The Blank Wall (Classic edition)

by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

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240pp
ISBN 978 1 906462 64 2

Raymond Chandler once asked his English publisher, 'Does anybody in England publish Elisabeth Sanxay Holding? For my money she's the top suspense writer of them all.'

First published in 1947, The Blank Wall is a rare example of a noir thriller told from a woman's perspective, in which the dangers of war are mirrored by the quiet, yet equally treacherous, perils of home life.

Lucia Holley, a mother of two living just outside New York with a husband serving in the Navy during World War Two, finds herself unexpectedly entangled in a web of criminal activity when she sets out to protect her 17-year-old daughter from blackmail.

The Blank Wall explores both the everyday realities of life on the American home front – rationing and shortages, writing letters to a husband posted overseas, managing a household – and also the darker, more unexpected challenges that arise in times of crisis.

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding blends the psychological thriller genre with the domestic in a fast-paced crime novel that is both gripping and unsettling.

The Blank Wall was filmed in 1949 as The Reckless Moment, with James Mason, in 1949 and in 2001 as The Deep End, starring Tilda Swinton.

Also available as a Persephone Grey and a Persephone eBook.

Read What Readers Say

Gaby Wood, ’The Observer’

In my opinion, a perfect thriller - because its thrills arise accidentally, incidentally, and then, in collusion with human nature, conspire to take over the plot… Who really did it, and whether they get caught, becomes almost superfluous, Here the suspense is embedded in a tragedy of manners…. A classic of suspense fiction.

Antonia Fraser, ‘The Spectator’

‘The Blank Wall’ is on the one hand an illustration of the old adage, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave / When first we practise to deceive. On the other hand it is a brilliant psychological thriller with twists and turns, both morally and amorally, worthy of the great Patricia Highsmith herself… [although] Sanxay Holding was Highsmith’s senior by thirty-two years. That admirable institution, Persephone Books, has produced an edition, complete with Edward Bawdenesque endpapers, which makes this racy, suspenseful tale a pleasure to read. I certainly feel I have been introduced to a masterpiece.

mslizreads via Instagram

Quite a page-turner… it’s also an interesting snapshot of women’s lives in the early 1940s, particularly the challenges and frustrations of everyday domestic life, the imposed dependence on men (financial and otherwise), and the relationship between a (white) housewife and her (black) servant.

The New Yorker

Highly recommended.... this suspense story has a rare and desirable down-to-earth quality in which a suburban matron finds herself implicated in the murder of her young daughter's extremely unattractive beau.

Categories: Classics