Jane Stanton Hitchcock

It's been a while since I read an obituary so full of head-shaking, sparkling tidbits as are in the recent NYT obituary headlined: "Jane Stanton Hitchcock, Novelist Who Razed the Ritzy, Dies at 78."

You can almost bet that anyone whose name is composed of two surnames (with no obvious ethnic giveaways other than you figure their family was wealthy) that they went to private schools. So it is with no surprise to read later on in the obit that Ms. Stanton Hitchcock attended the Brearley School in Manhattan, the Wheeler School in Providence R.I. and Sarah Lawrence College, graduating in 1968."

Right from the lede, we start to feel the what a special person Ms. Stanton Hitchcock was...."a daughter of privilege who skewered the foibles of her tribe..."

Mr. Stanton Hitchcock "grew up in Manhattan at 10 Gracie Square, a blue-chip co-op on the East River that was once home to Gloria Vanderbilt, Brooke Astor and other New York society figures." [Beekman Place ain't bad either.] 

The obiturist for Ms. Stanton Hitchcock, Ms. Penelope Green, is so full of what might be inside information, that one wonders if she herself was not invited to some of the family's dinner parties that Jane grew up with that saw Leonard Bernstein take over the living room piano (he always took over the piano).

Jane gets a 19-gun salute with six columns, top of an obit page, two medium size photos, as well as three! reproductions of book covers for some of the many crime novels she wrote..."addictive" according to Ms. Green. (I ordered one, "Bluff.")

"A tart observer and professional wit (did she get paid for cracking wise in an elevator?)...it wasn't until she began mixing social satire with murder that she found her voice." 

This proved that crime can pay well if the stories sell well, which they did. Her last effort, "Bluff,"  published in 2019, is about a "56-year-old socialite (you can make yourself younger) turned poker player who sets out to murder the celebrity accountant who has stolen money from her family."

This is a thinly veiled personal account of her turning into a tournament poker player in real life, and making sure the celebrity accountant who stole money from her mother (and others) was taken to criminal court.

In real life, the mother's gardener tipped off Jane that the accountant was siphoning money off from the mother. It took Jane some time to convince her mother that she was getting duped, and even more time to gain an indictment and a trial against the accountant. But Jane was tenacious.

I don't know all the details of the book, but in real life the accountant was found guilty and received a seven and a half years sentence. The prosecutors asked for a 12-year sentence, but the judge felt some sympathy for the defendant and argued for the lighter sentence saying that  his victims were all well off and that Mr. Starr had lost his moral compass because of his affection for his fourth wife, a former pole dancer. I kid you not. It's in the obit.

That has to be perhaps the only time that a gentlemen's club dancer was instrumental in achieving a lighter sentence for their husband.

I regret never having met Ms. Jane Stanton Hitchcock, but given her described social circles and pursuit of poker, it's understandable why I never did.

My father would have said, "she was quite a gal."

http://www.onofframp,blogspot.com