Seven Tears For Apollo is one of the earlier and less well known novels of contemporary romantic suspense that Phyllis A. Whitney wrote. It is also one of the few set outside the Americas, in this case a Greek island near the coast of Turkey. In a comparison with the Greek-set romantic suspense novels of Mary Stewart, written around the same time*, Seven Tears Of Apollo does not fare well, lacking, for example, the poetic energy and moral backbone that helped raise Stewart’s books into the classics they are today. The Rhodes of Whitney co-exists stiffly with the feeble plot, descriptions sometimes reading like primly conscientious notes from a travel journal (Whitney visited the island), and the principal character is so tangled up in anxieties that a cloud of depression greys the mood on nearly every page. Nevertheless, as a psychological portrait of an abused woman’s lonely struggle to regain self-confidence, Seven Tears For Apollo evoked strong emotions in me.
Fear and pain dominate American Dorcas Brandt’s memories of her deceased husband, Gino Nikkaris. “Seven times [you] must weep for Apollo, ” he told her the first time they met, in front of a museum statue of the god, “before [you] will shake free of the bonds that hold [you]”. The consequences of Gino’s criminal activities continue to haunt Dorcas after his death, and so, desperate to make a new start for herself and her daughter, she accompanies writer Fernanda Farrar on a research trip to Rhodes.
But small, threatening incidents soon shatter her hopes for peace. Confronted with disbelief on every side when she tries to explain that someone may mean her harm, she begins to doubt her own mind. Worse, Fernanda takes the attitude that her instability, as she calls it, is a bad influence on her little daughter. Then she discovers a long-lost letter with a cryptic message about Apollo in one of her daughter’s storybooks, and realises she is holding the clue to the mystery. But since even level-headed Johnny Orion, a teacher and fellow traveller whom she has started to like, refuses to take her concerns seriously, it looks as if she must find the strength to defeat her unknown enemies alone.
My main problem with the story concerns Dorcas's relationship with Fernanda Ferrar. The person closest to a parent in Gino’s life, Fernanda was like a foster-mother to him and reveres his memory. It is her firm conviction that Gino was a loving husband, and that Dorcas was simply too neurotic to see it. Fernanda oversees the welfare of Beth, Dorcas and Gino’s daughter, with the determination of a grandparent, making many decisions regarding her that should belong to Dorcas. On her part, Dorcas is grateful to Fernanda for the safe home she has tried to provide for Dorcas and Beth after Gino’s death, and strives to temper secret resentment with appreciation. She never reveals Gino's abusive side to Fernanda.
What this translates to throughout the book is a constant battle of wills invariably won by Fernanda because of Dorcas’s insecurities. No matter how many times Dorcas resolves to stand up for herself and decide what is best for herself and her daughter, she always ends up buckling under the patronising behaviour of others, be it Fernanda, Beth’s nanny, Johnny, or someone else. What made this theoretically understandable diffidence incredibly frustrating for me was that each time Dorcas succumbed to pressure she reasoned to herself that the other person had a good point and that she must not resent them. I found it a challenge to – how shall I put it tactfully – remain patient with a character who insists on telling herself that being a doormat is a sign of having a healthy perspective. With the exception below, I will make allowances for the strain she labours under and not go into the TSTL behavior she exhibited now and then, most notably in chapter fourteen; the poor woman suffers enough!
Another thing I questioned was the premise which demands Dorcas to believe Rhodes is a good place to get away from the problems caused in the USA by her husband's shady dealings in the art and antiques world. It is made clear in the first two chapters that her Greek-Italian husband had (supposedly severed) family ties with Rhodes and business ties with Greece. How on earth could Dorcas reasonably expect to escape his past on Rhodes of all places? Not once does she inquire into that past while she is on Rhodes, either, even when doing so seemed, to me, the obvious course of action in order to help clarify or verify certain concerns.
