The Swimming Pool

A tense and moody affair. A body in the swimming pool. A heroine who knows little but steps up bravely, each and every time. An atmospheric setting. The glamorous past revisited, deconstructed, glossed over, forgotten and remembered and reevaluated, memories like yellowing photos in an album crumbling when you pull them out for a closer look. A beautiful woman, a woman defined by her beauty, a woman of much ugliness within, a woman much like her mother, trained carefully by that mother for a life of perfect shallow uselessness. An intrepid teen, smoking at the dinner table with his relatives, this was definitely a different era. A hot cop whose swim trunk-clad body causes our heroine to drool time and time again. Get a grip sis!<br /><br />The writing is fine and the characterization is sharp and often subtle. The mystery was nifty. I would have liked this so much more though if (1) the author didn't constantly try to ramp up the tension with strenuously ominous foreshadowing i.e. <i>later she was to learn how wrong she was..</i> she pulls that in each chapter, sometimes multiple times, ugh so irritating; and (2) every other character besides the heroine knows something super important about the mystery and just point blank refuses to tell her. Every. single. other. character. I wanted to wring the neck of every single other character - and the heroine as well, for not wringing the necks of every single other character. There's a body in the damn swimming pool, you need to get these jokers to cough up some info!

This was a wonderful story that was hard to put down. And I admit I cheated and read the end to find out who the killer was. It didn't spoil the story though. For I still had to find out how it was done.

I was not really familiar with the works of Mary Roberts Rinehart. I thought she wrote corny melodrama type Victorian novels. Nope. This is a good, old fashioned Golden Age detective novel, quite an enjoyable one at that. It's mainly concerned with a family of grown children whose parents lost pretty much everything in the depression, and whose mother stopped at nothing to cover up a scandal involving the middle sister. Twenty years later it all comes back to haunt them and bodies start piling up near the old swimming pool.

From 1952<br /> Rinehart was born in 1876, so she was like 75 when this came out. <br /> A family/financial mystery going back 20 years. <br /> I was gripped by the scene where Lois, the main character, went to the home of the dead woman in her swimming pool and had to break in to save a cat.

While it dragged a bit in the middle, I really liked it. And I didn't figure it out until the very end.<br /><br />However, the plot summary is completely wrong - this is not a locked room mystery.

Lois Maynard and her brother Phil live in genteel poverty at The Birches, the family estate. The estate is all that is left to them after the family fortunes took a decided dip after the crash of 1929 and their father's suicide shortly thereafter. Between Phil's job as a middling sort of lawyer and Lois's income as a writer of detective fiction, they just manage to get by. Their sister Judith, the spoiled family beauty, had escaped with a timely marriage to the rich and eligible Ridgely Chandler. She has the world at her feet and Ridgely seems content to let her do as she pleases. So...why on earth does she suddenly decide to divorce him after 20-some years of marriage? <br /><br />That's what Lois wants to know when Ridge asks her to chaperone Judith on the trip to Reno. But Judith isn't talking and on top of that she seems to be deathly afraid of something or somebody...to the point of fainting on the train when she looks out over the people standing about at the station. And still she won't talk--except to say that she's decided to cash in on her share of the family homestead and come to stay at The Birches for an indefinite amount of time. Having never been close to Judith, neither Lois nor Phil think this is a spectacular idea, but they can't tell her no.<br /><br />From the moment she arrives at the estate, she behaves like a woman with demons on her heels--keeping herself indoors, installing extra locks on her bedroom doors, and insisting that Phil board up the windows that look out on the roof of the porch. Soon a policeman on leave has taken up residency in the cottage they've had up for lease, there are people lurking in the bushes, people taking potshots with guns, and....there's a woman's body floating in the swimming pool. Lieutenant O'Brien is certain that Judith's troubles and the woman's death have links to murder case from the past which included the shooting death of his mentor on the force. He and Lois work along their own lines while the local police and State Troopers try to figure out who the woman is and why she was killed on the grounds of The Birches. What Lois really finds out is just how little she knows about her family and the events of the last twenty-five years.<br /><br />This book is a bit of a mixed bag--mostly good with a few annoying bits thrown in. First, the good: Rinehart is doing what she does best. The Gothic undertones in the isolated mansion. The heroine/s in danger. The misunderstood family motives and mysterious strangers doing who-knows-what and for who-knows-what-reason. Unidentified terror building up suspense. Foreshadowing and flashbacks. All good fun. The annoying bits: at 334 pages, Rinehart runs on for just a bit too long--we get several rounds of somebody (Lois, Phil, the family lawyer [who is not Phil], the cops, etc.) questioning Judith about what's wrong and why she's terrified and Judith insisting that there's nothing wrong (because obviously everybody wants extra locks for no reason and windows boarded up just because...). Phil is pretty much the most clueless lawyer ever and doesn't seem to be aware of much that goes on in the house unless Lois waves it under his nose in neon lights. And Lois seems remarkably naive when it comes to the $50,000 that her mother mysteriously received at time when cash wasn't all that plentiful. But--even with those annoying bits, Rinehart spins a good tale and I found myself enjoying myself a great deal. ★★★ and a half.<br /><br />First posted on my blog <a href="https://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-swimming-pool.html" rel="nofollow noopener">My Reader's Block</a>. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.

