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A carregar... Turquoise Mask (original 1973; edição 1981)por Phyllis A. Whitney
Informação Sobre a ObraThe Turquoise Mask por Phyllis A. Whitney (1973)
A carregar...
Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. 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 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. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
Distinctions
A woman investigates the mysterious death of her mother in Santa Fe in this New York Times bestseller by a "master of suspense" (Mary Higgins Clark). Between jobs and relationships, Manhattan illustrator Amanda Austin decides it's finally time to take her grandfather up on his request to visit him in Santa Fe. Near death and anxious to reconnect with his granddaughter, Juan Cordova has summoned her to New Mexico so she can get to know her late mother's relatives. Amanda hasn't been back since she was five years old, when her mother died under mysterious circumstances--a tragedy no one has spoken of since. One thing's certain: This isn't going to be a pleasant reunion. In the cold and gloomy Spanish hacienda that guards its secrets like a tomb, Amanda is greeted by all like an unwelcome guest. Only when she investigates on her own does she begin to fear the real reason why she was asked here. It isn't to explore the past, but to bury it for good. Now Amanda's life is on the line in this house of flesh-and-blood strangers--because one of them is a killer. The Turquoise Mask is a chilling tale of suspense from the Edgar Award-winning author the New York Times called "the queen of the American gothics." This ebook features an illustrated biography of Phyllis A. Whitney including rare images from the author's estate. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)813.5Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th CenturyClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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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 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. ( )