Hindsight

by Peter Dickinson

Hardcover, 1983

Status

Available

Call number

Fic Mystery Dickinson

Collections

Publication

Pantheon Books (1983), Hardcover, 191 pages

Description

In this brilliant crime novel by CWA Gold Dagger winner Peter Dickinson, a writer looks back on his past and discovers the memory of a murder that needs to be solved It's been forty years since Paul Rogers spent a night at St. Aidan's Preparatory School. When a biographer asks the now-middle-aged novelist about his youth, it triggers memories that Rogers thought he had lost forever. He begins writing about the summer of 1940, when the Nazis took Paris and his entire boarding school was evacuated to a country house in Devon. There the boys discovered a pastoral countryside whose woods held untold mysteries--one of which, Rogers realizes in hindsight, might have been a murder.   To write about this long-forgotten crime, Rogers digs deep into his past, uncovering terrifying recollections that may or may not be real. Something gruesome happened that summer, but understanding it will force Rogers to clear the fog of memory and unravel its mysteries once and for all.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member ChrisRiesbeck
Like Dickinson's Death of a Unicorn, which appeared a year later, this is a flashback novel, by a writer, told in past and present streams, intermingled in this case, where events from decades before, including a death, are re-visited and reinterpreted. This is a multi-layered tale -- the title is
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a pun I didn't catch until I was two-thirds done -- rich in detail and observation. Though the main character is an author of detective novels, this is not that kind of mystery. The murder itself doesn't occur until 3/4 of the way through the book., and what follows is not detection, but an extended addition of 1/2 and 1/2 and 1/2 and 1/2 to get a possible sum of 2. Unfortunately, the book's most interesting elements are offset by numerous multi-page infodumps, that eventually dominate the concluding portions.
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LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey
Utterly weird. The mystery - the murder - is a secondary plot at most; the book is really about the author and how he wrote it. Except that I truly can't tell if the author that it's about is Peter, or fictional. It's a story within a story, possibly within a story. I don't much like any of the
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characters - even as the boy Paul saw them, let alone as the adult Paul figures out their actions and motivations. It's a problem I have with a lot of Dickinson's books - very well-written stories about quite unpleasant people doing quite unpleasant things. Definitely worth reading, though I doubt I'll reread.
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LibraryThing member ritaer
Questions from a fellow author bring up memories of childhood, but in fictionalizing them has the author remembered or invented? And how can he know?

Language

Original publication date

1983

Physical description

191 p.; 8.4 inches

ISBN

0394531825 / 9780394531823

DDC/MDS

Fic Mystery Dickinson

Rating

½ (15 ratings; 3.5)
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