The Trouble in Room 519 - by Thomas Aiello (Paperback)

About the Book

"At around seven o'clock in the evening on May 7, 1950, Gordon Malherbe Hillman filled an empty bottle with water, capped it, then walked into his mother's room in the pair's fifth-floor suite at Boston's luxurious Copley Plaza Hotel. He walked up behind her and bludgeoned her to death. The pair was scheduled for eviction the next day due to several weeks of unpaid rent. Mounting debts had finally broken the fifty-year-old author, but it had not always been that way, as Thomas Aiello shows in his study of the life and work of this forgotten figure. As a youth, Hillman attended the prestigious Noble and Greenough School near Boston. Pursuing a career as a writer, he published several dozen short stories and a critically acclaimed novel, Fortune's Cup (1941). Hollywood studios purchased the rights to two of his stories and made them into films, The Great Man Votes (1939) and Here I Am a Stranger (1940). But Hillman remained, for the most part, a middling magazine writer, as were the majority of working fiction writers from the 1920s to the 1940s. Although most authors did not delve into mania and ultimately kill their mothers, Hillman's tremulous position in literary circles, along with his gradual decline into financial ruin, is far more common than the stories of literary success often poured over by critics and historians. The Trouble in Room 519 tells Hillman's story, examining his writing as exemplary of Depression-era popular fiction and of his declining mental state. Aiello explores the economics of magazine fiction and the strains placed on authors by the publishing industry prior to World War II, while also telling a compelling true crime narrative. The book reprints eight stories written by Hillman and originally published in prominent midcentury American magazines, including Collier's, Liberty, and McCall's"--

Book Synopsis

At approximately seven o'clock in the evening on May 7, 1950, Gordon Malherbe Hillman filled an empty bottle with water, capped it, and walked into his mother's room in the pair's fifth-floor suite at Boston's luxurious Copley Plaza Hotel. He then edged up behind the semi-invalid woman and bludgeoned her to death. Hotel staff had planned to evict the two the following day after several weeks of unpaid rent. Mounting debts had finally broken the fifty-year-old Hillman, a now-struggling author of mixed success, but it had not always been that way, as Thomas Aiello shows in his study of the life and work of this forgotten midcentury figure.

As a youth, Hillman attended the prestigious Noble and Greenough School near Boston. Pursuing a career as a writer, he published several dozen pieces of short fiction and a critically acclaimed novel, Fortune's Cup (1941). Hollywood studios purchased the rights to two of his stories and made them into films, The Great Man Votes (1939) and Here I Am a Stranger (1940). But Hillman remained, for the most part, a middling magazine writer like the majority of fiction authors working during the Depression. Although most did not resort to acts of manic violence, Hillman's tenuous position in literary circles, along with his gradual descent into financial ruin, proved a far more common tale than the stories of literary success often pored over by critics and historians of this period.

In The Trouble in Room 519: Money, Matricide, and Marginal Fiction in the Early Twentieth Century, Aiello weaves a compelling true crime narrative into his exploration of the economics of magazine fiction and the strains placed on authors by the publishing industry prior to World War II. Examining Hillman's writing as exemplary of Depression-era popular fiction, Aiello includes eight stories written by Hillman and originally published in prominent midcentury American magazines, including Collier's, Liberty, and McCall's, to provide additional context and insight into this trying time and tragic life.

About the Author

Thomas Aiello, a professor of history and African American studies at Valdosta State University, is the author of more than a dozen books, including Jim Crow's Last Stand: Nonunanimous Criminal Jury Verdicts in Louisiana.