Fri 24 Jun 2016
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: ELIZABETH CADELL – Shadows on the Water.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
William F. Deeck
ELIZABETH CADELL – Shadows on the Water. William Morrow, hardcover, 1958. First published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1958, as Shadow on the Water by Harriet Ainsworth.
Kate Verney, widow, is sailing to South America to become acquainted with her new grandson and maybe to save him from being christened Theobald. Her roommate on the ship is Lindy Barron, who along with her brother, Rex, is going to Lisbon to live with her father, William Barron, an arrogant, physically attractive businessman with a weakness for females.
Upon arrival at Lisbon, the group discovers that Barron is missing, presumed dead after the horse he was riding fell off a cliff. Later Barron turns up, saying that someone had stretched a wire across his favorite riding path. Other attempts are made on his life.
Since Kate’s passport is stolen while she is ashore at Lisbon, she cannot continue her voyage. Which is a good thing, for someone has to keep an eye on the Barron children’s welfare — and William Barron’s, despite his protests.
Though disappointing to me because it did not have the engaging humor of Cadell’s The Corner Shop, this book is nonetheless a good example of the romantic-suspense novel, featuring a heroine a little longer in the tooth than usual. Cadell’s goal is merely to entertain, and she is for the most part successful.
June 24th, 2016 at 8:57 pm
I suspect, although I certainly don’t know for sure, that this one is more romance than suspense, and as such, is something of an anomaly on this blog.
But even if so, when he wrote this review, Bill succeeded in one thing: even if I’ll never read it, he makes the book sound interesting.
June 24th, 2016 at 10:23 pm
I’ve learned there are no anomalies on this blog!
June 26th, 2016 at 1:19 am
Romance and suspense are a fine line in this genre, and may depend on how it is marketed as much as the actual plot and mechanics of the thing.
I learned you could never just dismiss the ‘girl gets house’ genre of suspense fiction since it varied from actual supernatural masterpieces like THE UNINVITED and THE HAUNTING to the kind of books Norman Daniels and Mike Avallone turned out as Dorothy Daniels and Edwina Noone, and even some of those were worth reading.
I had a good many more gothics in my collection than I would likely admit to, and regularly indulged in Phyllis Whitney, Norah Lofts, Dorothy Eden, Victoria Holt, and Mary Stewart (who I think is much better than the genre as a whole and as good as anyone). Evelyn Anthony, Dorothy Dunnett, and a few others even managed to make ‘romantic suspense’ fun and quite playful. Some writers were good enough at suspense to get a pass on the ‘romantic’ label though they often fell into it including the wonderful Elizabeth Saxnay Holding and Charlotte Armstrong.
Sadly today too much of what is labeled romantic suspense (and some is still quite good) is actually fairly hardcore women’s porn, a problem that extends to the supernatural novel as well.
It makes you a little nostalgic for when you could stumble on a neat little item and writer like this.
June 26th, 2016 at 1:31 am
I read all those authors you mention, David, as often as I could when I was younger, but there is so much else I want to read now, I’ve all but given up on ever getting back to them. All excellent writers, truly, and their likes are sorely missing today.
June 26th, 2016 at 1:55 am
It seems as if the suspense novel today always has to be about serial killers or conspiracies, and the kind of small personal book about someone endangered by a murderer is done.
Some pros might still write one once in a while, but increasingly they are hard to find, and frankly the fact that to even get considered for mass market paperback so many have to come in at a bloated hundred thousand plus words works against the idea of suspense.
Back when every book on the kiosk didn’t have to vie for the bestseller list there were a great many more books worth the time to read, and you had a chance of reading them because they didn’t all weigh in at 500 plus pages of bloat.
I pick up one of the older writers who did it at 50 to 80 thousand words and wonder today at how tight the plots are, how crisp the writing, and how enjoyable it is to actually finish a book when you still remember how it started.