Book Notes: Internal Combustion by… you know

Yes, it’s a book by Joyce Maynard. What can I say, I’m hopelessly addicted.

This time I decided to try Maynard’s contribution to the true crime genre titled Internal Combustion. Maynard investigated the case of a Detroit woman who murdered her husband and pretended she had the battered woman syndrome. The jury correctly saw through her ruse and sent the vicious killer to jail for life.

As I’m telling this story, you probably think that Maynard’s position regarding this case is that the killer wife was a victim because women always are, and so on. But that’s not the case. Maynard is never predictable like that. She makes the story of a white woman who killed her white husband amongst friends and acquaintances who are white and Asian be about… black people. There are no black people in the story, so how can Maynard possibly make the book about them? Well, duh. Didn’t I mention that this happens in Detroit? And Detroit blacks were very racistly affected by the racist white people white-flighting the city because of race riots. This happened decades before the crime but still!

Maynard receives confirmation that the case she investigates is about race when she hears a rumor that in jail the murderer wife once gave a dirty look to a corrections officer. Who was black! Ray-ceesm! What else can motivate convicts to give nasty looks to their jailers?

There are fascinating aspects to the story that Maynard refuses to investigate because she’d rather prattle about the absent African Americans. The murdered husband had a very bizarre relationship with the neighbor’s wife but she was Asian, so not of interest to Maynard. Soon after completing Internal Combustion, Maynard went on to adopt and then re-gift two black girls, so we know what the consequences of her White Saviorism were.

I’m now reading the most famous Maynard novel that was turned into a movie starring Nicole Kidman. After that, I might lay off Maynard for a bit. Or not. This is too much fun to stop.