While I collect Gothic romance paperbacks, I certainly have not read most of them. Yet, that is. So when I get an inquiry like the following, I’m seldom of very much help. It’s a long shot, I know, but I’m posting the question here, just in case someone stops by sometime and recognizes the book right away. You never know.

The Moonstone

   Leave a comment or email me directly, and I’ll pass the word along to L.B.

PS. And as I said in my first reply to her, several of Wilkie Collins’s books were published in paperback as Gothics. This was early on in the craze for them, before a crew of authors had been established to write new ones and publishers were growing frantic trying to jump on the gravy wagon. Anything that could be published as a Gothic was, back in those days. All they had to do was to put a new cover on it, one with a girl in the foreground, running from a spooky manor house in the background.

   Here’s her question:

    I’m hoping your memory is a lot better than mine. I’m trying to recall the title and author of a paperback novel I read in the 1960s — the genre was then termed “Gothic” romance (not to be confused the the Brontes, Wilkie Collins, etc.). I read quite a few of these Gothic novels, and I’m hoping you can help me.

   The setting was summer, modern day. The husband takes his beautiful young wife (Rikki) to the shore for the season — Rikki had some type of medical condition (breathing, asthma?). A woman is hired to stay with the family (there may have been a young child?) while the husband is back in the city at work; this woman becomes the protagonist of the story.

   As the story develops it turns out Rikki is a jealous psychopathic liar, who senses early on her husband has more than platonic feelings for the woman (they both share a passion for Sinatra music, etc.) — the implications are the marriage was strained at the story’s outset. The climatic scene towards the end has Rikki on the telephone with someone, cleverly creating a “scene” where she’s screaming the protagonist is about to kill her, during which Rikki actually trips and falls (I think her death was the result of electrocution).

   Does any of this ring a bell for you? I’ve tried Googling some of the key words — most of the results are for some type of heavy metal music. I may not have given you sufficient information, but this is all I can recall of the plot.

               — L. B.