Stevie‘s review of The Splendour Falls by Susanna Kearsley
Suspense published by Sourcebooks Landmark 14 Jan 14
Amazon classifies this one as suspense, but to me it reads more like a rather excellent near-contemporary gothic, almost as if Victoria Holt on one of her very best days had decided to write about the 1990s instead of the 1890s. The novel has all the elements I love in a gothic: an intelligent heroine, lost treasure, missing relatives – as well as a profusion of handsome men who may or may not be who they say they are and don’t all have our heroine’s best interests at heart.
Emily has grown up in a family of unreliable men and is very used to being the sensible one – more so after her parents decide to divorce late in life and then disappear overseas, leaving her to work in the family business for her uncle and one of her cousins. Meanwhile, her favourite cousin Harry, a university lecturer specialising in the Plantagenets, has discovered a new research topic connected to King John and Queen Isabelle. He plans to spend the next term, in which he has no teaching duties, exploring the castle at Chinon where the queen is reputed to have hidden an item of great value.
Against her better judgement, Emily agrees to take two weeks’ holiday and join Harry in his treasure hunt. However, when she arrives at the hotel, she finds a whole host of interesting guests from a variety of countries, but no Harry. Used to Harry’s fecklessness, Emily befriends the hotel’s inhabitants and determines to enjoy herself regardless. She also attracts the attention of the local vineyard owner, a widower with a young daughter, and with a sister-in-law whose ex-husband died very recently under mysterious circumstances.
Emily is attracted to various of the men, but then she finds an antique coin apparently left for her by Harry and more mysterious accidents occur, leading her to suspect that his disappearance wasn’t just due to his being distracted by other avenues of research. As Emily and her new friends – not that she entirely trusts any of them – dig deeper, she finds herself wondering if Harry’s missing treasure is somehow linked to the diamonds another Isabelle buried during the Nazi occupation of the area.
I really enjoyed this book, with all its various characters – not all of them instantly likable – and their individual traits which conveyed little pieces of their backgrounds without resorting to national stereotypes. I also appreciated reading a story that hadn’t been updated since it was written in the 1990s, which meant that long-distance calls and the availability of landlines were a genuine problem when searching out information or summoning help. The existence of two Isabelles and two rumours of missing treasure created plenty of plot twists and confusion without ever over-complicating matters and the resolution of the two mysteries is suitably satisfying. I’d like to see more stories in the same genre from this author.
Grade: B
Summary:
An Ancient Castle, a Tragic Love, and a Web of Secrets Begins to Unravel…
Emily Braden has stopped believing in fairy tales and happy endings. When her fascinating but unreliable cousin Harry invites her on a holiday to explore the legendary own of Chinon, and promptly disappears—well, that’s Harry for you.
As Emily makes the acquaintance of Chinon and its people, she begins to uncover dark secrets beneath the charm. Legend has it that during a thirteenth-century siege of the castle that looms over the city, Queen Isabelle, child bride of King John, hid a “treasure of great price.” And in the last days of the German occupation during World War II, another Isabelle living in Chinon, a girl whose love for an enemy soldier went tragically awry.
As the dangers of the past become disastrously real, Emily is drawn ever more deeply into a labyrinth of mystery as twisted as the streets and tunnels of the ancient town itself.
Read an excerpt.
