Murder in Mount Holly is set at that time in
American history when Lyndon Johnson was having
trouble with his gall bladder. It was incidentally
the same time that Herbie Gneiss was forced to leave
college and made to work at the Kant-Brake toy
factory (manufacturers of war toys for children) in
order to keep his fifteen-stone widowed mother from
starvation. Mr. Gibbon, veteran of three wars, also
works at Kant-Brake; when Herbie is drafted into the
army, Mr. Gibbon falls in love with Herbie’s mother
and persuades her to live with him in Miss Ball’s
rooming house. Because Herbie is fighting nobly for
his country, Mr. Gibbon feels that he, Miss Ball and
Mrs. Gneiss should do something patriotic as well.
They decide to rob the Mount Holly Trust Company
because it is managed by a small dark man who is ...
probably a communist. There are complications: Miss
Ball’s Puerto Rican lover, Juan (“Warren”); Mrs.
Gneiss’s inertia; several necessary murders;
Herbie’s death in action; and, of course, the
difficulty of three people over sixty executing a
daylight bank robbery. But none of these
complications prevents the old threesome from seeing
their mission through to the end. They triumph,
striking a blow for old age and for ... America,
proving the words of two commentators on the
American scene, the poet e. e. cummings, who said
“The pigpen is mightier than the sword,” and the
militant H. Rap Brown, who will be remembered for
saying, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” |
