Muted Murder by Sally Sinclair

It's rare to come across a book that has virtually no presence online. Aside from a publication listing that this was printed in 1953, I can find no information about this book or its author Sally Sinclair, including the usually stalwart Kirkus Reviews. No synopsis, no GoodReads review.

Is it possible there are other people out there who have read this book? Will this review be the only presence for future readers?

This is a gothic mystery filled with foreboding and danger, a minor romance and deeply buried family secrets. Recently engaged Ann is about to turn 21, and her Aunt finds it time to tell her the true story of her family, kept secret all these years. When Ann was born her parents owned a grand plantation and cotton mill in rural Georgia. The night her father returned from travel, there was an extravagant masquerade ball and he was found at midnight standing over her bloody corpse holding a curved blade. Snapping into catatonic schizophrenia, he has lived in a hospital all these years, never uttering a word. This is all in the first 20 pages, so I'm not revealing too much here. Ann decides to return there and find out if her father is truly guilty, fearing his murderous psychosis is hereditary and she may kill her husband one day!

She stays in a rooming house (not knowing it was their family home), indeed, in the same room her mother was killed in. There are odd lodgers, old family friends, and questions for the family servants who live in wooden shacks down in Coloured Town. With the help of her new friend, nursing-student Posy, she discovers a web of black magic, voodoo death, adultery, reincarnation, animal sacrifice, a theft ring - all sorts. It really moves along, with one menacing revelation into another - including the discovery that her mom lived as a complete mute! No one thought it was important to tell Ann...

If you like discovering a hidden door in the dark hallway, climbing the dusty cob-webbed stairs armed with a fire poker and a flickering candle in the middle of the night, to discover what was making those thudding scraping sounds above you in the attic, you'll enjoy this as much as I did.

Taking place over just a few days, the secrets bubble up and are dealt with in a quick 221 pages. Written in 1953, you have to take with a grain of salt the descriptions of the black servants, the giant negress witch, and a young girl's hokey misconceptions. I admit this was one step above a novel by Midred Wirt, but enough fun to keep me reading.

Too late now, but there are three glaring typos in my Arcadia House hardcover copy, and once she calls her fiancé Bob the wrong name, easily overlooked though...she's going through a lot.

Maybe you have read this as well? Maybe you have seen or have a cover for this book? Going into it blind was fun, with no cover to judge the book by, leaving it all open to my imagination. Happy to have stumbled onto this copy.

1953 / Hardcover / 221 pages