The Romantic Armchair Traveller

Rhodes: Seven Tears For Apollo by Phyllis A. Whitney

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).

 

Excerpt

(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.”

India: Blood Moon Over Bengal by Morag McKendrick Pippin

Reading Blood Moon Over Bengal by Morag McKendrick Pippin was a schizophrenic experience for me. On one hand, a well-plotted mystery and the author’s adept handling of a time period and setting unusual in romances set the stage for an absorbing historical romantic suspense. On the other, caricatures rather than characters run the show, led by a self-centred heroine and cliched, foul-mannered hero. My intitial admiration curdled into tight-lipped determination to hang on to the end for the sake of the resolution to the mystery.

 

1932. When British heiress Elizabeth Mainwarring pilots a decrepit plane onto a military parade ground in Calcutta (Bengal, India) Major Nigel Covington-Singh is struck by her beauty and the regrettable fact that she is the daughter of his regiment’s commanding officer.

Even the fact that his father is the Maharaja of Kashmir and that he himself excels at his chosen profession does not make Nigel’s half-Indian, half-British heritage acceptable in colonial society. Elizabeth has more modern ideas, but convincing others that race is immaterial in matters of the heart becomes harder than ever as a series of gruesome murders increase racial tensions.

 

Morag McKendrick Pippin uses her considerable storytelling ability to good effect in her debut book. At its best, Blood Moon Over Bengal offers both absorbing drama and nicely honed suspense. My only quibble in regards to the latter is that after much has been made of the latest technical equipment and information-gathering from the four corners of the world, the method in which the mystery is actually solved is lame and unworthy of the well-plotted and well-paced intrigue. The author nevertheless displays one of her key strengths in infusing the resulting scene with drama that keeps the suspense afloat. Drawing on its setting and period, the mystery plot is integral to the story and a provides plenty of opportunities for social commentary, too. More about that later.

The descriptions of the British haunts in Calcutta brings the colonial setting to entertaining life. The author’s choice of emphasis does tend to conjure up a world where all anybody does all day long is imbibe alcohol and engage in extra-marital or otherwise secret affairs. British slang is thrown about with every breath the characters take, whatever the age, race, sex, or nationality of the person. At one point, Elizabeth and her best friend Fiona can hardly speak a sentence without calling each other “old thing”. If local idioms or slang are used, they eluded me entirely. (In other respects, apart from some stilted dialogue due to clunky exposition, men constantly raking their fingers through their hair in frustration or staring at women’s breasts, and repetitious sexual imagery, the prose is remarkably polished and confident for a debut book.)

While Blood Moon over Bengal is steeped in evocative detail about everything from period fashions to plants and the weather, the novel aims to steer clear of non-discriminating nostalgia for the Raj. An impatient determination on the author’s part not to put up with nonsense flavours the racial discourse, and it is perhaps forgiveable that this refusal to whitewash or sweep issues under the carpet in parts results in rather heavyhanded execution. While racial prejudices on the British side are well-illustrated and permeate the book – slurs such as wog, eight-anna, and cheechee are used judicially to showcase it – the lack of nuance in its strength or expression became a problem for me. Together with the author’s predilection for stereotyping this oversimplification/exaggeration helped reduce potentially interestingly flawed portraits to black and white caricatures. Except for the heroine and hero, their two sidekicks, and the Maharani, who are effortlessly broad-minded, everybody else thinks, feels, and reacts alike. Characters have energy but remain static and nobody really grows, develops, or learns anything.

In one scene the author’s judgment does falter quite startlingly. In an outburst of aggression Nigel identifies civilised restraint with British culture and primitive violence with his Indian heritage: “I am too Anglo to carve an unarmed man to shreds with my kukri [knife]. Insult Miss Mainwarring again, and I will indulge in a more primitive practice my Indian half is not above carrying out.” Additionally, of the only two Indian female characters in Blood Moon Over Bengal, one is a cardboard example of the Evil Other Woman, and the second is forced, through her torn loyalties, into the role of victim. While a few male full-blooded Indians show up in the story, they are barely given any voice. The Indian independence movement is alluded to but it does not assume any prominence in the story.

The issue of characterisation brings me to one of my biggest problems with Blood Moon Over Bengal: its treatment of women. It seems every female who is not friendly with or impressed by the heroine is called whore, tart, cow, shrew, harlot, slag, biddy, cat, bint, or bitch – frequently by the hero and heroine. I lost count of how many are described as catty, intolerant, shallow, and snobbish. (Namecalling where male characters are concerned is confined to “cad”.) Meanwhile, the heroine wears shorts to a polo match, makes assignations with male strangers after dark, sleeps with a man she is not sure wants, scorns the customs, conventions, and traditions of the society in which she is a temporary guest, downs alcohol as if her liver is made of immortal material, insists on lunching in a disreputable area where she proceeds to laugh at her companions’ discomfort about a nearby brothel (Blood Moon Over Bengal takes place in 1932), and in one instance says “I’d like to give the stupid cow a jolly good slap across her smug face”. Unlike the aforementioned women, we are told she is simply being admirably bold, unconventional, and brave. While Elizabeth does display moments of pluck, in perilous situations this woman who successfully pilots a wreck of an airplane in chapter one goes limp with paralysis and has to be rescued at the crucial moment.

Details of women’s clothing and makeup, frequently including brand names, form a major part of the visual props the author itemizes. On a historical level, I found these notes interesting but as a part of the characterizations they began to grate. It is constantly implied that other women, especially non-friendy acquaintances, never look half as splendid as Elizabeth. The one well-dressed exception is a character whose portrayal is among the most damning in the book. Even in the case of her close friend, “Elizabeth couldn’t help wondering why Fiona either possessed exquisite taste in her clothing selections or roared off on peculiar tangents, bent on curdling one’s digestion”. In Elizabeth Mainwarring we have a heroine who must be admired at the expense of every woman in her vicinity. Only the hero’s mother escapes unfavourable comparison, but even she is made to pay the heroine’s specialness due tribute: the Maharani quickly invites Elizabeth to “’cease this ‘ma’am’ and ‘Royal Highness’ nonsense’” and call her “’Vanessa’”.

Anachronistic attitudes are evident in conversation topics (money, prostitution, bathing – anything goes) and behaviour of the sexes toward each other (little to distinguish it from the 21st century). Apart from Elizabeth’s wardrobe not much marks her as a pre-WWII woman. A belated concern about the risk of becoming pregnant and the desire for a permanent relationship in the form of marriage were hardly unique to the 1930s. Moreover, after spouting thoroughly modern ideas about bi-racial relationships and ridiculing the narrow-mindedness and racism of British society in Calcutta, she is shocked – shocked, I tell you! – to discover that her half-Indian, Kashmiri lover is, in fact, Hindu. The instant she learns this she begins to (figuratively) wring her hands in despair about the cultural obstacles in her and Nigel’s path, and becomes reluctant to commit to a future with him. This plot point could have contributed to Elizabeth’s growth but instead of teaching Elizabeth something about self-awareness or humility, for example, it is simply used as an obstacle to keep the lovers apart.

Then again, Elizabeth seems to misplace her brain any time she runs into Nigel. She wants Nigel to tell her that he is in love with her, refusing to confess her own love first because that would be clingy behaviour. When he does, she resents him for not expressing his love in a manner she finds acceptable. When he proposes, she immediately assumes that he wants to marry her only because they slept together, and calls him a cad. These two jump to conclusions every chance they get and relish making assumptions about each other. If not for Nigel’s apologies (exasperatingly, Elizabeth is made out to be the injured one) and sorting out of their poor communication styles, Elizabeth would be on her way to her newly inherited sheep station in New Zealand, intent on treasuring her self-image as a broken-hearted martyr.

