We All Killed Grandma by Fredric Brown

"I feel sorry for Arch.  I feel sorry for anybody who could love money enough to do a thing like that to get money."

As we saw in the last episode of MPorcius Fiction Log, in 1980 Barry Malzberg was worried that Fredric Brown was being forgotten, less than a decade after his death.  Let's do a little something to allay the fears of the Sage of Teaneck and read Brown's 1952 novel We All Killed Grandma.  I recently purchased at Antiques Crossroads in Hagerstown, MD, for one solitary dollar, a copy of a Bantam Books paperback edition of the novel, I believe printed in 1953.  Looking at prices at ebay, I feel like $1.00 was a bargain for this book, but of course those ones are all said to be "VG" or "VG+," while my copy is "~FA": more or less falling apart.

We All Killed Grandma is one of those stories in which the narrator has amnesia and wakes up unable to recall anything about his life, though he still can speak, read and write English and knows the stuff he learned in school, how to drive a manual transmission, and pop culture stuff.  His name is Rod Britten, and he apparently lost his memory when he went into shock upon finding the grandmother who raised him, Grandma Tuttle, murdered--he called the cops to report the crime, and when the person on the phone asked his name he realized he had forgotten it--and everything else about himself and his life previous to this moment!

As we expect in a mystery story, our narrator Rod goes hither and thither throughout the town, asking people questions and learning all about the crime and the suspects, including in this case himself--Rod has a nagging sense of unease and considers himself the prime suspect!  This sense lingers even though Rod learns that his own personality is that of a softie who is against capital punishment, hates guns, never hunts or fishes and condemns those who do.  Rod has a job at an ad agency writing copy, and was married to an attractive woman, Robin, but they got divorced just before the murder--one reason Rod suspects himself is that he was drunk at the time of the killing, presumably drowning his sorrows over being dumped--maybe he killed Grandma in some kind of drunken rage?  

Grandma Tuttle raised Rod and his half-brother, Archer.  After her husband died she got into the real estate business and was a tireless worker, becoming locally famous as a canny business woman.  Arch is a lazy guy who aspires to be a playwright and hates real work, even though he loves money, and has continued living in Grandma Tuttle's house after Rod left, and living off an allowance from Grandma, who coddled him.  Rod loves cars and has a well-maintained 1941 Lincoln coupe, and has been issued many speeding tickets; talk about cars takes up quite a bit of text of We All Killed Grandma, and is one of the ways Brown contrasts Rod with his half brother--Arch has a car but doesn't maintain it properly (he doesn't clean the spark plugs, for example) and isn't good at shifting the gears.

Arch was in Chicago when the murder took place, and a friend of Rod's, a police detective, saw Rod elsewhere in town at the time of the killing, so the cops have cleared both Rod and Arch, and are sure a burglar killed Grandma when she discovered him in her house.  They are confident of the time she was slain because when she fell her watch broke.   There are a lot of characters in this novel, among them Rod's male friends, Grandma Tuttle's next door neighbor, and the guy who is handling her estate. 

Everybody keeps telling Rod he is innocent and should relax and go see a psychiatrist to allay his worries and maybe get some help with his amnesia, but Rod refuses--he has a fear of head shrinkers he cannot quite explain, but which likely reflects a subconscious fear of learning some horrible truth.  Arch tells him to steer clear of Robin, because she'll break his heart again, but Rod doesn't take this advice, either--he can't stop thinking about Robin.  Another woman whom he dated before marrying Robin, Evangeline, a fellow employee at the ad agency, is still crazy about Rod, and throws herself at him, but Rod can't commit to her and spoils a chance to have sex with her.  (He feels her up, at least.)  

Two thirds of way into the story Arch drops a bombshell--he tells Rod that his mother (Grandma Tuttle's daughter, the second wife of Arch and Rod's father) was a mental case who committed suicide in an asylum and Rod had feared he might himself go batty himself.  This provides a possible explanation for much of what is going on; why Robin and Rod divorced, for example--Rod was scared of having kids because he feared his mother's insanity was hereditary.  Rod consults one of the male friends mentioned above, an academic who does psychological research on monkeys, on to what extent insanity is heritable.

By the last 20 or so pages of the 152-page book Rod has made real progress in figuring out what happened to him on the day of the murder, and on convincing himself he is innocent.  But his amnesia has not eased; what horrible truth is Rod's subconscious is keeping from him?  If it is not the fact that he is the murderer, what is it?

As the story has proceeded we readers have been wondering if some of the stuff people are telling Rod might not be true, might be manipulative lies.  Rod's GP exposes just such a lie Arch told Rod--Rod's mother wasn't insane and didn't commit suicide--she had a brain tumor which caused insanity-like symptoms and eventually killed her!  Rod is not genetically predisposed to insanity!  (Arch told this lie to Rod because he wanted Rod to get divorced and thus decrease the pool of people eligible to inherit Grandma Tuttle's money; if Rod had a widow, Arch would still have to split the money even if Rod predeceased him.)

Rod runs over to tell Robin they should get married again now that he is willing to have kids, but she drops a bombshell of her own--she thinks Rod killed Grandma!  But then Rod's memory returns!  The thing his subconscious didn't want him to remember, the shocking knowledge that caused his amnesia, is his belief that his beloved wife Robin killed Grandma!  Rod figures out the quite complicated series of events that led to Robin thinking Rod was the killer and to Rod thinking Robin was the killer.  And by talking to the killer--a secondary character I haven't even named--Rod figures out the rather complicated series of events which led to the murder.

