La piedra iluminada

This is the dark memoir of a young murderess who shares a mansion with her fatherthe Maimed Onebut lives alone in that part of it she calls the Greenhouse. An incomparable beauty, she more than once entices a man to a homicidal "soiree" at which she slits his throat with a razor while he is in the midst of orgasm. She gives no hint of her reaction to the speculation of S---, an amateur detective whose fascination with the murders provides the novel's only element of suspense. Her own thoughts, invariably in interrogative form, may lead the reader to wonder in turn: Is there no relief from this decadence?

- L. M. Lewis, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond