1967 mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. On holiday in Syria and
the Lebanon, Christy Mansel runs into her cousin Charles. They decide
to drop in on their great-aunt "Lady" Harriet, who's been doing the
Lady Hester Stanhope thing and living in the local style in a remote
palace. But when Christy steals a march on Charles and goes on her
own, she discovers a rather more disturbing situation than she
expected…
And yet somehow it doesn't quite work, and I think a large part
of the problem is the heroine. In other books Stewart's heroines have
generally been pretty solid and independent characters, with
well-developed and divergent personalities, but Christy is just sort
of there. Stewart could perhaps have pulled off a rich and somewhat
spoiled girl having to cope with things on her own for the first time,
but there's usually help to be had (whether from cousin Charles or
from a local driver who goes well beyond the terms of his contract),
and when there isn't Christy is much more of a passive observer than
other Stewart heroines. (If Vanessa March were in this book, she would
tell Christy to pull her socks up, and get on with solving the
mystery.) At one point, when her captors are arguing, she sticks
around to be witness to the events rather than slip out through the
open prison door. As for the hero, he's absent most of the time, and
even the romance takes the form of drifting into a love that's been
there for years rather than falling in love.
And it's a shame because the rest of it does work, with Stewart's
usual lyrical landscapes, some splendid moments involving the animal
inhabitants of the palace, a villain out of his depth but doing his
best to salvage the situation (though the chapter in which, for no
particular reason, he exposits his scheme to Christy is laboured at
best), and Evil Drug Smuggling; my wife grew quite misty-eyed at the
recollection of an era when good-quality Red Leb was readily available
for a mere eight pounds an ounce.
This has been the first real disappointment in my re-reading of
Stewart; I had recalled that the books did start going downhill a bit
in her later years, but I had thought it was not quite yet.
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