You see, years ago, Grandma Tuttle discovered that a guy working for her had embezzled some of her money.  The embezzler's father got Grandma Tuttle to decline to prosecute sonny boy and to not spread the news around, but she made the embezzler sign a letter of confession, and she put it in her safe to use as blackmail--she made the father do clerical work for her for free and to pretend to be her friend.  This loving father gunned down Grandma Tuttle while trying to burgle the confession from her safe, to protect his son from the release of the damning document--Grandma Tuttle had cancer and would die soon and, if she died, the confession would be discovered by the executor of her estate and it would be revealed to the world.  

Rod doesn't believe in punishing criminals, and doesn't think killing his own grandmother was such a bad thing seeing as she was sick anyway and had devoted her time to making money and was even unkind to embezzlers, so he and Robin decide not to tell the police they have found the burglar and murderer.  (Having protected the murderer, Rod and Robin are accessories, which leads Robin to say "We all killed Grandma.")  Rod, Robin, the murderer and the embezzler all live happily ever after.  As for Arch, Rod doesn't do anything to punish him, but says he pities him because he loves money.

Mickey Spillane, whom I think of as a hardcore right-winger, is said to be a huge fan of Brown, so I was a little surprised by the center-left softie line taken by Brown here in We All Killed Grandma.  Hunting (including fishing!) is immoral.  Ordinary citizens shouldn't own firearms and resisting criminals with firearms is futile.  Capital punishment is wrong, and any sort of punishment is pointless.  Socialism and communism aren't so bad and capitalism isn't so great--really, one is little different from another.  Burglary and murder aren't such a big deal as long as you don't do them to get money, but to protect the reputation of your son who is an embezzler.  Ay, caramba.   

I guess it is a cliche to say it, but crime fiction doesn't just appeal to people who enjoy seeing criminals punished, but to people who identify with criminals and harbor fantasies of stealing from others and killing others, and there is a long tradition of mystery fiction in which the author comes up with justifications for murder, and other crimes, to cater to such bloodthirsty readers, as well as to shock--or even persuade--people with more conventional attitudes.  We All Killed Grandma is just such a story, engineered to satisfy all you people out there who savor the idea of killing business people--even old women!--or to make the case to squares that bourgeois types who pursue money don't deserve to live, are actually worse than killers and burglars.

While Brown offers readers the vicarious thrill of gunning down some rich old businesswoman, he also offers them emotional distance so they can deny to themselves their own lust for blood and their own class envy.  Neither the main character nor his wife actually pulls the trigger on the old woman, they just endorse it.  And Brown makes the entire theme of the novel the fact that caring about money is contemptible, a sign of low character; all through the novel goody-goody Rod can be seen throwing his money away, buying people meals and drinks and offering them loans and just giving them money, while money-loving Arch doesn't know how to drive or maintain his vehicle and pinches pennies.  Rod, Robin, Brown and the reader don't approve of the assassination of Grandma Tuttle because they envy her wealth--no, no, look, we don't care about money!  We don't envy people who have money, no, no, see, we pity them! 

Another thing that struck me about We All Killed Grandma is that everybody is constantly drinking, and talk about drinking and being drunk and whether a guy can write ad copy while drunk or while hung over, etc., takes up a lot of the text.  Through the entire book the narrator keeps track of how many drinks he has had and whether he is "feeling them" and calculates how many more drinks he can get in before being too drunk to function.  When Rod has to go to the office or have an important conversation or something he then takes a long walk and/or drinks cup after cup of hot coffee to sober up.  It feels like alcohol is the center of this guy's daily life!

Brown of course was a successful SF writer, and there are some noteworthy SF elements in the story.  An office worker utters the cliche about working in the salt mines but alters it to "the Venusian zilch mines."  And, when Rod still thinks he has a hereditary predisposition to insanity that he might pass on to his children, he embraces the idea that modern science could allow Robin to fertilize herself and produce a clone child.  ("Artificial fertilization--a way in which you could have your own children without me or any other man being the father.") 

(Alright, well, I've looked at We All Killed Grandma from the right-winger's perspective, the teetotaler's perspective, the SF fan's perspective, and next I'll look at it from a sort of popular literature perspective and talk about climax and catharsis and plot, but one angle I won't elaborate on, am perhaps not equipped to elaborate on (at time of writing), which probably would reward elaboration, is the feminist perspective.  It was a woman whose murder "we" are all accomplices to, after all, a woman whom we might say took on a man's role, and then there is all that business of whether the point of marriage it to have children.  One might argue this whole book is about gender roles, and how all the main characters are failing to fit them--Rod, remember, is totally uninterested in guns and hunting and competing for the big bucks, while Arch shuns labor and knows jack about autos, etc.) 

The format of We All Killed Grandma is sort of questionable--for 150 pages a guy drinks booze and has conversations with like a dozen people and in the end one of those dozen people is revealed to be the murderer, without much by way of climax or catharsis.  Am I supposed to be thrilled or satisfied to learn that some guy whose name I forgot was the killer?  Or that Grandma deserved to die because she was, as the killer puts it, "an avaricious bitch"?  I guess the "real" plot is not figuring out who the murderer is, but Rod's quest to regain his memory and rebuild his marriage, but Rod and Robin aren't (to me, anyway) likable enough characters that I cared whether they had happy endings or not, and the stuff Rod does to achieve his goals isn't very dramatic--it feels like success just falls in his lap, and that his decisive actions in the story are not doing anything, but refraining from doing something.

The characters and their motivations all make sense--they seem like real people and behave in ways that are logical given their personalities and goals--and Brown's style is good enough that the story moves along smoothly enough to its underwhelming conclusion.  The ending is disappointing and I have little sympathy with the novel's ideology, but I can't say We All Killed Grandma is bad; I was more or less enjoying the first 149 or so pages as I read them.  So "Acceptable" it is.