<u>2018 Review</u><br /><br />I pulled this from my shelf because I wanted something to read that wouldn't make my brain hurt and it's been a while since I've read this. Mary Roberts Rinehart is an excellent suspense/mystery/romance writer. Even though she wrote during the 1940s-1970s (my rough estimate), her books don't feel dated. The dialogue and the characters could still probably drop into modern America and be only slightly out of place. What's usually a little more jarring is the much more regimented social order of the 1940s/50s, the excessive cigarette smoking, and the overt sexism of the male-dominated culture of that time (not to be confused with our male-dominated modern culture). But the mysteries are usually pretty good, the heroines fairly intelligent and not too prone to fainting into the big strong arms of the heroes, and Rinehart is a skilled writer. <br /><br />Lois Maynard lives with her older brother Phil at The Birches, the country home. It was once a grand estate run by several servants, but the 1929 market crash and two world wars have taken their toll on the Maynard family fortunes. Lois earns money as a struggling author of female-sleuth mysteries and Phil is an unsuccessful lawyer. However, they live peacefully in their genteel poverty (with only one maid and one housekeeper/cook) until Judith, their sister, comes to live with them. Judith is the beauty of the family. She married very well and has been the darling of the society pages for years. Now, for no reason, she recklessly divorces her millionaire husband and decides to stay at The Birches with her siblings for a "rest." Lois and Phil are horrified. Their peaceful, relaxed lives are thrown into chaos soon after Judith's arrival. Not only does she demand Lois's room, but rarely goes outside during the day and locks herself in at night. Aside from the internal chaos, there's a man lurking around the grounds and a woman's body is found floating in the swimming pool. When a handsome Irish police officer rents out their cottage, Lois finds herself being drawn into his search for justice for a murdered fellow office and wondering why his search is connected to her sister and her increasingly bizarre behavior.<br /><br />I'm not really going to get into the novel that much because either these types of romantic suspense novels work for you or they don't. Lois is a smart, highly capable woman who doesn't immediately fall into the muscular arms of Detective Terrence O'Brien, although, as is required of these books, she does fall in love with him rather quickly. What's refreshing however is that he expresses his love for her first and there are none of "misunderstandings" or mind games that modern romances are fond of. The mystery of Judith's odd behavior and the murder of a police detective twenty years ago are connected and the investigation is very well done. Upon this rereading of the novel (my fourth reading or so), I found that information is repeated too often, that Lois learns something and then has to repeat it two or three times to different characters and that got tedious. The end was one of those "all the suspects are here and I will now tell the long story from the beginning and reveal the criminal" and seemed a bit unnecessary. <br /><br />Because this book was published (initially) in 1952, you cannot hold the rather paternalistic view of the world against it. O'Brien, the detective, is rather sensible (he thinks women have brains and should use them) but there's a psychiatrist in the book that Lois consults with because he has been counseling her sister. They are discussing why Judith is being so weird and he thinks it's because she's divorced now and is out of her normal routine:<br /><blockquote>"[Divorced women have been sheltered], at least there was someone around they could depend on, in case of burglars, for instance! Someone to keep house for, to order food for, even to dress for. If they marry again, all right. At least they are back in a familiar groove. If they do not, what have they? They haunt the movies and the beauty shops, they gamble frantically, and some of them end up in this office, out of sheer loneliness and despair." (56)</blockquote> Now I know this man is expressing the approved theory of women from oh, 1948, so I am not irritated but it is rather amusing? Stupifying? Whatever. But apparently women without men wander around like brainless hunks of flesh on two legs, no direction in their lives and nothing else to think about. <br /><br /><i>The Swimming Pool</i> is a decent novel and it's interesting to read about a world of enforced social roles and glamor that no longer exists. Although I would probably drop it down to 3.5 stars.<br /><br /><u>Older Review</u><br />I've read this book many times and I always enjoy it. It's suspenseful, has a good mystery, and just a hint of romance. Very enjoyable.

