A review by emily_m_green
Killingly by Katharine Beutner

dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Thank you to Soho Press and Goodreads Giveaways for providing the review copy of Killingly by Katharine Beutner with the expectation of a fair and honest review. 

In Killingly, Katharine Beutner begins with a real-life unsolved mystery: the disappearance of Bertha Mellish from Mount Holyoke College in 1897. She includes characters who are very loosely based on figures central to the case: Florence Mellish, Bertha’s older sister and Henry Hammond, the doctor who delivered Bertha and once she was a college student sought to court her. Other characters are straight from Beutner’s imagination, such as Agnes Sullivan, Bertha’s best friend who is poor, studious, and painfully serious. While the book is a work of historical fiction as well as a mystery, it would be incorrect to label it as true crime, as beyond the premise, the book is all invention. This is not a critical comment--as the novel is quite well-imagined--but a note on the genre of the book. 

The Mount Holyoke of the story is one in which most young women engage in both serious scholarship as well as socializing, including dating, and many seek to secure a husband as they learn about anatomy, rhetoric, and Latin and participate in sports and other extracurricular activities. Bertha, however, was not interested in going to parties and courting as the “all-around girls” were, and was seen as serious and peculiar. She did not fit in, but she did not seem bothered by it, which Agnes greatly admired. In bringing in the contrast between Bertha and the other women, there is a question that is begun about gender roles and women’s place in education. At the time, higher education was not about learning a trade or securing a job, but about learning the information that was considered important to carry with you into your adult life. 

The plot of Killingly relies mostly on secrets, as the information each character withholds creates a tension and a layer of difficulty for solving the mystery. As the plot moves forward, the reader sees many of the secrets revealed, and Bertha, who does not get to tell her own story, has her story told and interpreted for her. 

In addition to gender roles, one of the main thematic discussions in the book is sexuality, specifically who each character chooses to be with or is forced to be with, and the consequences. The sexual politics of the time, as Beutner describes them, are not entirely different from our own. Women still have less power, it is not always safe to reveal anything but heterosexual attractions, and there is more interest in how women express their sexuality than men. A woman’s “virtue” is at more risk than a man’s, and since pregnancy can result from a heterosexual encounter (consensual or not) women physically bear the burden, as well. Not to mention how a woman’s reputation reflects on her family, and what lengths they will go to protect it. 

Would I teach Killingly? Admittedly, I have not taught a significant amount of historical fiction, but a discussion about historical fiction and how a real event was used to spark a largely imagined explanation could be interesting. I can also imagine a follow up writing prompt of finding another historical mystery and filling in the blanks. Maybe I will try that prompt myself…