Mon 16 Feb 2015
Archived Review: SUSAN RICHARD – Chateau Saxony.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[8] Comments
SUSAN RICHARD – Chateau Saxony. Paperback Library; paperback original, 1971.
You pick a book at random, around here at least, and you never know exactly what you may find. This looks like a perfectly ordinary gothic romance novel from the 70s, and that’s precisely what it is. Checking with Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, you then discover that “Susan Richard†is a pseudonym, of Julie Ellis, who also wrote mysteries and crime fiction (mostly other gothics) as Susan Marino and Susan Marvin.
Most of her books seem to have been written as by Julie Ellis, and over the years – from the titles, at least – it appears that she is now writing what is called “romantic suspense†– gothics as such having lost some of their appeal. (There simply can’t be that many spooky castles and mansions still remaining anywhere in the world.)
While the first book that Hubin lists for her as being crime fiction, The Secret of the Villa Como, as by Susan Marvin, came out from Lancer in 1966, Julie Ellis seems to have had another early career writing as Joan Ellis for the relatively sexy line of Midwood paperbacks from the even earlier 1960s – for example, The Hot Canary (Midwood, 1963), The Strange Compulsion of Laura M. (Midwood, 1962), Liza’s Apartment (Midwood, 1961) and Gang Girl (Midwood, 1964).
So. Chateau Saxony is where young, unattached Laurie Stanton finds herself going after graduating from college – Switzerland, that is, near Geneva, where she by happenstance has been hired to teach French to a young wealthy businessman’s stubborn grandmother, who’d rather be back home in New England.
The house itself is not spooky, but the servants do not seem to like her, and soon after Laurie’s arrival, strange events begin to happen: a rock and a trivet are thrown through her window; she finds a voodoo doll on her bed; a fire breaks out in her room. The grandmother, Diedre, on several occasions, claims to have ESP and warns Laurie that if she stays, something horrible will happen at the chateau that summer.
The challenge to the author is, if you’re going by the rules, is to have all of these events happen, and yet make them seem reasonable, with everyday kinds of explanations, so that in effect, nothing seems to happen while there really is. And – if you were wondering – why does Laurie stay? There is the young wealthy millionaire (I guess that was redundant) whom she finds herself falling in love with. And, it as gradually becomes clear, although under the most chaste of circumstances, he with her.
The last incident that Laurie must face could have been enhanced into a fairly decent locked-room mystery – a pendant is stolen from her room while she is sleeping and locked in – but after nearly 150 pages of gradually growing suspense and atmosphere (mostly the latter), the whole affair seems to come unraveled and is solved all too quickly. I imagine I should have spotted the person responsible, but I confess that I did not. I am embarrassed, but I will never lie to you.
February 16th, 2015 at 10:27 pm
In many cases, not all, Romantic Suspense in this century doesn’t mean Mary Stewart or Charlotte Armstrong or Mignon G. Eberhart, it means not so soft core porn rougher than anything Midwood or Beacon ever published. This isn’t even the euphemistic heavy panting of the bodice rippers. You don’t need a Thesaurus to know what many of these writers are talking about.
Not all writers in the genre are like that but given Ellis past I’m willing to bet her books were.
My problem with gothics were they all too often were all atmosphere and set up and then precious little delivery. This one sounds like that.
It is actually the original Gothic tradition. The books tended to have all these ‘orful happenings that must be supernatural and then explain them as natural or contrived, but some of the events were so over the top the explanation was as fantastic as the supernatural, or quickly tossed off so you don’t look too close.
Walpole’s CASTLE OF OTRANTO is a good example. The explanation is pure nonsense.
Voodoo in Geneva? Okay. I just didn’t know Baron Samedi was Swiss.
February 16th, 2015 at 10:57 pm
Later in that same article I linked to, Lynn Munroe talked to Gil Fox, who also wrote for Midwood back in the 1960s under a variety of pen names. Lynn asked him about Julie Ellis:
“Julie was not a ‘dirty book writer,’ didn’t belong in our business, too much class. She had much greater success, all of it richly deserved, after Midwood.”
I’ve never read anything Julie Ellis wrote for Midwood, but I’m sure it was awfully tame compared to what’s published today. How what she wrote compared to rest of the Midwood line, I can’t say, but I have the feeling that Fox got it right.
I have accumulated a huge collection of gothic paperbacks over the years. Back in the 1960s and 70s they were extremely popular. Every publisher had a solid line of them. I may have well over a thousand of them, maybe even more. I used to pick one to read every once in a while, but it’s been a while since I’ve been tempted.
February 16th, 2015 at 11:22 pm
I sense that you aren’t ready to yield to temptation after all these years, Steve. I started accumulating Gothics once because I thought someone ought to. At some point I decided that while that might be true, it didn’t need to be me.
February 16th, 2015 at 11:44 pm
As I said not everyone in Romantic Suspense is the same, J.D.Robb (Nora Roberts)and Iris Johansen, are a long way from Laura Leigh and some others, though I suspect the modern Ellis was sexier than the Midwood one or she wouldn’t have been popular.
In general the Romantic Suspense novel is not as well written as many of the gothics of the era, the ones I’ve read are a mixed bag from well written suspense to plots too lame for seventies series television.