As I indicated in my post about Blue Fire, Phyllis A. Whitney’s male love interests are often overbearing at best and coldly domineering at worst. Johnny Orion (“O’Ryan via South America”) falls into the former category. He takes Fernanda’s word over Dorcas’s for most of the story, and even once he and Dorcas confess their romantic interest in each other his support tends to take the form of criticism. Dorcas learns to appreciate his viewpoint, but personally I several times thought his was a hard sort of love. His personality is not distant but Whitney’s characterisation of him is shallow and his role in the story keeps him on the sidelines for long periods at a time. He eventually comes to see Dorcas has been right all along (don’t expect an apology, though) but since even in the decisive final scenes and action sequences he somehow disappears into the background, he remains one of the less interesting characters in Seven Tears For Apollo.
By contrast, Xenia Katalonos, the wife of a prominent Greek sculptor, and Vanda Petrus, Beth’s Rhodian nanny are two strongly-defined secondary characters who stole the show whenever they appeared on the scene. Each charged the sometimes anemic writing and dispirited, repressed atmosphere of the story with her own, intriguing brand of passion and mystery, reminding me of where Seven Tears For Apollo takes place: amid the intense, sunbright colours of an ancient Mediterranean culture.
Seven Tears For Apollo may not be the best place to start if one has never read romantic suspense by Whitney before. The plot develops at a sluggish pace for the first half of the book, which seems mainly concerned with generating suspense through the fragile psychological state of the principal character. For an armchair traveller, plenty of historical scenery is provided - Kameiros, Mount Filerimos, Lindos, and the city of Rhodes - but usually in such an uninspiring style that one might as well be listening to a jaded tour guide. The romantic couple are short on romance, and taken as individuals, not very entertaining characters.
Yet Phyllis A. Whitney does a credible job of showing the tense despair of an emotionally battered character who can rely on no one but herself. Dorcas may be too easily subjugated to be an admirable heroine, but she never completely gives up and in the end she fights bravely for what is hers. While Seven Tears For Apollo would not be my first choice for a romantic fictional trip to Greece – I would recommend either My Brother Michael or This Rough Magic for that – I am not sorry to have spent a few leisurely hours brushing up on the history of such a fascinating place as Rhodes.
*My Brother Michael (1960), The Moonspinners (1963), and This Rough Magic (1964).
(Appleton Century Crofts hardcover, 1963, pages 68-9):
“Along the water a stone wall, low on the land side, dropped steeply to the rocky beach below. Scattered among stones and big boulders were curious stone balls, some of them as large as a man’s head, some of them smaller. All had been shaped and rounded by the hand of man.
‘What can they be?’ Fernanda puzzled. ‘They don’t look like cannon balls – they’re too big.’
Johnny knew the answer. ‘Rhodes was a city often besieged in the old days. Those balls were thrown by catapult when Turks and Saracens and pirates tried to breach the walls. I suppose the Knights of Saint John used them, too, in defense. You’ll see them everywhere around the town. Out there in the harbor a good many lie where they must have fallen and no one bothers about them.’
‘Fascinating,’ Fernanda said thoughtfully, tapping a tooth with the end of her silver pencil.
Johnny laughed and spoke over his shoulder to Dorcas. ‘We have to watch her when she sounds like that. It means she’s cooking something up . If we don’t watch her, she’ll try to take one of those balls home for a pocket piece.’
The stone catapult balls, perhaps more than anything else, Dorcas thought, gave a sense of the past as it hung over Rhodes. Down on the beach the stones shone in the sun, wet and brown and pock marked from long weathering, lying where they had fallen short of the wall they were intended to breach. She could almost hear an echo of the crashing and the tumult.
The car had reached two massively rounded towers with a deep, arched gateway between, offering entry into the walled town. Above the gate still hung the marble buckler of a knight. As they drove through with other traffic, the great masses of stone dwarfed the car.
Once inside, Johnny found an open square where they could park and they got out to walk over ancient cobblestones. Stone buildings two or three stories high closed around them, almost every window bearing the mark of a cross in wood strips that separated the panes. For all that the town within the walls offered shops to draw the tourists, it was a town in its own right. People lived here in houses that were not greatly different from what they had been in the days of the knights.
As they crossed the square, Dorcas was again reminded of Beth’s absence. There was no small hand tugging at her own, no demands made upon her attention. She hoped all was going well back at the hotel. She must not worry.”