cover image Man Kills Woman

Man Kills Woman

D. L. Flusfeder. Farrar Straus Giroux, $21 (358pp) ISBN 978-0-374-20162-3

In an interesting twist on the premise behind Citizen Kane , Flusfeder's first novel is a clever, well-written study of the elusiveness and essential unknowability of human character. Boston sportswriter Richard Tierney is hired by Dorothy Burton to write a biography of William Ivory, a British psychologist, man of letters and translator of Mishima and Tanizaki. According to Burton, Ivory, who died mysteriously in 1980, was a monster; but as Tierney soon discovers, Burton's interest in Ivory is more than academic. As his research takes him into the circle of Ivory's closest friends, Tierney builds a picture of Ivory that is contradictory and intriguing. Although Ivory may be dead, his influence on those he knew lives on--especially in the person of his ex-wife Helen, who jealously guards his memory. But on one point everyone is silent: the manner of Ivory's death. The eventual revelation of how Ivory died solves the book's central puzzler, and rounds out Tierney's portrait. Many troubling questions about Ivory remain unanswered, however, and continue to haunt the reader. Narrated by Tierney and addressed as kind of a long love letter to Burton, his editor/employer, the book adeptly combines an unusual mystery with excellent character studies of both the biographer and his subject. (Sept.)