Mailer has clearly taken the mystery story as the model for his novel. It is his only work of fiction in which suspense plays a key part and the perpetrator of a crime must be discovered through detective work. As in a traditional mystery, each chapter thickens the atmosphere of ambiguity and at the same time provides several clues that hint at a solution to the crimes. The reader is faced with several questions: Did the same person kill both women?

What was Madden's role in these murders? What exactly is Regency's interest in the case? Several vital facts are withheld from both Madden and the reader until late in the novel — such as Regency's affair with Patty Lareine and his marriage to Madden's former flame, Madeleine Falco.

Mailer departs from the traditional constraints of the murder mystery in his narrator's digressions into...