Payment Deferred

by C.S. Forester

Genres: Crime
Pages: 192
Rating:

Synopsis:

Mr Marble is in serious debt, desperate for money to pay his family's bills, until the combination of a wealthy relative, a bottle of Cyanide and a shovel offer him the perfect solution. Slowly the Marble family becomes poisoned by guilt, and caught in a trap of secrets, fear and blackmail. Then Mrs Marble ensures that retribution comes in the most unexpected of ways...

C.S. Forester’s Payment Deferred is a horrible little story. I’m not saying it’s not well-written, but the protagonist is horrible in so many ways, and it’s basically the story of how he and his family become ever more twisted by a murder that he commits and then more or less successfully hides, for money (of course for money).

Mr Marble doesn’t seem like a great person to begin with, alcoholic and disinterested in his family, but murder brings out the worst in him, and the contamination seems to spread. It takes a long time for Mrs Marble to realise what’s happening (the portrayal of her is vicious and misogynistic), but eventually she too understands the murder, while the kids don’t, but definitely get twisted by the situation their parents have created.

If I hadn’t been reading this as a serial via Serial Reader, I’m not sure I would have finished it. It’s just relentlessly unpleasant. It’s meant to be — there’s no way Mr Marble is meant to be any kind of hero — but all the same, it’s not the kind of reading experience I generally enjoy. Still, it’s interesting as an example of a sort of inverted mystery, where the suspense is not “whodunnit” but “will he get away with it?”

Rating: 1/5