Romantic Suspense
Sep. 7th, 2011 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
partheniaThe kids are finally back at school and today I managed to have two coherent thoughts, one after the other. It won't last.
I've been all downcast and morbid over the last couple of days for no real reason, so I've finally switched the computer off again and continued my Mary Stewart jag. I first read her modern novels back when I was about 14. They were dated then, in a magnificent sort of way. I hung on to my Coronet paperbacks, but then they went out of print. When I was book shopping in Waterstones before our holiday, I discovered they'd all been reissued. I've been filling in the gaps ever since, and re-reading the whole lot.
Oh my. I think the genre is 'romantic suspense', but I don't remember much else in the same vein.
I'm amused by the Amazon review quotes, which very much mirror my own thoughts.
Her leading ladies and gentleman are pretty similar: the feisty (and terribly feminine) woman, the tough, masculine antihero. Her heroines love expensive, fast cars, and smoking. They quote Shakespeare a lot, or Euripides. Yet damnit, she's good. They are beautifully plotted, her sense of place is astounding, and the writing is so clear and tight.
I've been re-reading 'Nine Coaches Waiting' , still a terrific read after many re-readings. To quote one reviewer: 'When I first read it my teens,I was smitten with Raoul de Valmy and I was Linda Martin, transported to the Haute-Savoie, touched by adventure and danger.' It's a heady mix of 'Rebecca', 'Jane Eyre' and' The Thirty-Nine Steps' and every time I read it I'm terrified by the final chase.
Her best:
Madam, will you talk? (France)
Nine Coaches Waiting (French Alps. And The Revenger's Tragedy)
My Brother Michael (Greece) ('Nothing ever happens to me...' - ah Camilla Haven. Delphi.)
The Ivy Tree (Northumberland and Josephine Tey)
The Moonspinners (Crete)
This Rough Magic (Corfu. And The Tempest)
...with all the other pre-1965 novels following closely behind. I've never read her Arthurian cycle, and I've skimmed the three or four sickly romances that she wrote in the 1980s.
Not that I'm sad or anything, but there's a fan site here with a bunch of old cover art, location photos and suchlike, with a rather wonderful rendition of Linda in her (expertly) home-made ballgown. LOL. It's not just me.
Mind you I have never met any man ever who read them. I suspect they're a pretty female taste.
I've been all downcast and morbid over the last couple of days for no real reason, so I've finally switched the computer off again and continued my Mary Stewart jag. I first read her modern novels back when I was about 14. They were dated then, in a magnificent sort of way. I hung on to my Coronet paperbacks, but then they went out of print. When I was book shopping in Waterstones before our holiday, I discovered they'd all been reissued. I've been filling in the gaps ever since, and re-reading the whole lot.
Oh my. I think the genre is 'romantic suspense', but I don't remember much else in the same vein.
I'm amused by the Amazon review quotes, which very much mirror my own thoughts.
Her leading ladies and gentleman are pretty similar: the feisty (and terribly feminine) woman, the tough, masculine antihero. Her heroines love expensive, fast cars, and smoking. They quote Shakespeare a lot, or Euripides. Yet damnit, she's good. They are beautifully plotted, her sense of place is astounding, and the writing is so clear and tight.
I've been re-reading 'Nine Coaches Waiting' , still a terrific read after many re-readings. To quote one reviewer: 'When I first read it my teens,I was smitten with Raoul de Valmy and I was Linda Martin, transported to the Haute-Savoie, touched by adventure and danger.' It's a heady mix of 'Rebecca', 'Jane Eyre' and' The Thirty-Nine Steps' and every time I read it I'm terrified by the final chase.
Her best:
Madam, will you talk? (France)
Nine Coaches Waiting (French Alps. And The Revenger's Tragedy)
My Brother Michael (Greece) ('Nothing ever happens to me...' - ah Camilla Haven. Delphi.)
The Ivy Tree (Northumberland and Josephine Tey)
The Moonspinners (Crete)
This Rough Magic (Corfu. And The Tempest)
...with all the other pre-1965 novels following closely behind. I've never read her Arthurian cycle, and I've skimmed the three or four sickly romances that she wrote in the 1980s.
Not that I'm sad or anything, but there's a fan site here with a bunch of old cover art, location photos and suchlike, with a rather wonderful rendition of Linda in her (expertly) home-made ballgown. LOL. It's not just me.
Mind you I have never met any man ever who read them. I suspect they're a pretty female taste.