Why does Nigel fall in love with Elizabeth? Your guess is as good as mine. He just is, and he would die for her. Of course, as the person assigned to lead the investigation of the Calcutta murders he also knows which suspect is not guilty. How? Well, he assures his investigative team, “my instincts tell me he is not our murderer”. Okay, then. The best I can say for him is that except where Elizabeth is concerned he usually thinks – and yes, despite his dependence on his “instincts” he does know how to reason - before he acts. Unsurprisingly, however, it is not his investigative techniques or deductions that lead to the capture of the killer/s.

The vagueness of Nigel’s background and his thinly fleshed out, cliched personality disappointed me. But much worse was his hypocrisy. A sexually sophisticated man, he looks forward to teaching Elizabeth everything about the delights of sex. Every time he looks at Elizabeth his eyes are described as either “smouldering” or “glowing”, and while still barely acquainted with each other he boldly conveys his lustful feelings for her in his expression, in his speech, and in his actions. Yet when he receives advances from the other women who pursue him, he behaves like a boor, treating them with open contempt, calling one a tart to her face, the other a shrew. Charming. He is actually joined by most men in Blood Moon Over Bengal in this behaviour; it is typical of how they talk about, address, and think about women.

Both the hero and heroine reason that keeping vital information from each other is noble. In Nigel’s case, Elizabeth must not know that the murderer/s seem to have targeted her next because he refuses to have her be frightened. In Elizabeth’s case, Nigel must never, ever know that she loves him before he has declared his love, because saying it first would show her as the kind of clingy woman she despises (which is why she must never, ever call him on the phone either). This couple's romance left me highly doubtful about their ability to survive a lifetime together.

As Blood Moon Over Bengal unfolded I had to look harder and harder for one likeable character. Fiona came close. Cheerful and sensible, she and an older woman, a plantation owner, are the two voices of reason and perspective in the book. But in the end Fiona, too, lost some of her decency. Although other readers may feel the circumstances warrant it, I could not swallow how she laughs “in delight”, uttering “’I do love a bloodthirsty man!’” after somebody expresses a wish to “see how far the slag will stretch on the rack”. (Similarly disturbing to me, after the father of a suspected rape victim says, in an outpouring of understandably grief-struck rage, “Do you realise how anxious I am to crush that craven bastard’s throat”, he adds “I get hard thinking about it”.)

My final verdict about Blood Moon Over Bengal calls to mind Longfellow’s (?) poem about the little girl with the curl: When she was good, she was very good indeed, but when she was bad...

In Blood Moon Over Bengal author Morag McKendrick Pippin has created a sense of time and place that drew me in as if I was there. Much more successfully than Meredith Duran’s otherwise excellent The Duke Of Shadows, which also features a half-Indian, half-British hero, she places the realities of racial prejudice at the front and centre of the story. There is no doubt in my mind that McKendrick Pippin can write. When my reading enjoyment was ruined by off-putting characterizations including an I’m-SO-the-fairest-of-them-all heroine and a bigoted male protagonist it was the author’s storytelling verve and talent for plotting an intriguing mystery that prevented the book from being tossed aside unfinished. With a radically different set of characters and some grey between all the black and white, Blood Moon Over Bengal could have been a winner.

Books of related interest: In fiction, M.M. Kaye's romantic suspense novels set in 1940s India are classics of the genre. I can wholeheartedly recommend both Death In Kashmir (the revised edition of Death Walks In Kashmir) and Death In The Andamans (the revised edition of Night On The Island). The author belonged to the Raj, and her love and inside knowledge of India and its British residents permeates the stories. For a non-fictional account, Women Of The Raj: The Mothers, Wives, and Daughters of the British Empire in India provides a more nuanced portrait of its subject than Blood Moon Over Bengal.

Scotland: Wildfire At Midnight by Mary Stewart

Mention the Hebrides and I remember a rainy afternoon on the Isle of Skye with a pot of black tea and the best scones I have ever tasted, the extraordinary kindness of the Scots towards a young, backpacking stranger, and Wildfire At Midnight. A gothicky romantic suspense that became my first introduction to Mary Stewart, Wildfire At Midnight remains a comfort read I re-savour regularly.

