Description
Book Synopsis‘When a man has three separate notices by three different women inserted in the local paper, and he’s my own namesake besides, I feel I owe him something.’
Sequential death notices appear for Robert Raynald: one by his mother, one by his estranged wife, one by his daughter. This odd approach draws the attention of Superintendent Mallett and his friend Dr. Fitzbrown. The inquest had decided that Raynald shot himself whilst temporarily insane, but his daughter Geraldine is not convinced and presents enough evidence to arouse the investigator within Mallett. Raynald's story is presented in flashbacks, as Mallett and Fitzbrown build a picture of his life through the people who knew him best. Requiem for Robert combines the excitement of a detective story with a haunting reading of character.
Trade ReviewTimes Literary Supplement (Maurice Willson Disher, 27th June 1942)
Haunting regret gives Miss Mary Fitt’s writing its distinctive quality. With this she disconcertingly moves us to deep feeling in Requiem for Robert over an old lady’s memory of being a wallflower in the eighteen-seventies, over a tutor leaving the house where happy years have been spent, over a young English officer climbing stairs in a French house which he fears he should not have entered. The chief pleasure of her new detective story lies in the sudden experiencing of such emotion; one can never be sure when it will happen next, for the narrative twists and turns as Robert’s relations talk to Superintendent Mallett and Dr. Fitzbrown—almost on holiday in the mountains. How and why Robert died is not an enthralling problem. Yet Requiem for Robert is an enthralling book. This is more because of the author’s powers of writing than the plot.
-- Maurice Willson Disher * Times Literary Supplement *
Requiem for Robert combines the excitement of a detective story with a sensitive reading of character. Legally, Robert committed suicide while temporarily insane; morally he was murdered; and the degrees of responsibiliy in his associates are subtly estimated.
-- Charles Marriott * The Manchester Guardian *
