Product Description

Heading a police investigation into the brutal murder of a showgirl, Lt. Wesley Horner zeroes in on Herbert White, an eccentric recluse whose spends his days writing gushing fan letters to Hollywood starlets.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3685915 in Books
• Published on: 1999-02
• Released on: 1999-01-11
• Format: Large Print
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 438 pages

Amazon.com Review
In Robert Clark's second novel, Mr. White's Confession, two men grope through real and metaphysical mysteries in post-depression Minnesota. A pair of girls, taxi dancers at a local dance hall, have been murdered. It seems obvious to everyone involved that the killer is Herbert White, a quiet eccentric with a taste for glamour photography--particularly after portraits of the dead women are found in his apartment. Yet police Lieutenant Wesley Horner finds himself obsessed with the oddities of the case, starting with the fact that the suspect is afflicted with a faulty memory. Literally unable to recall anything but the distant past (and intermittent patches of the present), White cannot confess to the murders. Did he in fact commit the crime, or is he merely a convenient scapegoat? Agonizing over these questions, Horner also begins to ponder the role that memory plays in understanding the past--and the present.

Part of the narrative consists of Herbert White's journal, and this is the best part of Mr. White's Confession. Here Clark creates a voice that is both innocent and formal and, most of all, blind to its own desires. Recalling a visit by Ruby Fahey, one of the eventual victims, the photographer writes: "She went back to my bedroom to change, and I must say I felt a huge sort of breathlessness at the idea that she was in my room shedding and then donning her garments, rather as if some mystery of great enormity were taking place right here in my humble quarters!" Horner's half of the narrative, alas, is weighted down by tired lyricism, and populated by a hard-boiled cast straight out of Raymond Chandler. The result is a gripping mystery with an anticlimactic ending--less a philosophical resolution than the tail of a shaggy-dog story. --Emily Hall

From Publishers Weekly
By opening with a long epigraph from St. Augustine's Confessions (in the original Latin, no less), Clark's ambitious, atmospheric rumination on good, evil and the gray area in between announces intentions far loftier than those of the standard dime-store detective novels to which the book bears an intentional but superficial resemblance. Set in St. Paul, Minn., in the bleak winter of 1939, this high-brow thriller retains enough lowdown grit and grime to qualify as both a suspenseful read and a surprisingly touching character study. When two young "dime-a-dance" girls are murdered, tough-as-nails homicide cop Lieutenant Wesley Horner hones in on eccentric recluse and amateur photographer Herbert White as the prime suspect. Looking like a cross between Humpty Dumpty and Paul Bunyan, and equally obsessed with Hollywood starlet Veronica Galvin and the voluminous scrapbooks and journals he keeps in order to compensate for his (narratively convenient) memory loss, White takes the fall with sympathetic dignity: astute readers will have fingered the real culprit many pages earlier. The true mysteries here are psychological: Horner's morally suspect relationship with teenage drifter Maggie is particularly fascinating. Having previously written a biography of James Beard (The Solace of Food), a cultural history of the Columbia River (River of the West) and a critically lauded first novel (In the Deep Midwinter), Clark here seesaws, most often successfully, between hard-boiled cliches and an earnest, self-conscious concern with the natures of memory and love. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Is solitary eccentric Herbert White involved in the murders of two young women, or is his short-term memory failure really pathological, as he claims? As in the author's acclaimed first novel (In the Deep Midwinter, LJ 12/96), this psychological mystery is set in Minnesota in the mid-20th century. Wesley Horner is a seemingly hardened police lieutenant with a tragically fragmented family. The triumph of his pursuit and capture of pitiful suspect Herbert is cut short, however, when Horner's new sweetheart thinks that the man might be innocent. Fellow officer Welshinger is a bit too conscientious in extracting a confession from White. Damning evidence telegraphs to the reader the identity of the real murderer, since the real point is not whodunit but whether or not the truth will emerge. A literary treat for procedural fans, this belongs in all libraries.?Margaret A. Smith, Grace A. Dow Memorial Lib., Midland, MI
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

haunting characters, period-perfect atmosphere
The readers' comments about this book have been of two sorts: those who are disappointed because they expected standard mystery fare (closed room puzzles, gritty contemporary private eyes, etc.), and those who realize that this is indeed a great novel. So be forewarned. If you fall into the first camp, don't bother with this book. If, on the other hand, you want to read a beautiful novel with an unforgettable central character, exquisite yet simple language, a conjuring up of a bygone era, and a stunningly original take on the playings out of crime, this is the book for you. It's a treasure.

A Mystery about the Mystery and Beauty of Life
What a marvelous novel: a searching exploration of memory, love, beauty, good/evil, and the hideously mistreated victim, who endures life and takes himself to a higher spiritual plateau. This novel is soaked in mystery, albeit most of it not of the superficial kind that litters most mysteries by, for example, Sandford, Grafton, Patterson, E. George. Readers enjoy a speed read through the kinds of novels written by most mystery authors. I have no quarrel with them. But I would argue vehemently that one Mr. White's Confession is worth more than all the "speed read" novels put together. I am of course making a value judgment, a rather absolute one, but the depth and beauty of this novel demands praise and the most heartfelt entreaty that if you are reading this commentary that you read this novel--your life will be enriched. This novel almost broke my heart at several points. But what it really did is stir into my consciousness the memories of love and beauty in my own life; it made me take stock of where I have been and how important it is that my future create memories that are full of love and beauty. Read this book and be the wiser for having read it.

St. Paul, Minn. in 1939
This book, ostensibly the story of two murders in St. Paul in 1939, has long swatches of exquisite writing. These swatches are the journal entries of the Mr. White of the title, a sad and strange man with a memory problem, and a penchant for taking photos of taxi dancers. When one, and then another, is murdered, he becomes the prime, and only, suspect, and the story of how the "justice system" worked in those days is quite intersting, and chilling. The other protagonist is a middle-aged widower policeman who is involved in the murder investigation, and his relationship with a 16 year old female runaway. This is a very sad story, but brilliantly told, and well worth reading. The ending really doesn't tie up some loose ends, or even resolve the crimes, although there are hints scattered throughout the book. Even those hints, however, don't actually point out "whodunnit". Read the book and decide for yourself what actually happened so long ago.