From 1999 till 2004, a renowned NYC writer named Bob Reiss took the pseudonym of Ethan Black and wrote five of the best detective mysteries ever. All featured, as the hero, a detective named Conrad Voort, who was not only good looking, but from a wealthy aristocratic Dutch family of lawmakers that went back several generations. But what distinguished the books were his perpetrators, often people in situations one could feel sorry for. So, one felt as bad for the killers as their victims.
Two of the most haunting perps in the series were Nora Clay, in 2,00's "Irresistible" and Wendall Nye in 2003's "Dead For Life." Today I shall focus on Nora.
I must warn you. This discussion will include spoilers, so if you have any intention of reading this novel, stop here!
Nora had it all, sort of. She was raised in the town of New Thames, Massachusetts. Her mother, Edith, provided comfortably for them both. While they did not live in the town's best section, they were not exactly on the wrong side of the tracks. And certainly, far from Goat Alley!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nora was attractive and talented, with a flair for acting, having received praise for portraying Laura in a high school production of "The Glass Menagerie." But on a summer day in August, all that changed.
Having finished helping her mother with the day care, she rides off on a bicycle to meet her friend, Harriet, at Revere State Park, for a swim in the lake. Unfortunately, and with no explanation given, Harriet never shows up.
Elsewhere, Nora discovers a group of boys high school age putting the make on one of the local cheerleaders. Now, girls, we all know how notoriously cheap they can be, but this girl has integrity, and sense, and makes off, fighting with words, without the boys laying a hand on her.
Now, Nora is just 13, and as discovered she has not yet ovulated, nor has any idea what being pregnant means. Thinking herself blissfully alone, Nora gets out of her dress clothes, stripping down to a bathing suit underneath. She swims out to a diving raft in the lake, where she suns herself, and doses off.
It is when she awakens that the nightmare begins. Standing over her, leeringly, are four high school boys--Will Green, son of the high school principal, Joshua Low and Roger Trumbull, both from the town's more affluent families, and Curt Maze, son of the town's deputy police chief. They mock and leer at Norma, determined to unload all their pent-up anger and lust on her. She makes it off the raft, and swims to shore, where she finds her clothes and bicycle gone, taken by guess who. She runs, searching for the bike, and the boys follow. In brutal fashion they hold her down, and, one by one, gang rape her, leaving her hurt and bleeding.
Nora makes it home. But what happens next is that Nora does not receive legal justice, but the justice of small-town hypocrisy.
While the boys' families are appalled by what their sons did, they do not want this to ruin their futures. So they approach Edith with a plan. As restitution the boys will work for Edith, and the boys' uncles too, assisting in whatever housework is needed. Edith says it is up to Nora, but the child understands her selfish, garrulous mother, wants the work done, thinking that it is enough justice, but it is not. Nora is not happy, and simmers in anger at the boys. But soon she starts displaying symptoms of pregnancy, and this is where she and her mother part ways.
Edith wants her daughter to abort the baby. The father is never revealed. Two of the boys move away, and the others do their chores and keep their distance. Even when the two boys move, checks keep coming to Edith. Nora wants to have the baby, but her mother, using small town hypocrisy, talks her into having an abortion.
Years later, Nora meets and dates a man she feels is right for her. Except she discovers that, back in New Thames, the abortionist botched the job, so now she can never have children. Her fiancé abandons her.
By age fifteen, Nora has had it with her mother and New Thames. So, she heads for NYC, and makes it as a transcriber, working from home. The novel takes up eight years later, when Nora is twenty-three, and receives a note from her mother, dying, who says--NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!--"Darling, you were right!"
Nora is filled with rage and anger. She sees a therapist but is betrayed when he comes on to her. She then becomes a serial murderess. But instead of going after her mother--from whom she is estranged--or the boys and their families, Nora, who transcribes for an abortion clinic, goes after men who impregnated women and forced them to have abortions in the first place.
Eventually, Nora comes to discover, through Conrad Voort, that she has been killing for the wrong reasons. Nora is eventually caught, but not harmed; before the law can do anything, she kills herself, fitfully out of guilt and remorse, in front of Voort and colleagues in the lobby of an apartment building.
Poor Nora got no justice of her own. And even though she died by suicide the lack of justice ended up killing her. If I had been Nora, I would have charged the boys and their families, ruining all their lives. I would have taken Nora's mother to court, charging her with child negligence and endangerment. That was the justice Nora deserved.
Serial killers are not born but made. Nora did not have to become one. But the circumstances around her, and how wrongfully they were handled transformed the anger she had no place to project it into projecting it wrongly as a serial killer.
I pray no girls ever go through what Nora did.
But, darlings, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
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