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Reviews of Mr. White's Confession by Robert Clark
Amazon.com
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
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From Kirkus Reviews , August 1, 1998
Clark's second fictional slice of St. Paul history (In the Deep Midwinter,
1997) goes back to 1939and the most tender account of a sex-killing
investigation you'll ever read. If it weren't for his size and his limping
gait,
making him look like an overgrown teddy bear, no one would ever notice
Herbert White, an inoffensive clerk at Griggs-Horner whose only
pleasures in life are the letters he writes to an indifferent Hollywood
starlet; the copious journals he keeps as an attempt to compensate for
his
flawed memoryhe can remember yesterday, and his childhood, but not
much in betweenand his photography sessions with the women he meets
at the Aragon Ballroom. When one of his models, Carla Marie LaBreque
(ne Charlene Mortenson), is strangled, Homicide Lt. Wesley Horner
questions White and even finds some promising evidence against him. But
all too soon it's clear that the lead is a dead end; as the Aragon survivors
agree, White couldn't harm a soul. But then a second Aragon dancer is
found murdered, and witnesses place White at the scene. By this time, he
can't remember meeting Wesley before; he certainly can't remember
either killing or not killing Ruby Fahey; and he's a ready target for a
bullying Vice cop who's eager to euchre him into a confession, sign
Wesley's name as witness, and send him to prison for life. By the time
Wesley, whose fragile romance with a teenaged runaway mirrors White's
own stumbling attempts at intimacy, rouses himself on White's behalf, the
story seems headed toward an inescapably melodramatic climax. But
because Clark's true subject isn't the mystery of the Aragon dancers'
murders (wound up in a brilliantly offhand sentence), but the sovereign
power of memory to nurture desires that would otherwise never survive,
his closing scenes amount instead to a transfiguration of his decent,
tempest-tossed heroes. Despite its florid subject, then: a gently,
powerfully moving demonstration of the ways, as White concludes, that
``we are but memory enfleshed by love.'' (Author tour) -- Copyright
©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Book Description of Mr. White's Confession by Robert Clark
By the acclaimed author of In the Deep Midwinter: a novel of mystery,
murder, and two men's search for truth. St. Paul, Minnesota, 1939.
Lieutenant Wesley Horner is heading a police investigation into the brutal
murder of a beautiful showgirl. His chief suspect is Herbert White, an
eccentric recluse and hobby photographer who spends his days writing
gushing fan letters to Hollywood starlets and recording his life in detailed
journal entries and scrapbooks. Then another dancer is found murdered,
and the clues point once again to Herbert White. In his extraordinary
second novel, Robert Clark examines the inner worlds of two very
different men and the women in their lives. He illuminates the complex
relationships between truth and fiction, past and present, while exploring
the nature of faith and memory.
Synopsis of Mr. White's Confession by Robert Clark
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.
Buy Mr. White's Confession by Robert Clark at Amazon by clicking here
From the Inside Flap of Mr. White's Confession by Robert Clark
Robert Clark's first novel, IN THE DEEP MIDWINTER, brought him
wide critical acclaim as a gifted writer of important fiction. Now he gives
us MR. WHITE'S CONFESSION, a flawlessly crafted and suspenseful
novel of mystery, murder, and two men's search for truth.
St. Paul, Minnesota, 1939. Police Lieutenant Wesley Horner is struggling
and alone after the recent death of his wife when he receives an
assignment that threatens his precarious stability. The body of a beautiful
showgirl has been found on a hillside, and Wesley must head an
investigation into her murder. His chief suspect is Herbert White, an
eccentric recluse and hobby photographer who spends his days writing
gushing fan letters to Hollywood starlets and recording his life in detailed
journal entries and scrapbooks. But when the trail to White runs cold and
other leads dry up, Wesley faces the horrible possibility that the true
murderer may remain at large.
Then another dancer is killed, and the clues once again point to Herbert
White. Wesley's cross-country pursuit of Mr. White takes both men on a
journey that will link them in complex ways for the rest of their lives.
In all his work, Robert Clark illuminates the complex relationships
between truth and fiction, past and present, faith and memory. Richly
atmospheric, haunting and many-layered, MR. WHITE'S
CONFESSION fully confirms the promise of IN THE DEEP
MIDWINTER.
About the Author of Mr. White's Confession, Robert Clark
Robert Clark is the author of the novel IN THE DEEP MIDWINTER,
RIVER OF THE WEST, a cultural history of the Columbia River (both
from Picador USA), and THE SOLACE OF FOOD, a biography of
James Beard. A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, he now lives in Seattle
with his wiife and two children.
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