 

1953. London is in the grips of coronation fever and weary Gianetta “Janet” Brooke flees the city for a quiet holiday on the Scottish island of Skye. But a strange atmosphere hangs over the isolated little hotel, a tension that is heightened by any mention of Blaven, the nearest peak of the Black Cuillin mountains. Then, among the fishing enthusiasts, climbers, and an old acquaintance who populate the hotel, Giannetta is shocked to run into her ex-husband.

Divorced four years ago after a disastrous marriage, neither is keen to advertise they know each other. While Nicholas Drury researches the folklore of the area to collect material for his latest novel, Gianetta befriends the other guests, in particular Roderick Grant, who explains the reason everybody is upset: a local crofter’s daughter was found ritualistically murdered on Blaven a scant three weeks earlier. Soon after Giannetta’s arrival, tragedy strikes again. And this time, police interest turns from the first victim’s boyfriend to the hotel guests.

 

In the article “Teller of Tales" (The Writer, Volume 83, No. 5, May 1970), Mary Stewart says, "Wildfire at Midnight was an attempt at something different [from her previous writings], the classic closed-room detective story with restricted action, a biggish cast, and a closely circular plot. It taught me technically a great deal, but mainly that the detective story, with its emphasis on plot rather than people, is not for me. What mattered to me was not the mystery, but the choice the heroine faces between personal and larger loyalties."

The classic mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie may not have satisfied Mary Stewart’s professional inclinations, but Wildfire At Midnight is as successful an experiment as any mystery lover could wish. Readers looking for the romantic aspect of Stewart’s storytelling, however, may come away a little less impressed, unless old-school alpha behaviour appeals.

At a brief 175 pages Wildfire At Midnight is a quick read but the intrigue makes every page absorbing and the whole is as thrilling as any mystery double the length. If you enjoy the classic mystery authors such as Agatha Christie or John Dickson Carr (like I do), for example, Wildfire At Midnight should warm the cockles of your heart. Suspects abound; the Inspector is the sternly competent, pipe-smoking, bushy-eyebrowed character of numerous black-and-white British films of the Thirties and Forties; and the heroine is kindly, caring, and prone to end up in the thick of devious goings-on.

On the other hand, this is not a light-hearted romp of the breezily cheerful country-house type. In Wildfire At Midnight, death by murder is a tragedy instead of a mere plot point, and its pall affects the mood and temper of everyone in the hotel. Once it becomes evident that the murderer is not done with his or her crimes, tension and fear escalates as hotel guests realise they, too, may be in danger. Having developed old and new friendships and aware that the guilty person, if found, will be hanged and “buried in quicklime in a prison yard” (p. 108), Giannetta has to fight not to buckle during her struggle to weigh the morality of loyalties against justice and civic duty. Around her, too, brittle nerves stir up heated arguments as the hotel guests begin to suspect one another. The question of when co-operation with the authorities becomes a matter of spying on each other culminates in "strong opinions" (p. 115-6) about whether physical violence has any acceptable place in civilized society.

As for the love interests, I cannot say much about them without spoiling that particular subplot. Two men express interest in Giannetta: her ex-husband Nicholas Drury and climber Roderick Grant. I was a young and definitely unsophisticated teenager the first time I read Wildfire At Midnight and the outcome of the romantic triangle took me by utter, and not very pleasant, surprise. None of my re-readings have altered that first impression, yet I have learned to set the resolution to the romance aside. The result is immense enjoyment of the ambiance, the mystery, the skilfully sketched assortment of quirky and colourful characters, and the setting.

