As part of my recent thought-experiment on Oates’s “Americanness,” I’ve decided to read the several unread JCO books I already own. I read the first two novels in the so-called Gothic Saga too many years ago to remember and I eventually bought its last two books, so I’d remember to read them. Because I have no Goodreads reviews to remind me, I’ve forgotten too much about the first two, though an atmosphere lingers.

Mysteries of Winterthurn takes place in the late-nineteenth into the early-twentieth century. By writing of the (violent, even gory) horror under the surface of a New York village, of what’s exploited and hidden by prominent families, of the community’s rush to judgment and the willingness of the authorities to put the blame on “others,” Oates is commenting on more recent times as well.

Detective Xavier Kilgarvan, a Sherlock Holmes without a Watson, has an existential, philosophical bent. His obsessive love interest, Perdita, being a younger (half-) cousin reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe, whose fictional detective C. Auguste Dupin is also being invoked. I particularly enjoyed a conversation between the cousins when they are in their mid-to-late twenties, her “feminist” chastising of him and his bewildered, clueless responses. By the end of the book, I too was obsessed with Perdita.

In keeping with the Gothic/sensation genre, the writing style is ornate and breathless, though a bit less so when the sometimes-clueless, sometimes-repetitive narrator (a dabbler in unsolved true-crime) adds his prefaces and epilogues. I’m left wondering why I don’t mind JCO’s penchant for exclamation marks, though I’m on record for disliking such a surfeit with other writers.

I was proud of myself for remembering an odd detail from the beginning (it’s a long book!) that might be a clue to the last “mystery.” Oates is always thought-provoking—and I had a lot of thoughts with this one.