The Brownout Murders
A True Crime Graphic Novel, Set in 1942
A woman and her sisters navigate wartime life with a serial killer on the loose in the gripping graphic novel The Brownout Murders.
In Melbourne, Australia, the threat of Japanese invasion looms and a brownout is ordered to dim the night lights. Beatrice volunteers as an air-raid warden while her sister June works as a telephone operator. Their other sister, Lizzie, gets to know some of the American GIs stationed in Australia, among whose ranks a killer lurks. After two women are murdered, a friend of Lizzie’s survives a close encounter with the killer, setting in motion his capture. Beatrice is stunned when she recognizes the murderer as a man with whom she had a brief personal connection.
Beatrice narrates, exposing her inner turmoil. Thoughtful historical commentary on the role of women comes in: A romantic prospect comments that Beatrice and her sisters will be okay because, unlike the victims, they are “girls who avoid undue risk.” Beatrice reflects on this blaming of the victims, thinking “what made me angry … was my own silence.” The black-and-white art sets the mood for night scenes and other haunting images. In one memorable scene, a mannequin is dressed in a victim’s clothes and displayed in public to draw forth witnesses.
The Brownout Murders is a tense graphic novel that illuminates misogynistic social attitudes toward women in the 1940s.
Reviewed by
Peter Dabbene
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