Madam, Will You Talk - Mary Stewart's 1st novel

For the Back to the Classics 2022 challenge, I decided to read Madam, Will You Talk for the Mystery/Detective/Crime category. Published in 1955.

I have long been a fan of Mary Stewart's novels, which are a delightful blend of suspense and romance, usually in exotic settings, and well-written to boot. My blogger buddy Constance, of Staircase Wit, has recommended this first of the Mary Stewart novels on more than one occasion, so I finally put it on a reading list...and, voila!

Here's the GoodReads blurb:

Widowed Charity Selborne had been greatly looking forward to her driving holiday through France with her old friend Louise - long, leisurely days under the hot sun, enjoying the beauty of the parched Provencal landscape. But when Charity arrived at their hotel in the picturesque French town of Avignon, she had no way of knowing that she was to become the principal player in the last act of a strange and brutal tragedy. Most of it had already been played. There had been love--and lust--and revenge and fear and murder.

Very soon her dreams turn into a nightmare, when by befriending a terrified boy and catching the attention of his enigmatic, possibly murderous father, Charity has inadvertently placed herself center stage. She becomes enmeshed in the schemes of a gang of murderers. And now the killer, with blood enough on his hands, is waiting in the wings.

I absolutely loved the setting, starting out in Avignon and ending up in Marseille, with terrific car chases, visits to ancient Roman and medieval French sites and landmarks, cafe lunches, moonlit strolls, kidnapping, and lots of derring-do along the way. Charity is a wonderful heroine in the Mary Stewart mold, literary, lovely, and full of the right stuff. Her relationship with David, the boy she meets at the hotel in Avignon, tells you all you need to know about the goodness of her heart. The romance is pretty sappy, but palatable. The suspense is marvelous--definitely couldn't put it down as I neared the end of the story.

This would make a great movie, but alas, I couldn't find one. I would love to see Hallmark devote some effort to bringing Mary Stewart's novels to the screen. 

You might enjoy Constance's travelogue to France from October 2021--her post on Avignon is what made me decide this was the year I finally read this book. And yes, Avignon is now on my must-visit list.

France 2021, Day 9, Avignon

The title is from a folk song called I Will Give You the Keys of Heaven from Cheshire.

RIP Roundup

I had a particularly good RIP this year, one might say I had a RIP roaring time! I completed six and a half mystery books in Sept/Oct and had a marvelous time doing so.

Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson - #4 in her Jackson Brodie series, I loved this, of course, as the setting (north of England and Scotland), the characters, and the writing are all superb. Very interesting with an unresolved ending. I am hoping Tracy Waterhouse surfaces in this next book.

A Tiding of Magpies, by Steve Burrows - #5 in his Birder Murder mysteries. These are always interesting with good characters and good settings.

The Guest List, by Lucy Foley - absolutely terrific. All the hype wasn't far off the mark, and I really enjoyed this page-turner. Definitely channeling Lord of the Flies in this variation on the classic locked room mystery with all the suspects and victim being on an island off of Ireland. Now, I am eager to read Foley's next book, The Hunting Party.

The Long Call, by Ann Cleeves - #1 in Cleeves latest series. Really enjoyed it--Matthew Venn shows great promise as the starring detective with plenty of family baggage for the long haul. Love the small town setting and the bird references.

Thornyhold, by Mary Stewart - I'm a Mary Stewart fan and Lark of Lark Writes recommended it as terrific, and it was! A wonderful good witch story with romance and magic wrapped in a comfortable package. 

Jane and the Waterloo Map, by Stephanie Barron - my JASNA bookclub has invited the author to our November meeting and so I wanted to read one of her more recent books in the Jane Austen mystery series. This was enormously fun with a spunky Jane and I enjoyed her visits to Carleton House (this is during the time when she was reviewing proofs of Emma) and the mystery itself and the characters it involved were all interesting. I love maps and watercolors, so this was just all around perfect.

