A good book, I liked it a lot. It's a bit unusual, in a way. The story is told in the first person by Michael Rogers, telling us about his many little jobs and his dreams that one day he would have found something special and someone special. How he used to dream to have enough money to have his architect friend Santonix build the house of his dreams. One day he met Fenella "Ellie" Guteman, they started to see each other and when she reached 21 she married him in secret, so that her family could do nothing about it. Ellie was one of the richest persons in America, and her only relatives were a stepmother, a cousin and her father's brother-in-law: all the others were dead.
Mike and Ellie have their house built and it's beautiful, they love it. A dear friend of Ellie comes to stay with them: Greta Andersen, a beautiful girl and very efficient: Ellie's only friend. Mike doesn't see a lot his wife's relatives, and only saw a couple of times the men that worked for her: banker Stanford Lloyd and lawyer Andrew Lippincott, that had been her tutor and financial administrator for years, and was very fond of her.
I liked this Mr Lippincott, much much more than I liked Mike himself. I did not like him, his choice of lifestyle, the way he thought about work and women.. then he strongly opposed the idea that Ellie should ever meet his mother, and was angry when she secretly did it, and never told him. From that moment, not only I disliked him, but I started to be very suspicious. He didn't like the way his mother looked at him, as if she knew him, really knew him, while I didn't like how easily he used the money he now had, never thinking "this is Ellie's money".
My book has 193 pages, and at page 141 she's found dead, her horse near her. No clear cause of death, maybe she had a weak heart? Nobody knew.
As usual I never stop to think about the mystery, so I didn't know the "how", but the "who" was different, I had a strong feeling against Mike.
More pages about him and Greta dealing with the funeral, the hearing and the documents, since Mike is Ellie's heir, then he says he'll marry Greta and keep living in that same house... he comes back and sees Ellie where he first saw her that day, his mind playing tricks on him.
At home with Greta, he feels like he has no more plans, no more dreams, that house and Greta were what he wanted so strongly.. but he also thinks about Ellie, sweet innocent Ellie that loved him so much. He could have been happy with her; he reveals that he has killed twice before, when he was a kid to get his friend's valuable watch and later on to steal a friend's money. Now he had poisoned Ellie to get her money. All of a sudden he feels the urge to really feel what murder someone feels like and strangles Greta. He stays there until people arrive and simply confesses everything. There is nothing more for him, now. He asks for pen and paper and writes his story, this story.
More than a mystery novel this is a psychological story of a deranged mind slowly losing it.
I liked it.
ITA Nella mia fine è il mio principio
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