Review: "Battered Spouse" by Jeremiah Healy

“Battered Spouse” by Jeremiah Healy from The Concise Cuddy, Crippen & Landru, 1998   “Battered Spouse”—which was originally published in the Fall 1990 issue of Armchair Detective—is Jeremiah Healy’s fifth published John Frances Cuddy short story. Mona Gage’s husband, Kyle, was killed in a hit-and-run accident while jogging six days earlier on a quiet country road. Three men witnessed the accident but none were able to identify the car beyond the general make and model. The police investigation has gone cold and Mona wants Cuddy to revive it with some private sleuthing. Cuddy does what Cuddy does and he interviews everyone involved—the witnesses, Kyle’s boss, and a few others the police missed—and discovers a thread that ultimately leads him to the killer. “Battered Spouse” is a solid whodunit that should have been easier to solve than it was (for this reader, at least) because the clues were well-placed and the situation, after reading the conclusion, should have made it obvious. But that’s what makes any whodunit good—the reader kicking himself for not seeing the culprit before they’re revealed on the page. Healy’s matter-of-fact style and Cuddy’s likable mannerisms make the narrative easy-to-read. The climactic ending had a perfectly ironic twist that was one part funny and two parts surprising. “Battered Spouse” is easily the best of the four or five Cuddy shorts I’ve read so far. “Battered Spouse” was nominated for the Private Eye Writers of America’s 1991 Shamus Award for best short story, but it lost out to Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone tale, “Final Resting Place.”

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