Murder, She Wrote

In May, Katharine Beutner ’03 was looking forward to attending a 20th Smith Reunion “full of book signings”—her own, that is.

Beutner’s second novel, Killingly, launched in time for Reunion-weekend book events at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley. Published by Soho Press, her novel is a fictional dive into the true-life, unsolved disappearance in 1897 of Bertha Mellish, a “peculiar, quiet” Mount Holyoke student.

Beutner, an assistant professor of English at the College of Wooster in Ohio, bills her new work as a “queer historical crime novel”—a fit for fans of Donna Tartt and Sarah Waters. Early reviews cite Killingly’s resonance as “a story of women who defy strict rules” (Kate Manning) and a book that bears “witness to the sacrifices many women have made to live—and die—authentically” (Elizabeth McKenzie).

Beutner won the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award for her first novel, Alcestis, a queer retelling of a Greek myth that she says was inspired by her major in classical studies at Smith. That book will be out in September from Soho as a reissue.

Killingly
Katherine Beutner ’03
Soho Press, June 2023

This story appears as part of the Smithies Create column in the Summer 2023 issue of the Smith Alumnae Quarterly.

Katherine Beutner ’03 describes her new book as a “queer historical crime novel.” Photograph by Alexander Cox