Allan. Intrigue: Espionage and Culture. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. This study of British and American spy fiction begins with three general chapters on the appeal, emotional effects, and narrative codes of the genre that provide a context for understanding McGerr’s work.

Manson, Cynthia. Introduction to Women of Mystery, edited by Cynthia Manson. Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 2002. Introduction discusses McGerr and her character, Selena Mead, as well as the fourteen other female mystery authors included in this anthology.

Mizejewski, Linda. Hardboiled and High Heeled: The Woman Detective in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, 2004. Study of the representation of female sleuths and spies in popular fiction, film, and television that sheds light on McGerr’s novels.