I swear the next book I read with a shootout in a warehouse is going through the nearest window. You have to do that on television for budgetary and practical reasons but novels can happen anywhere. It’s lack of imagination.
I don’t mind if they are more risqué or dirty, only if they are badly written and Ellis doesn’t seem the sort for that.
I read more than a few gothics in the day, Holt, Whitney (who did romantic suspense as well), Lofts, even Dorothy Daniels and Edwina Noone. Some were good, some bad, some silly about like anything else. At the time, like todays cozies, it was all that was available, there were even romantic gothic comic books attempted.
The Romantic Vampire and other horror genre is where most of them went, though the heroines are less fainting governesses than kick ass Buffy types and sexy vamps.
I don’t think most modern women would want to go back to the meek governess as a character to identify with. I think they much prefer the independent openly sexual woman or the femme fatale type. The Jane Austen type has replaced the Charlotte Bronte type as the model for the modern heroine.
February 17th, 2015 at 12:50 am
Randy
So if not you, then why not me. Somebody ought to, that’s for sure.
I haven’t worked on this list in years, but at one time I posted my catalog of gothic romances in my possession online.
You can find it at
https://mysteryfile.com/Gothics.html
February 17th, 2015 at 1:02 am
David
After your earlier comment, I started looking into the kinds of books that Julie Ellis wrote toward the end of her career.
There’s a list on the Fantastic Fiction website
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/e/julie-ellis/
and to me it seems as though her fiction in her later years didn’t approach anything near what Laura Leigh writes. I think her later books were sold mostly to the library trade and the older patrons thereof. Here, for example, is a description of a book called A Town Named Paradise (2001):
“Little more than a year after graduating from law school, Karen Mitchell is feeling discontent. She has a prime job with a top legal firm, but after one seventeen-hour day too many, she starts to realise there’s more to life. Packing up her belongings and handing in her notice, she returns to tranquil, undeveloped Paradise to figure out what she really wants to do with her time. Within minutes of driving into her home town, however, Karen realises that Paradise isn’t going to be the sleepy haven she’d imagined. Little Debbie Norris, the daughter of Karen’s childhood friend Jeannie, is missing, and the tiny, close-knit community has been thrown into chaos. When Debbie’s body is found in a shallow grave and neighbour Todd Simmons is named as her murderer, Karen’s loyalties are divided. She’s desperate to find Debbie’s killer, but she knows a terrible injustice has been done to Todd, and this is the perfect opportunity for her to do something worthwhile with her legal skills. And roving reporter Neil Bradford, returning to Paradise for a break in his hectic schedule after taking a bullet in war-torn Bosnia, can’t help but agree.”
Sorry that that’s so long.
As for gothic romances and what they morphed into, I think you’re absolutely right, the Romantic Vampire was the next stage, then kickass women fighting all kinds of paranormal prey. You can’t get out of the Romance section of Barnes & Noble without noticing it, and even moreso in the “Science Fiction” section, science fiction in quotes.
February 17th, 2015 at 2:07 am
I remember reading a piece by the excellent humourist Alan Coren wher he talks about being stranded in a country cottage where the only books are “Approximately 7,000 bogus historical romances, all called something like ‘THE MISTRESS OF BEAUJOLAIS, all with a well endowed heroine bursting out of her dress whilst the mansion burns down behind her”.
Wonder whether 50 SHADES OF GREY is the current iteration of the gothic. Don’t really know the book or film, but the ‘hero’ does sound a bit like the brooding ‘Mr Rochester’ type male character, but with nipple clamps.
February 17th, 2015 at 3:31 pm
Bradstreet I think you are right about Mr. Grey, though he also has a dash of Heathcliffe and THE STORY OF O to him. S&M is very much in the Gothick tradition of THE MONK, MELMOTH, and even DRACULA.
Just a bit more blatant about what’s going on.
Steve,
Actually many of the racy Romantic Suspense novels have more than adequate plots, its just everything takes a back seat to the sex part of the Romance. She may well be more in the J.D. Robb style than Laura Leigh, but there is no little sex in Robb’s Eve Dallas books.
Almost anyone, accept James the 50 SHADES writer, would have to be better than Leigh.
I just think everyone needs to stop pretending and admit many of these are hard core for women. There is nothing wrong with that save if you actually think from the cover it will be a suspense novel.
Romance novels used to be about actual romance, now it’s often code for hard core femme friendly sex.
And the audience ranges from young adult to professional women in their thirties and forties to church going working moms who would never consider reading porn but don’t blush at these as graphic as they are.
More power to them, but lets not pretend these books aren’t what they are. Somebody is putting Leigh and other’s like her on the best seller list, and it is not men. If anyone was writing books this pornographic for men the same working moms would be outside the store picketing, because they carried them.
About the only graphic men’s writer around today in the top category is Wilbur Smith, and he’s in his eighties. Rollins, Cussler, and the like you have to flip back to make sure there was a sex scene. I know there are still some adult western series, but now even the adult western is aimed at a woman audience because they buy books.
It seems ironic that men’s fiction should only be pornographic about technology and guns while women are producing something just short of hard core back of the store plain cover porn sold right up front in bookstores, grocery stores, drugstores, and Dollar stores.