One can always rely on Mary Stewart’s descriptive genius to create a setting so breathtakingly real that it seems to be a memory of one’s own rather than an imagined place. This is perhaps particularly the case with northern England and Scotland; born in Durham and educated there and in Yorkshire, Stewart later settled in Scotland. Wildfire At Midnight also borrows specialist knowledge from her husband, noted Scottish geologist Sir Frederick Stewart, and draws upon the couple’s travels: “[...] the one background I owe entirely to him is the Scottish one for Wildfire At Midnight. We travelled every inch of Scotland together.” (Interview in Counterpoint, edited by Roy Newquist, published by Rand McNally & Company, 1964, page 564.) The rain-lashed island setting with its suddenly descending fogs, perilous mountains, treacherous bogs, and toasty peat fires by which to warm oneself with a glass of sherry, is a character in its own right. It is neither filler nor a device to create suspenseful moodiness (although suspenseful and moody are the resulting atmosphere), but is actually even more integral to the plot than usual with Stewart, who always takes care to match her stories believably to the chosen location.

Wildfire At Midnight has aged rather well not because it still seems modern - for good or ill, it does not, and some of its more dated attitudes require indulgence of the conventions and sensibilities of another era - or because it touches on a discussion of ethics that will probably always remain a human dilemma; it has aged well because it fits so comfortably into a beloved genre that thrives as much on nostalgia as it does on a well-conceived mystery. It shows Mary Stewart the plotter at her best; and for those seeking an armchair trip to Scotland, well, Mary Stewart’s Isle Of Skye is almost every bit as striking as the real one.

 

Excerpt

(Fawcett Crest paperback, 1956, p. 73-4):

"The night had been black and wild, and after several fruitless and exhausting hours of climbing and shouting in the blustering darkness, the searchers had straggled home in the early hours of daylight, to snatch food and a little sleep before setting out, haggard-eyed and weary, for a further search. Bill Persimmon had telephoned for the local rescue team, and about nine next morning, a force some twenty strong set out once again for what must now certainly be reckoned the scene of an accident.

This time, I went with them. Even if I couldn't rock-climb, I would at least provide another pair of eyes, and I could help to cover some of the vast areas of scree and rough heather bordering the Black Spout.

The morning - I remembered with vague surprise that it was the eve of Coronation Day - had broken grey and forbidding. The wind still lurched among the cairns and heather braes with inconsequent violence, and the frequent showers of rain were arrow-sharp and heavy. We were all muffled to the eyes, and trudged our way up the sodden glen with heads bent to meet the vicious stabbing of the rain.

It was a little better as we came under the shelter of the hill where Roderick and I had talked two nights ago, but, as we struggled on to the crest of it, the wind met us again in force. The raindrops drove like nails before it, and I turned my back to it for a moment's respite. The storm gusts leaped past me, wrenching at my coat, and fled down the valley towards the sea.

The hotel looked far away and small and lonely, with, behind it, the sea loch whitening under the racing feet of the wind. I saw a car move slowly away from the porch, and creep along the storm-lashed track to Strathaird. It was a big car, cream, with a black convertible top.

'Marcia Maling's car,' said a voice at my elbow."

South Africa: Blue Fire by Phyllis A. Whitney

The plot of Blue Fire by Phyllis A. Whitney (originally published in book form in 1961*) deals with the South African diamond trade and apartheid. While the story follows a similar pattern to many of Whitney’s bestselling romantic suspense novels – a parentless or alienated heroine with a buried, violent secret in her past, a controlling, disapproving boyfriend or husband, and the oppressing sense of isolation and danger that surrounds the heroine - it has a more pronounced social conscience than is common in romances. In fact, although Whitney’s romantic suspense novels are often grouped together under the gothic umbrella, I hesitate to call Blue Fire a romance. Whereas the heroine’s love life is central to the story and there is an HEA, the treatment of marriage and romance ushers Blue Fire closer to mainstream fiction.

