1958; mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. Linda Martin gets a job
as governess to the young Comte de Valmy, at his château in the French
Alps. But why did her employer seem so keen that she not be able to
speak any French?
This is one of my favourites among Stewart's books, and now that
I'm reading them slowly in chronological order I think this is because
it's where the balance is well struck. Madam, Will You Talk? got the
action right but rushed the romance; Wildfire at Midnight tried to
push the latter forward but had to elide it for the mystery plot to
work; Thunder on the Right made the romance too obvious. Here, the
romance is complicated, and it's not just two suspects who are rivals
for our heroine: it's the choice between a safe, unglamorous, but
secure life, and leaping out into the future with no safety net.
The writing is, as always, solid, and Stewart's traditional
descriptions of landscape are here – but it's not just in the lush
decorative sequences as our heroine approaches the chateau for the
first time. Later it has a sharp point, when she's evading pursuers
across a hilly landscape in a sequence that reminded me of some of
Buchan's highland stalks. The slow discovery of the nature of the plot
is one of this book's pleasures, so I won't go into details here
(indeed, I'd recommend against even reading the blurbs); suffice it to
say that with a paucity of potential villains, some can easily be
identified as vital to any dark goings-on, and this may disappoint the
mystery aficionado who wants twists in the plot, while others are more
ambiguous.
And that's where we come back to the romance: one of the men showing
an interest in Linda may in fact be an aspiring murderer, or at least
a conspirator. Can, and should, she bring herself to trust him? The
latter part of the book deals with this resolution, in parallel with
but not directly linked to the dissection of the plot and the
application of comeuppance to the villains. It's all rather elegantly
done, with a certain amount of emotional whiplash, and a very powerful
ending.
Highly recommended, and a good starting point for the new reader of
Stewart.
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