The Boy at the Keyhole is a psychological mystery about a nine-year-old boy and the housekeeper who is looking after him. Set in the UK in the past, maybe the 1950s, it presents a rather bleak picture of Samuel’s life as he pines for his missing mother. She has gone away, and she left in the middle of the night, so he didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to her. He has been on his own being taken care of by Ruth, and he is very unhappy because he misses his mother. He looks for clues about where she is. Ruth tells him that she has gone to America for business, but he is suspicious. He gets postcards from his mother telling him about her travels, which he treasures, but he starts to wonder if she really wrote them. He even wonders whether his mother is really in America. He vents his anger on Ruth and sometimes suspects that she is telling him a lot of lies. Sam goes through whatever he can find in the house and starts to uncover secrets about his parents’ life together before his father died. Sam doesn’t always understand what he finds, but the reader learns that his mother is not enthusiastic about her motherly role. It also is clear that the money is running out and Ruth is having a hard time keeping the household going. So it isn’t clear whether Sam is just being neurotic or whether he is on to something. It seems that the story he is being told doesn’t completely fit together. Sam refuses to be comforted by Ruth’s assurances and gets increasingly agitated the longer his mother is away. He engages in defiance, feeling vulnerable and angry about his situation. Ultimately, the book does not provide any great revelation and the skill in the writing is mostly to do with sustaining the tension. It is a powerful depiction of Samuel’s restless desperation. The unabridged audiobook performed by Joel Froomkin is consistently tense, making Samuel’s sorry situation vivid.

© 2019 Christian Perring

Christian Perring teaches in NYC.