Final book, half way finished, is Witch Elm, by Tana French. This might actually be the best read of the season--so good. I really cannot predict how it is going to work out.

Happy Halloween!

 

Touch Not the Cat

I read Mary Stewart's wonderful paranormal romantic thriller, Touch Not the Cat, for both the R.I.P. Challenge and last week's Frightfall Read-A-Thon.  It's a shortish book--only 302 pages in the mass market paperback version--but it still took me all week.

Published in 1976, it was a nostalgic read for me.  That was the year I graduated from high school, and while all the action takes place in Europe, mostly England, but a bit in Madeira and Germany, the time and mores felt familiar from my teenage years.

Beyond the nostalgia, there's a lot to like in this novel.  The paranormal element is mental telepathy -- that is, the heroine, Bryony (love that name!) communicates mind-to-mind with her "lover," whose identity she doesn't even know.  She comes from an old family, the Ashleys, some of whose members share this ability, and so she assumes the person she can communicate with telepathically and who she has come to love romantically is related to her.  The family estate is entailed and when her father mysteriously dies, the estate must pass on to her uncle and his family of sons.  She cannot inherit it from her father being female.   Honestly, I had to work to suspend my disbelief around the mind-to-mind communication, but it was a fun premise and a kick to think about.

The estate is pretty cool too--complete with a moat and maze and secret dwelling within the maze where one of Bryony's ancestors, Wicked Nick lured maidens for romantic liasons back in the 1830s. There are Bryony's dashing twin cousins, one of which might be her mental lover, an American family that is leasing the estate, a friendly vicar, a hunky caretaker, a link to Britain's Roman past, and a way cool family motto..."Touch Not the Cat," which has Scottish roots and is linked to the shy but deadly Scottish wildcats.

There's a great Romeo and Juliet theme that run throughout the novel, in both plots (the modern day one and the one from the 1830s) as well as in chapter intros and more subtle references in the text that are fun to recognize.

The mystery is a bit light-weight.  Nothing gruesome happens, and there's a nice happily-ever-after with the nasties slinking off to parts unknown rather than being brutally dealt with.

A fun read...not terribly spooky but awfully fun.

Top Ten Tuesday: Gateway Books/Authors

This week's Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by The Broke and the Bookish) is about those Gateway Books or Authors in Our Reading Journey who got you into reading, or into reading a genre you never thought you'd read, or brought you BACK into reading.

Definitely this was a fun Top Ten list to consider--I focused on authors because when I find an author who works for, I tend to try to read everything they come out with.  I also had a blast coming up with the right illustrations for my authors.

Donna Leon - Leon's series of books featuring Guido Brunetti sparked an interest in Venice that has taken hold of me and just won't let go.  Now I seek out books--histories, novels, memoirs--about Venice.  Hoping to make it there this fall.

Nevada Barr - I've always liked mysteries, but Barr's Anna Pigeon series which features a lot of National Parks and a lot of hiking got me interested in both.  Now I walk daily and hike weekly, and make a point of planning vacations around visiting National Parks...truly one of America's best ideas! 

Mary Stewart - I'm not much of a Romance reader but my mom used to get British women's magazines from our town's newspaper/tobacco shop in the 1960's and I learned to read by reading the serialized Mary Stewart stories, complete with stirring illustrations!

Bill Bryson - My love of travel and travel memoirs can be traced to reading Bryson's oh-so-snarky travel books.

Jane Austen - Classics don't have to be big, scary, or filled with political ramblings that are incomprehensible to the modern reader.

Daphne du Maurier - I love psychological thrillers and DDM is the mistress of the genre.

James Michener - I love historical fiction and Michener hooked me early.

Margaret Forster - I didn't really start reading literary bios until my dad gave me Forster's bio of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and I fell in love with the genre.

Erik Larson - I love his histories that read like novels; Larsen's books made me go back and read In Cold Blood, the prototype of the genre in which Larsen shines.

Tracy Chevalier - Artifact-based fictionalized backstory. Love it!