The Marx Sisters
By Barry Maitland
Allen & Unwin, 2000, 315pp, $14.95 (pb)
Review by Phil Shannon
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/22530
Eleanor, Meredith and Peg possess something unique and quite valuable, something which greedy, unscrupulous rogues would kill for. The three sisters, great grand-daughters of Karl Marx through Marx's illegitimate son Freddy, are sitting on an historical treasure in the inner-city of London — the mysterious fourth volume of Capital.
Capital Vol. 4 was meant to crown the life-work of Marx. However, he never got around to writing it but, for the sake of the plot in Barry Maitland's recently published novel, it turns up, much to everyone's surprise.
Surprise, too, is the order of the day, when, many plot twists later, the culprit for the murder of two of the sisters is revealed.
The suspects are many — a property developer who is anxious to buy up all the residences of Jerusalem Lane where the sisters live but is frustrated by their refusal to sell; the son of one of the sisters who is over his head in debt and desperate to inherit the property so he can sell it; an architect also in need of money who discovers the valuable manuscripts; and a Princeton academic of economic history keen to revive her sagging career by getting her hands on the lost volume of Capital, not to mention former Nazi collaborators from Poland who fear their past being exposed by the sisters.
Or perhaps the culprits are from left-field, so to speak, from the sisters themselves — Peg, an orthodox Stalinist, or Eleanor, a non-Stalinist Marxist, or Meredith, an "apolitical petit-bourgeois"?
The answer will surprise, though not convince, just as the novel will engage but not satisfy.
The intricate plot is competently weaved but, given its subject matter, the chance of a profound novel of ideas and politics is sadly passed up. Marx and his descendants, and the history of 20th century Marxism, are but props to hang a plot on — Capital Vol. 4 may as well have been a Maltese falcon or a stash of diamonds.
Hammett or Chandler, it ain't — the thematic potential of the corrupting evils of wealth remains underdeveloped in this novel by Maitland (Australian crime novelist and professor of architecture at the University of Newcastle), a novel which also lacks the brooding menace of Chandler at his best.
Part of the problem lies with the police detectives, Sergeant Kathy Kolla and DCI Brock, rather thin stereotypes who could have walked straight out of a British TV cop series. The novel is worth full marks for the puzzle of the plot but, alas, few Marx for its political punch.