Now that I get Rinehart, I’m pretty sure I want to read all of these. Nearest I can compare to her is Barbara Vine (when Ruth Rendell set out to outdo Agatha Christie, did her Barbara Vine books intend to outdo MRR?), but somehow they are like Vine’s moody modern gothic mixed with Nancy Drew. I love the murky mystery and creepy atmospheres, but am not so fond of the repetitions, Had-I-But-Knowns, and spirited girl/stronger guy romance. <br /><br />What turns Rinehart to the positive for me is the straightforwardness. Not just the absence of Latin phrases and untranslated French, but the real faded-genteel world in which the mysteries happen—full of chickens, cranky cab drivers, old houses in bad need of repair, and servants no longer differentiated much from the Family. My favorite scene inthis one is when Lois gets hit on the head by a newell post. She doesn’t swoon—she gets knocked silly and then has to run and throw up. Never read <em>that</em> in any classic English mystery.

Well-written mystery. I did manage to get an idea who the killer was close to the end. But very good. Lois Maynard lives in the old estate with her brother Phil. He commutes to town to work- she writes mystery novels. They have a sister Anne who is married. Another sister, Judith, is married to a very wealthy man and does eactly what she pleases. The others think their mother spoiled her and now her husband spoils her. Judith was the beauty of the family and all their mother's time and effort were invested in her. Suddenly Judith decides she wants a divorce from her husband and gets one, with a nice alimony. On the train leaving Reno she sees something or someone that frightens her - in fact, she is terrorized. Judith intends to go abroad, but instead returns to The Birches, the old family estate and terrible things begin to happen. A woman is found drowned in their swimming pool and various attacks are made on people, including Lois and O'Brien to whom Lois has let the caretaker's cottage. And, in trying to figure things out, Lois learns some dreadful things about their past and why their father shot himself after the stockmarket crash. She also figures out things aren't as simple as they seem and their mother was obsessed with wealth and position.