 

Newspaper photographer Susan van Pelt‘s mother took her away from South Africa when her father, Niklaas van Pelt, was disgraced and imprisoned. Although he was released three years later, Susan has not heard from him once. At the age of twenty-three she returns to Cape Town, newly married to a childhood friend, Dirk Hohenfield, who is now an associate of the father she does not want to see. Susan’s bitterness against her father is compounded when it appears he is even now only interested in what she may know about the whereabouts of a famous diamond that was stolen around the time of her parents’ breakup.

But Susan has suppressed all memories of that traumatic time. She wants to concentrate on her fragile new marriage and her photography, not delve in the painful past. None of those around her accept that wish, however. Dirk’s unpredictable mood swings seem somehow related to what she can or cannot remember. John Cornish, the journalist and author whose investigation into diamond smuggling contributed to her father’s downfall, insists on re-examining the case, and in doing so causes Susan to re-examine her hasty marriage. And South-Africa in all its beauty and conflictedness is seeping back into her blood and consciousness, questioning loyalties and testing truths.

 

The title of “Blue Fire” refers to the blue-white light dispersed by the Kimberley Royal, the infamous diamond that figures prominently in the novel’s plot. The draconian laws regulating diamond mining and De Beers' monopoly of diamond industry in South Africa have given rise to smuggling, a crime for which Niklaas van Pelt served a prison term. While the Kimberley Royal was also in his care when it disappeared, that particular case was never reported to the authorities due to the owner’s friendship with him. When Susan learns that her father impoverished himself to pay back the diamond’s worth to the owner in full, the seeming inconsistency between Niklaas’s supposed offenses and his behaviour begins to sow the first doubts in her mind about his guilt.

The Kimberley Royal and the mystery surrounding its disappearance drive a good deal of the motivations of the characters in Blue Fire. As in the new book that John Cornish tells Susan he is writing, it is the “fever” that diamonds breed in people who come into contact with them that interests Whitney, not the business side. Parallell with with this obsession runs another source of tension, the “cancer of apartheid” (p.100).

In a condescendingly indulgent commentary on Phyllis A. Whitney’s work (Twentieth Century Romance and Gothic Writers, edited by James Vinson, published by Gale, 1982) Nancy Regan writes (p.700): “[...] Whitney has created a species of romance fiction which might be called Tourist Gothic. She writes well and lovingly of the various places in which her books are set, but always with the enthusiasm of a visitor, not with an inhabitant’s long knowledge of place. Thus Whitney provides her readers with a kind of exciting vacation, replete with interesting locations, confusing romances, and outright danger.” Apart from questioning Regan’s assumption that seeing a place through fresh eyes means being insensitive to the nuances beneath its surface glamour, I have to wonder whether Nancy Regan ever opened Blue Fire.

Scenes that confront the heroine, and the reader, with the realities of South African society at the time include the incident with the sjambok or rhinoceros hide whip, which Dirk affixes as decoration on the living room wall; the Hohenfield servants’ sleeping arrangements, which are regulated by law to bar direct entry into the house; and the destruction of Susan’s film roll when she is coerced to surrender it to a policeman in District Six. Susan may admire the scenery of Cape Town but she never forgets or allows the reader to forget the ugliness of the system beneath its splendour. Through her family roots, her marriage, her household, and her work, she observes the daily inequalities and prejudices, and slowly becomes engaged in obstacles and controversies that directly affect the course of her life and shape her character. Yet apartheid is never turned into a vehicle for giving Susan a starring role as the selfless saviour of helpless or incapable locals – a convention which other writers who place Western characters in foreign places practise with astounding frequency.

In Blue Fire as in most of the roughly seventeen Whitney novels I have read, the psychological insights into the characters compensates for the less than heart-warming romantic relationships. While there is almost invariably an HEA (although that of The Moonflower, for example, is hardly the expected, conventional one), the attitude to love between a man and a woman is typically heavily weighted with issues of domination, coldness, belittling, and mistrust on the man’s side. The Quicksilver Pool (a historical) is a prime example. Sometimes a second potential love interest appears, which is the case in Blue Fire, and it is not always immediately clear whether he poses a threat to the marriage or the possibility of something better. Blue Fire scrutinizes the effect of a controlling partner on a heroine whose reactions range from a debilitating sense of powerlessness to silent resentment. Susan's past experiences have taught her not to make trouble even as she feels crushed by the burden of dissimulating her true feelings. There is an unspoken parallell between what goes on emotionally in her marriage and the oppression under which her native country struggles.

