reviewed by Russel D McLean
It’s easy to see why Andrew Klavan’s “Her Lord and Master” was a hard sell when it was first written. Sex and violence, even in the world of crime fiction, are tough subjects, especially when they intersect so clearly and in such a morally ambiguous fashion as in this Edgar Nominated story.
Klavan’s clear, understated prose only adds to the unsettling nature of this story, which starts by telling us we have no more taboos and then proceeds to confront perhaps one of the few still remaining.
Sex and violence.
Consensual (?) sex and violence.
At first, Klavan makes the idea sound ridiculous as our narrator tells us how two of his co-workers got together and how his friend – and we know up front he’s going to die, even if we’re not sure why – is shocked when his new lover shows a proclivity for the rough stuff. “Our Susan enjoyed,” our narrator says, with a kind of blackly-comic understatement that shortly becomes more chilling than amusing, “the occasional smack with her rumpty-tumpty.”
Indeed, Klavan’s narrative voice is concise, pointed and perfectly poised throughout. As the story progresses, we come to be unsettled not only at the tales our narrator is told by his colleague, but at his – in his own words – prurient reaction to these stories of sex and violence, and how his friend allows himself to be pulled into dark and unsettling rituals. As the lines between sex and violence, between consensual and non-consensual blur, Klavan employs a classic femme-fatale archetype to twist the tale into classic noir territory. The last few paragraphs are as morally ambiguous as the best classic noir and yet with a modern bluntness that brings their true meanings into sharp relief as the reader’s expectations and preconceptions are played with in disturbing fashion.
It’s a brutal, effective story – if not a conventional or easy read – that boldly and directly confronts the moral ambiguity of guilt and innocence, and our perceptions of the black and white nature of responsibility. The final twist might feel uncomfortable to many – and indeed one might argue there is a strange air of cliché in the femme-fatale element – but it makes the point that sometimes no one is as innocent as they appear, and succeeds in leaving the reader uncertain in their own convictions. Like the best noir, “Her Lord And Master” digs its claws deep into the ordinary person and uncovers a black and twisted horror hidden beneath the conventions of every-day life.
Russel D. McLean is a part of the Do Some Damage blogging crew and is the author of The Good Son and The Lost Sister.
Great start to the series. I’d never heard of this story.