The Turquoise Mask

Wow, can Whitney be verbose. Her earlier work has always been better, in my opinion, but this one was an in-between - first published in 1974. Which makes the plotting excellent, and the abuse of the expository extreme. Unfortunately the expository gauntlet must be run for many chapters before a hint of the rewarding plot can be found.

I'm undecided on whether it's worth the effort. The plotting was very well done. I was absolutely certain I knew who the villain was right up until almost the end, when she convinced me I was wrong, that it was really .... and then she blindsided me with the solution that was just unexpected. Whitney got huge bonus points for stunning me, but I'm not sure how I actually feel about it as a legitimate show more ending. It works, but it feels like it shouldn't.

The characters, and the romance, were, as is typical with both Whitney's writing and the time she wrote in, dramatic and overly simplified. Insta-love has nothing on romantic suspense from the 70's; and characters' personalities are never subtle or nuanced. If you accept this as the style of its time, it's not an insurmountable problem.

The one thing Whitney never lost, no matter how many books she wrote, was her sense of place. I'm not sure I've ever read anybody better at putting the reader in whatever setting she wants them, and making them feel like they were there. Here the deserts of New Mexico are the backdrop, and though I've never in my life seen an adobe house, I feel like I've lived in one the last couple of days.
I'd neither recommend it nor deter anyone from this one; the exposition is a challenge, but if that slow build isn't a deterrent, the story is one of her more complicated and compelling ones.

I read this for the Romantic Suspense square (which is on my card is the Psych square that's been flipped), for Halloween Bingo 2020. show less

Amanda Austin is an artist. Her mother died when she was a little girl. Her father and his sister, who reared her, never wanted to talk about Dorotea Cordova Austin. Now her father is dead. Thanks to a letter from Amanda's maternal grandfather, Juan Cordova, she's headed to Santa Fe to reconnect with her mother's family.

Sadly, Amanda soon learns that only her grandfather and Paul, her cousin Sylvia's husband, want her there -- and both for selfish reasons that have nothing to do with familial affection. Paul is writing a book about Santa Fe murders. Guess who witnessed one when she was barely five years old and remembers nothing about it? Juan's plans for using Amanda are even worse.

Amanda is instantly attracted to Gavin, manager of her show more grandfather's fabulous store, but Gavin is married to her beautiful cousin, Eleanor.

The Turquoise Mask has the usual elements one may expect in a Whitney book: ugly family secrets, beautiful scenery beautifully described, and considerable danger for the heroine. The usual troubled child is missing, though.

By the way, I was very glad that Amanda finally figured out, in chapter 12, something that should have set her BS alarm bells ringing shortly after she was told it. She was attentive enough to notice when stories she was told didn't match, so the fact that she was so slow to realize one story made no sense was driving me nuts.
Also, I note that the heroine of this 1970s book has already dumped a boyfriend who wanted her be a wife who catered to him instead of making a name for herself as a painter. Amanda doesn't always do what Gavin or Juan tell her to do, either.

I've been reading Phyllis A. Whitney books at the rate of about one a week for the last few months and I've enjoyed each one even though I recognize familiar elements in each. show less