Expectation: A Francesca Fruscella Mystery
3/5
()
About this ebook
In his newest novel, Jeffrey DeShell draws on the musical innovations of Arnold Schoenberg—by turns traditional, serial, and atonal—to inform his grammar and language. Moving progressively through specific Schoenberg compositions, DeShell complicates the surface of his text into lyrical derivatives, all the while drawing us into a murder mystery like no other as Detective Francisca Fruscella pursues both the killer and her own complicated personal history.
By turns rapturous, rigorous, and gripping, Expectation is a thriller of another kind—and a bold venture to the limits of the mystery genre and language itself.
Read more from Jeffrey De Shell
The Trouble with Being Born: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Arthouse: A Novel Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Masses and Motets: A Francesca Fruscella Mystery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Expectation
Related ebooks
Fort Da: A Report Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMother Box and Other Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJohn's Wife Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Horses Dream of Money: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Justice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Awful Possibilities Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDrain Songs: Stories and a Novella Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChaos is the New Calm Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Blue Absolute Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bruise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears? Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flyover Country: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Thought House of Philippa Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLike Blood in Water: Five Mininovels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMirèio, a Provençal Poem Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAge of Blight: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The President Shop Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVoice's Daughter of a Heart Yet To Be Born Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sunshine on an Open Tomb Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStoop City Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The River Twice: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShame Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Coal Life: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wonder That Was Ours Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDruids Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYear of the Rat Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKansastan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMammother Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Bell Zero Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTHOU Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Literary Fiction For You
Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Tattooist of Auschwitz: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Handmaid's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queen's Gambit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Thinking of Ending Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Salvage the Bones: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Expectation
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Expectation - Jeffrey DeShell
heart.
CHAPTER 1
Fünf Klavierstücke op. 23
I. sehr langsam
Investigation of murder involves the ability to recognize and articulate patterns: sometimes the patterns are spatial, evidence restricted to specific sites. Motifs of time require the detective to excavate and sift, fact often the wallflower, remains reluctant, outline blending into obscure background. Crimes of passion are the easiest to understand and solve: love, often wonderfully sweet, can leave horrific stains, blotting through white sheets, marks on paper indicting their author. After choking or stabbing, killers, now the aggrieved, are truculent, victims forced into self-protective acts. Patterns of psychopaths can frustrate the detective: in examining and comprehending deviance, often the investigator falters, comforting logic overwhelmed by true strangeness. Scenes of psycho-murder are the most difficult, with all gathering and analyzing futile initially, the design appearing only in repetition, vanishing until a subsequent recurrence.
The corpse is vital, a dominant component of the pattern. The body originates both the crime and the investigation: it's the key signature to the piece. Motive is secondary, only a lesser component. Like a Brahms melody created through the demands of harmony, the motive can actually distract from recognition, leading the investigator down cul-de-sacs, allowing the more productive trails to cool. The corpse here, indeed everything first noticed, seemed to fit seamlessly into the affair-gone-wrong husband-prime-suspect television stage set of the Oxford hotel room. The body, that of a tanned and toned woman in her wealthy thirties, was nude, tied spread eagle on the bed. A large plume of dried blood shocked the cream colored wall: both carotid arteries had likely been severed.
Detective.
Detective.
What are you doing here?
I was in the neighborhood.
This is my case.
I know that. Don't get nervous.
I'm not nervous. Stay out of my way.
If you need any help…
I won't. Stay out of my way.
While he turned abruptly, almost tripping over a technician, I surreptitiously, without gloves, examined her clothes—a nice size four Armani jacket suit and matching skirt—that were carefully folded and hung over the chair. He was right, it wasn't my case, and I was in the way. But he'd never acted like that to me before.
I stepped closer. The flesh was firm: she pilatied and watched her diet. She undressed well, her skin was clear, limbs shaped and displayed for maximum effect. It hadn't been enough: her killer had been unimpressed. He'd done nothing but cut her throat. He'd killed dispassionately, the knife slicing clinically, tissue parting and opening without resistance. She stretched out elegantly, too pampered to be someone's woman kept. And didn't that pose, stiffening, indicate clearly that she was a willing participant, expecting not dreading her partner's return?
Leave. Now.
The dick returns, abrasive.
I don't want or need your help.
CHAPTER 2
Vier Lieder op. 2
I. Erwartung
I closed my office door and opened the window blinds, letting the late afternoon April sun stream through. The bright yellow light was stronger than I expected and I squinted, shielding my eyes with my hand. Looking down at the small entrance plaza, and then at the parking lot across the street, I thought about all the work I had: a likely gang drive-by and a relatively straightforward escalated barfight. The image of that woman at the Oxford—tanned limbs against the white of the sheets, the black blood dark against the cream colored wall—came to me and I began to feel sorry for her. I hadn't felt anything while I was there, save a mild interest in trying to uncover a pattern. But now, as I thought of her splayed open, well, I hoped they didn't find me like that. No matter who or what she was, that was no way to go out. And Benderson's behavior