The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Two Murders in My Double Life by Josef SkvoreckyChristy Post
Josef Skvorecky. Two Murders in My Double Life. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001. 175 pp. $22.00.
Josef Skvorecky’s new novel is playful in form, pitting two story lines against each other to create effects at once tragic and comic, disturbing and absurd. As the novel opens the reader is introduced to the first story line: a murder mystery set against the backdrop of academic politics and pettiness at the fictional Evandale College, where the narrator, a Czech exile, teaches classes in detective-fiction writing. Dorothy Sayers, a student in the narrator’s class and a member of the campus police force, leads an investigation into the death of Raymond Hammett, a handsome womanizer whose wife teaches mathematics at Evandale. During tutorial sessions with Sayers, the narrator pumps her for information about the murder and offers his advice (using the tenets of good detective writing as a guide) for how to proceed with the investigation. Gradually he pieces together a theory of Hammett’s unfortunate demise, involving campus sweetheart Candace Quentin, a groundbreaking mathematical theory, and a colleague’s quest for academic fame and fortune. But the foundation of this novel is the second and more sober story line: a murder in the form of a character assassination that transforms this detective story into a work of serious literary fiction. The story here revolves around the narrator’s wife Sidonia and "the List" published by the Czech magazine Kill Kommunism!, which accuses her of providing information to the communist secret police. Sidonia is devastated by the accusation, and she enters a downward spiral of alcoholism and depression as she fights to clear her name. By juxtaposing the events at Evandale with the more serious consequences of Sidonia’s plight, kvoreck… emphasizes the difference between the death of a body and the more serious consequences of the murder of a soul. Two Murders in My Double Life is witty and compelling to the end, a very smart, funny, and utterly engrossing book. [Christy Post]