Novel
The House of Cain
Arthur William Upfield · 1928
Synopsis
Austilene Thorpe, accused of murder, vanishes from her prison; in shock, her fiancé, Martin Sherwood, loses his sight. His brother Monty, a man of adventure, learns that she is hiding in a refuge for murderers, in the far north-west of New South Wales, near Tibooburra, and the two brothers set out to find her and bring her back to Melbourne, according to the publisher's presentation. AustLit notes that the book imagines the healing of a criminal through a medical intervention on a lesion of his brain.
Context
The book appeared in London in 1928, from Hutchinson, and the Perth Sunday Times serialised it the same year. AustLit, citing the critic Farmer, sees in it a pure suspense novel that carries the seeds of the books that followed, and the author's first to use the outback as a setting, which would dominate all his work. Inspector Bony does not yet appear in it; he appears in the next novel. Later, a method devised for another book was used in real crimes, and the author had to testify at the trial.
Who it is for
An adventure novel in English, from the desert of the interior to Melbourne; it is not yet a detective story.
Prizes and reception
For the critic Farmer, cited by AustLit, a mere sensational novel, in which one can already glimpse the best books to come.
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