THE HORIZONTAL MAN by Helen Eustis won the 1947 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. This unsettling psychological mystery combines suspense and a groundbreaking exploration of mental illness in mid-century crime fiction.
When a charismatic English professor is murdered at an Ivy League women’s college, a love-struck freshman confesses — though no one truly believes she’s guilty. So who committed the murder? Was it simply a random killing? As the investigation unfolds, the line between sanity and madness begins to blur.
Opening Impressions
What were your overall impressions of The Horizontal Man?
Charles Finch argues that the book is simultaneously a classical whodunit, psychological novel, campus satire, feminist novel, and literary experiment. Do you agree?
Like Vera Caspary in Laura, Helen Eustis plays with point of view. Writing in the third person, she relates the events after the murder from the perspectives of students, professors, a reporter, the college president, and a psychiatrist. Did this structure increase suspense or make the story harder to follow?
Would you call The Horizontal Man a mystery first or something else entirely?
Helen Eustis
This was Helen Eustis’s only detective novel. Does it surprise you that someone could write a single mystery and produce something this distinctive?
Critics have described the book as a roman à clef, with Kevin Boyle modeled in part on Helen Eustis’s first husband, an English professor. Does that biographical context affect how you read the novel?
Charles Finch notes that the author bio of his old Penguin edition of The Horizontal Man states: “Helen Eustis began writing at eleven and has kept it up to the present day except for a brief period of schizophrenia when she tried to devote herself to housewifery rather more extensively than was compatible with her abilities in that field.” Does this detail affect how your reading of the book?
The Murder of Kevin Boyle
Kevin Boyle dies on page two, yet he dominates the novel long after he’s gone. Why?
One mystery Carolyn found especially interesting is Kevin Boyle himself. Stanislaus the bartender never actually saw Kevin with women, and Leonard may have exaggerated his romantic exploits. Was he really an irresistible womanizer, or did he cultivate that image?
Why does every character seem to project a different version of Kevin Boyle? Is he ever fully knowable, or is he intentionally constructed as a collection of other people’s fantasies?
Hollymount College
Hollymount College almost feels like a character in the story. Why do you think Helen Eustis chose an elite women’s college as her setting, and how does the campus shape the novel?
Unlike Oxford in Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop, Hollymount feels claustrophobic and emotionally oppressive. What creates that atmosphere?
Nearly everyone on campus seems lonely, anxious, ambitious, or emotionally damaged. Why are nearly all the characters emotionally isolated?
Molly Morrison
Molly initially appears to be the obvious suspect. How does your opinion of her change throughout the novel?
Molly’s relationship with her parents, especially her mother, is heartbreaking. Dr. Forstmann argues that suffering doesn’t purify people, it scars them. Is that one of the novel’s central themes?
What do you think becomes of Molly after the novel ends? Will Hollymount and society as a whole ever really give someone like Molly a second chance?
Freda Cramm and Leonard Marks
What did you make of Freda Cramm? Is she a femme fatale, a proto-feminist, or … what?
Charles Finch argues that Leonard mistakes female strength for madness when confronting Freda. Did you read that scene the same way?
Freda delivers one of the novel’s most memorable speeches about violence, detective fiction, and murder. What do you make of her argument that readers secretly enjoy both crime and punishment?
Freda herself remains something of a mystery, particularly her concern over the “begging letter” in Kevin’s apartment. Does Helen Eustis deliberately keep Freda unknowable?
Leonard is one of the saddest characters in the novel. Why is Leonard invisible to almost everyone around him until Kevin dies? Is he simply awkward, or is he emotionally stunted? Did you pity him?
George Hungerford
What was your reaction to George Hungerford? Did you find him sympathetic?
Did you find George’s journal entries to be creepy and creepily effective? What did you think was going on with the mysterious journal entries?
Do you think modern readers respond differently to George than readers in 1946?
Kate Innes and Jack Donnelly
Kate and Jack provide relief from the novel’s psychological darkness. How would you describe their relationship?
Jack initially thinks of Kate as “Fatty.” Were you put off by his treatment of her? Does Jack become a more sympathetic character as the novel progresses?
What story was Helen Eustis trying to tell through Kate and Jack? Is their romance about intelligence? Humor? Mutual respect? Or does it still reflect conventional gender expectations?
Psychology and Mental Illness
Freud, Kafka, Jekyll and Hyde, psychoanalysis, schizophrenia, repression, paranoia – does the book suggest that repression inevitably produces violence? What does the book suggest about parents and, perhaps more particularly, mothers?
Does Helen Eustis seem genuinely interested in mental illness, or is she primarily using it as a mystery device? Does the novel treat mental illness compassionately?
Looking back nearly 80 years later, which aspects of the psychological material feel very much of their time and which still hold up?
Fair Play and the Solution
Anthony Boucher praised the ending as one of the cleverest examples of fair play since The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Do you agree?
In the opening chapter, the narrator appears to channel Kevin Boyle’s thoughts, referring to the murderer simply as “she.” Can you picture Kevin thinking of George Hungerford as “she”? Is this fair play, or is Helen Eustis cheating? Would the opening have been fairer play had Helen Eustis written from Eloise’s point of view instead?
Many of the red herrings are resolved about halfway through the novel. Did that lessen the suspense for you? At what point did you know what was really happening in the novel?
Modern readers may guess the solution earlier because we’re more familiar with psychological twists. Helen Eustis scatters clues about George Hungerford throughout the novel. Might readers in 1946 have been genuinely shocked?
A “Third Sex”
President Bainbridge tells Kate that Hollymount has created “a third sex.” What does that reveal about attitudes toward educated women?
Honey ends the novel repeating conventional wisdom about women not thinking too much. Why do you think Helen Eustis ended the book on that note?
Does the novel criticize traditional expectations placed on women?
Which female character in The Horizontal Man feels most modern today?
Closing Thoughts
EPIGRAPH
Let us honor if we can
The vertical man
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.
W.H. Auden
What do you think the title The Horizontal Man ultimately means?
Did you find the ending emotionally satisfying?
The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis won the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery. How does it compare with Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop (another campus mystery published the same year) or Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers?
Why do you think The Horizontal Man continues to appear on lists of classic crime fiction nearly 80 years later?
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