Charlotte Armstrong (1905–1969)

Crime fiction has many shapes. Taking Charlotte Armstrong’s Mischief as an example - the entirety of the novel’s action takes place in and around an adjoined hotel room where an absolutely unhinged woman is babysitting a 9-year-old girl. A series of missed connections and coincidences result in potentially the worst possible thing happening to a loving, pointedly positive family. Whether or not it happens is the core of Mischief’s tension.
Part of what impresses so much about this tension is that it is pulled off with a minimum of on-page violence or grotesquery. Much of Armstrong's work leans into lengthy and engaging dialogues and descriptions of facial expressions except for one knock-down prize fight in the latter half. We are so keyed into the potential “state of things” on the various fronts of the characters that the degree of suspense the novel pulls off is practically stomach-wrenching at times. Filmed as Don’t Bother to Knock with Marilyn Monroe, Mischief has aged remarkably well.
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Murderer in the Turret?
Review of the Mysterious Press/Open Road Kindle eBook edition (2012) of the Amereon Ltd. hardcover original (1965)

This was quite an unorthodox book in the crime/mystery genre for several reasons. The culprit(s) are revealed quite early, but everyone is oblivious as to how twisted they are, except for the heroine investigator Edie. Edie takes it upon herself to not only shield the main suspect, but to also solve the crime of an attempted murder in the mansion of her relatives the Whitmans. The title room only comes into it because that is where she is hiding the suspect. The police are at first reluctant to believe her explanations, but finally the craziness will out and all is revealed.

See cover image at https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/...
The front cover of the original 1965 Amereon Ltd. hardcover edition. Image sourced from Goodreads.

I was perhaps not as taken with The Turret Room as my GR friend Sportyrod, so I encourage you to read his 5-star review.

I discovered The Turret Room by Charlotte Armstrong from reading Christopher Fowler's excellent The Book of Forgotten Authors (2017) which I recently reviewed and rated as Five Stars. Charlotte Armstrong is the 2nd of the "Forgotten Authors" that I have investigated after first reading books by Gladys Mitchell.

Fowler describes Armstrong's style as follows:

She had abandoned a detective series to start this new style of writing, which largely avoids the whodunnit angle to portray women locked in psychological warfare with the members of their extended families and male-dominated workforces. Naturally she deals with stereotypes of the time, but the thrill comes in seeing her constrained protagonists gradually become empowered.

Trivia and Links
The Turret Room was not adapted for film, but several other Charlotte Armstrong books were. She also wrote for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television program.

Fowler cites her book Mischief (1951) which was adapted as the 1952 film Don't Bother to Knock directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring Richard Widmark and Marilyn Monroe. Two French movies by director Claude Chabrol were based on books by Armstrong. These were Merci pour le Chocolat (2000), based on The Chocolate Cobweb (1948)) and La Rupture (1970) based on The Balloon Man (1968).

Fowler also recommends Armstrong's Night Call and Other Stories of Suspense for both the title story and The Other Shoe.… (more)

[The Chocolate Cobweb] begins as a "switched-at-birth" mystery, but morphs into something far more sinister. A Mrs. Garth and a Mrs. Garrison each give birth to a baby, virtually at the same time and in the same hospital. Husbands arrive, and each is shown a newborn. But Mrs. Garth recalls being shown a baby girl in the delivery room, not the baby boy presented to Mr. Garth. He asks questions, of course, and the mixup is resolved amicably with the girl baby going home with the Garths and the boy baby going with the Garrisons.

Jump ahead 23 years, and for the first time Mandy Garth is told about the baby switch by a gabby relative. Astonished, Mandy wants to decide for herself whether these Garrisons are really her parents. Maybe? Tobias Garrison is a much admired and prosperous painter. Mandy has artistic aspirations. Hmmm, where did that come from? After visiting a showing of his art and actually seeing the artist and his wife and son, she is provoked to make the artist's acquaintance. And she does. Toby Garrison is smitten and invites her to stay for several days so he can tutor her in his studio. During the visit she finds Ione, Garrison's wife, a bit of a cold fish and a sneak. Thone, the son, is cranky, distant, but very attractive. But trouble is in the air.

What's going to happen?… (more)

One chapter in, and I was already dreading the rest of the book, with the setup of the main character and their access to Chekov's Gun, if you will, leading me to believe I already knew where all of this was going. The weapon of choice is in the title of the novel, after all.

Or is it?

I'm glad I ignored my instincts and forged ahead, for A Dram of Poison turns out to be so much more than the dry whodunit it's false start implies, and instead evolves into a bizarre existential road movie, a strange cross between Agatha Christie and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I won't even discuss the plot out of fear of spoiling... not any obscure plot twist, but the slow revelation of personalities and situations that completely endear every eclectic character that jumps on as the story barrels towards the inevitable conclusion.

This is a book with feels, and it earns your trust as it entertains. For the life of me, I can't understand how this has not been adapted to the screen yet. As far as I can tell, Charlotte Armstrong has had many works adapted to film and television, but the best A Dram of Poison was an episode of an old Playhouse episode most likely lost to time. Seriously, if you enjoy caring about the characters you read, and don't mind some philosophical soul-searching mixed in with your mystery, you can't pass this one up.… (more)