In re-reading Blue Fire I have come to regard it as one of its author’s most interesting novels. It has the hallmarks of a vintage Whitney in terms of a thoughtfully plotted mystery, absorbing psychological portraits, an unsettling atmosphere, and a setting that comes fascinatingly alive under Whitney’s descriptive powers. After a literally stumbling start in a somewhat distancing style the narrative quickly gets its bearings to become an intriguing and fresh-voiced study of a young woman’s struggle to establish her identity in a society where questions are dangerous.

The last words of the novel are for those who work for democracy and human rights in South Africa. When one recalls that Whitney’s book was published in 1961, before her own country’s (USA) Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the National Voting Rights Act (1965), and three decades before the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, it seems simplistic and naive to dismiss Blue Fire as a mere “tourist gothic”.

 

Excerpt

(Appleton Century Crofts, Inc., 1961, page 213):

“Ahead, where the uphill climb toward home began, the tall rocks glistened like black marble, a little eerie in the gray light. The ravine was deserted, and it was foolish to be afraid of passing a mere huddle of rocks. Perhaps it was their shape that always vaguely disturbed her, as if they had been raised into position by some antique force that had left a malignant spell upon the place.

She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of the mackintosh, feeling the crumbled cigar beneath the fingers of her right hand. She had been foolish once today and once was enough. As she started up the hill toward the rocks she did not permit herself to hurry in the panic of her own imaginings.

There was no sound at all save the dripping of moisture from bushes and trees, and the movement of her own feet on the steepening path. The odor of wet pine was heavy on the moisture-laden air. She was safely past the rocks now and her fears had proved childish, as always. Soon she would be at the house and out of this cold wind. The crack of a twig on the path behind her sounded at the same instant that something struck her full in the back. She was flung forward to her knees, the breath knocked out of her, and something rough was thrust over her head and pulled down, smothering her cry, blinding her.”

 

*A shorter version had previously appeared in Redbook Magazine.

 

A film of related interest: The subject-matter of (the decidedly non-romantic) Blood Diamond (2006) is the mining and trade of African conflict diamonds, commonly referred to as blood diamonds. During Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s, a priceless diamond seized by a slave worker (played by Djimon Honsou) in the diamond fields of Sierra Leone leads to a bloody fight over its possession by various individuals and syndicates. Among them is a smuggler (Leonardo DiCaprio) who trades arms for diamonds. The negative publicity the film generated for the diamond trade prompted De Beers to launch a website called Diamond Facts.

Teaser Tuesday: The Man In The Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

 

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• Be careful not to include spoilers! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away. You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser

From The Man In The Brown Suit by Agatha Christie (Triad Grafton, 1986, page 51):

"My histrionic talents had been wasted. I pulled the cabin trunk out a little farther and said: 'Come out at once, please,' in an acid voice."

One of Agatha Christie's earliest novels, The Man In The Brown Suit is as much a hot-blooded romance as it is a humorous mystery. Long a favourite of mine, I suspect it will appeal greatly to other fans of Elizabeth Peters, too, specifically those who love the Vicky Bliss series and Peters's stand-alone gothics. It features an enormously likeable heroine who in the course of a murder investigation spends her last money on an adventurous ocean voyage to South Africa, where she hopes to start a new life. Nonstop action, humour, an intriguing plot, eccentric characters, an alpha-male hero, and beautiful African settings add up to bliss for a romantic armchair traveller.

(Note, the cover I have posted above is not that of my edition, which is so horrid I could not stomach putting it up here!)

 

Feel free to post a link to your own Tuesday Teaser!