<i>"The Swimming Pool"</i>is a novel written by Mary Roberts Rinehart and published in 1952. Rinehart was an American writer, she was often called the American Agatha Christie, even though her first mystery novel was published 14 years before Christie's first novel in 1922. Although Rinehart wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, travelogues and articles, she is most known for her murder mysteries. There is no way I can't share this story; Rinehart maintained a vacation home in Bar Harbor, Maine, where in 1947 she was involved in a real-life almost murder mystery. Her Filipino chef, who had worked for her for 25 years, fired a gun at her and then attempted to slash her with knives, until other servants rescued her. The chef committed suicide in his cell the next day. Why in the world did he do that? Another mystery. I also think it is interesting that the phrase<i> "The butler did it"</i>, which has become a cliché, came from Rinehart's novel<i>"The Door"</i>, although that exact phrase does not appear in the work and I'm not telling you whether or not the butler really did do it, you'll have to read the book. But on to this book, <i>"The Swimming Pool"</i>.<br /><br />I'm not sure how to say what I didn't like about the book without giving away the mystery, but I'll give it a try. The story is very interesting, I was never bored, I was just frustrated. I love mysteries, but I love mysteries that I can figure out, or at least try to figure out the mystery. There simply weren't enough clues for me. The story begins with our narrator telling us about the swimming pool, this is the first line:<br /><br /><i>"One day last fall I ordered the swimming pool destroyed."</i><br /><br />Our first person narrator is Lois Maynard. She is the youngest of four siblings, the oldest is Anne, then Phil, Judith and finally Lois, ten years younger than Judith. She tells us that they are leaving their family home "The Birches" where they have lived for many years, their asylum after the panic of '29. Lois and her brother Phil live there with two servants, Helga and Jennie. Anne is married to Martin Harrison an "unsuccessful architect" and Judith is married to much older and more important, much wealtier Ridge Chandler. Judith is beautiful and rich and famous, although I'm not sure what she is famous for, unless you are famous just for being beautiful and marrying someone rich. Lois tells us that as children, Judith was always popular, boys "gathered around Judith like flies" and their mother doted on her and could refuse her nothing. Everything seemed to be going along fine in their lives until the stock market crash of 1929, then they lost everything and their father shot himself in his office one night after one last dinner party. They had to sell their house in the city and their furniture and jewels and move to "The Birches" permanently. One of the things that puzzled me from the beginning, well from page 8 anyway was this:<br /><br /><i>"I know now it was Judith who wanted the pool, Judith to whom mother could refuse nothing. According to Anne, father objected."</i><br /><br />So Judith gets her pool. Lois tells us that Judith either always got what she wanted or would sulk until she did. Just below this Lois tells us how Judith one day cut her long hair short and her mother was upset with her, then comes this:<br /><br /><i>"It suited her, however. It grew out into small blond curls all over her head, and she hated wetting it. Then, too, she swam badly. She could ride well. She could play the piano magnificently, but she hated the water. She was always afraid of the water. Perhaps that excuses her for what happened years later."</i><br /><br />Now, if Judith was afraid of water and hated water, why in the world did she want a swimming pool? I'm still puzzling over that. Perhaps to give characters in the book something to throw things into, bodies or otherwise, it certainly happens often enough. However moving on, by the time of our story all the Maynard's are grown and Phil and Lois are still at the Birches which Anne calls "a shabby old ruin". Phil is a lawyer, and as Lois says "not a successful one" and Lois is writer of crime novels, also not all that successfully from what I gathered. At the beginning of our novel Judith decides to divorce her husband after twenty years of marriage, going to Reno for the divorce and taking Lois with her. I suppose the second mystery to me, after the why did she want a pool one, was why was she divorcing her husband? We are told she didn't love him, but she didn't love him twenty years ago either, so she certainly took her time leaving him. Now on the return train trip from Reno something "scares" her and she faints, then arriving at the Birches she locks herself in her bedroom never to emerge again. Well, almost never. She spends most of the book either locked in the room or running upstairs to lock herself in the room. She will tell no one what she is afraid of, she spends the entire book telling us that she won't tell us what she's afraid of. The only person in the book that seems to know what she is afraid of is the ex-cop who lives next door and he won't tell us either. I know by now she is afraid of taxi cabs which makes little sense to me because if what she is afraid of is a certain taxi-cab driver he certainly can't be in every city everywhere, so I personally wouldn't expect him to show up everywhere in every taxi. <br /><br />Then there is the girl found dead in the swimming pool. She looks like Judith so almost everyone in the book assumes that whoever killed her thought she was Judith, including Judith. It would have been helpful to the police and me if she would have now told us why she thought someone would try to kill her, but no such luck. No one else bothered to share their thoughts on it either. The only two people who didn't seem to think that someone was trying to kill Judith was me and the detective, we thought Judith possibly killed the swimming pool lady, and I had no reason to think that, it was just a random guess. Oh, this made me smile:<br /><br /><i>"How's the book coming?"<br />"Book?" I said bitterly, "You don't write books in a lunatic asylum."<br />"She's not crazy Lois".<br />"Then I'm about to be."</i><br /><br />This too I found amusing, Judith is sure they were trying to kill her, so she locks herself in the bathroom and slits her wrists:<br /><br /><i>"So she tries to hill herself!" he said. "That's jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire with a vengeance. I've been in this business a long time, Miss Maynard. I've seen a lot of death and some suicides. But I never heard of killing yourself to avoid being killed."</i><br /><br />If only someone would have acted slightly suspicious I would have been having much more fun. If only taxi-cabs kept driving past the house, only in the middle of the night when it is raining of course. The servants spent all their time serving food and cooking food, if only they would have been sneaking in the house at midnight or down into the cellar at 3 a.m. Perhaps the therapist who seemed to be absolutely no help to Judith or anyone else would have smiled with a strange look on his face whenever her name was mentioned or stared at a mysterious statue on his desk, but no nothing. By the time anyone decided it may be a little bit helpful to share some of the clues they had with someone else so we could start piecing the whole thing together, I didn't care that much anymore. But that doesn't mean you won't enjoy it, so go ahead and read the book. Let me know why Judith insisted on having a pool in the first place.