Mischief

Crime fiction has many shapes. Taking Charlotte Armstrong's Mischief as an example - the entirety of the novel's action takes place in and around an adjoined hotel room where an absolutely unhinged woman is babysitting a 9-year-old girl. A series of missed connections and coincidences result in potentially the worst possible thing happening to a loving, pointedly positive family. Whether or not it happens is the core of Mischief's tension.
Part of what impresses so much about this tension is that it is pulled off with a minimum of on-page violence or grotesquery. Much of Armstrong's work leans into lengthy and engaging dialogues and descriptions of facial expressions except for one knock-down prize fight in the latter half. We are so keyed into the potential “state of things” on the various fronts of the characters that the degree of suspense the novel pulls off is practically stomach-wrenching at times. Filmed as Don't Bother to Knock with Marilyn Monroe, Mischief has aged remarkably well.