Rating: 3 stars
Nowhere Book Bingo: From the decade I was born (1970s)
Smart Bitches Book Bingo: Published in 2000 or earlier (first published 1976)
CBR16 Bingo: Vintage (published 48 years ago)
Briony Ashley is working in Portugal when she recieves word that her father has died, in what appears to be a hit-and-run accident. Her father didn't die instantly, but had time to ramble some strange and slightly mysterious things, among them a warning that Briony needs to be careful. She goes home to what is now her cottage, bordering Ashley Court, the large and expensive estate her father could really only keep by renting out parts of it to wealthy Americans, and letting the National Trust conduct guided tours in other parts of it. Briony is rather relieved that the estate will no longer be her responsibility, and doesn't begrudge her male cousins the inheritance at all. However, she is a bit taken aback when she discovers that several valuable artifacts have been removed from the house. Have they been stolen?
It seems to be an occasional family trait in the Ashley family, going back generations, that some of them have the "sight", that grants them premonitons, and sometimes the ability to telepathically communicate with other family members. Briony has been using this gift since she was a child, able to transmit words and emotions to another, who by now she just calls 'lover' in her mind. She doesn't know the actual identity of her secret telepathic friend, but since the "sight" only seems to be shared by other Ashleys, this 'lover' is most likely one of her three male cousins. Since Briony in time also becomes convinced that one or several of these cousins were responsible for her father's untimely death, the whole telepathic soulmate that she's never actually confirmed the identity of, but who may be a close blood relation gets a bit squicky.
I've only read one other Mary Stewart mystery, and Madam, Will You Talk? was a lot more batshit than this. In the previous novel, in between chain-smoking from waking up to literally being in bed in the evening, the heroine thought the love interest might be a murderer stalking her through Europe. Here the potential love interest's true identity isn't revealed until about two thirds of the way through, but it's strongly implied that said person may also be a murderer, and even overlooking that, he's one of Briony's cousins.
There was a much more convoluted plot in the previous book I read, here a lot of the plot is quite slow, and while I see what the author was trying to do with the little snippets of a story from the late 19th Century included at the end of each chapter, I don't think it worked very well and felt rather unneccessary on the whole. Because I bought a whole load of Mary Stewart mysteries in an e-book sale a while back, I'm sure I'll be reading more of them eventually. At the moment, however, I finished this book mainly because it fit into three different bingo challenges.
Judging a book by its cover: This book came out in the 1970s and consequently has had a number of covers, some of them more baffling and crazy than the next. The cover of my edition is a fairly boring one, with a grave in the foreground and some houses from an English village in the background. Nothing here screams romantic mystery with mild paranormal elements.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
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