A Crime In The Neighborhood
by Suzanne Berne
Award: Women’s Prize Winner 1999
Nomination: LA Times Finalist 1997
Date Read: January 31, 2025
From Kirkus Reviews:
“True, this debut by a Massachusetts essayist and storywriter is a coming-of-age tale, but the greater ethical issues its author explores raise it well above typical first-novel fare. It was the summer of 1972 when Spring Hill, a Washington, D.C., suburb, got its first taste of an increasingly violent, insecure modern world. The quiet residential area, whose inhabitants traditionally left their doors unlocked and spent the summers attending one another's cookouts, was rocked by the news that 12-year-old Boyd Ellison had been raped and murdered, his body dumped behind the local mall. While shaken residents organized a neighborhood watch program and clued detectives in on anyone's suspicious behavior, the inhabitants of at least one house were distracted by a tragedy of their own: Ten-year-old Marsha Eberhardt's father, Larry, had run off with his sister-in-law, leaving his wife and three children to manage on their own. Marsha, stunned by her father's abandonment and rendered homebound by a broken ankle, spends the summer witnessing her mother's desperate attempts to cope; her older twin siblings' scary acting-out behavior; the neighborhood's paranoid response to the murder; and even the country's disorientation over the unfolding Watergate scandal. The tension proves too great when the Eberhardts' shy bachelor neighbor takes an interest in Marsha's mother. Primitive, unexamined passions take over, and Marsha finds herself accusing the suitor, Salem-witch-hunt style, of sexual abuse and murder. The ethical issues that unfold as a result are at least as absorbing as Marsha's own guilt and fascination over her act of false accusation. Berne's skill with language and her talent for evoking believable, all-too-human characters add to this fascinating story of evil and fear, and the unexpected consequences they engender.”
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