The Horror at Red Hook
risiblezombie for Cornelia Gerritsen
Cornelia Gerritsen is 25, beautiful, and sharper than she lets on. She presents herself as a vulnerable socialite concerned for her invalid mother, but there’s an edge beneath her charm, a greed and desperation she tries to hide under perfume and practiced tears. She hires Malone to investigate her second cousin, Robert Suydam, claiming worry over his mental state and control of the family trust. Whether or not she truly cares about her mother’s wellbeing is left ambiguous.
Cornelia is a classic noir femme fatale, seductive, manipulative, and ultimately doomed. She may feel some real connection to Malone, but her self-preservation instincts always win out. When she gets pulled deeper into Suydam’s web, her flirtations and schemes prove powerless against cosmic forces far beyond her understanding. Her death is swift, brutal, and final, a tragic end for someone who thought she could play every angle. Classic femme fatale
- american
- female young adult
- Lana Turner
- Femme Fatale
- Mary Astor
CORNELIA (warm, subtly seductive): Detective Malone? Cornelia Gerritsen, I called earlier. Thank you for seeing me. Your office is... honest. Not like I imagined, somehow I was expecting polished chrome and gleaming filing cabinets.
CORNELIA: He has let himself go, detective; his grooming, his clothing—he looks like a tramp. He lives alone, well, practically alone, in that decaying mansion of his. It’s him and that dreadful butler. Worst of all, he has taken up with unsavory types in Red Hook. People who... who shouldn’t be trusted, immigrants, criminals involved in...who knows what.
CORNELIA (soft, eyes glistening): Then you don’t know what it’s like. Watching your mother wither away while the money meant to save her goes into the pockets of fanatics and foreign thugs. He’s our only family, Mr. Malone. I thought you might understand what that means.
