Today's post discusses Lane Kauffman's novel The Perfectionist. It's an inverted mystery in which a killer tries to work out which of his social circle is blackmailing him. It won him the 1956 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel, but is it really a great work of mystery fiction?
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Lane Kauffman's The Perfectionist is a title that will likely be unknown to most people reading this blog. If you have heard of it, the likely reason is you're familiar with the titles of 1950s winners of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel. I wonder though if knowing it won that award sets up expectations that the book isn't really interested in meeting...
