Melissa Harley had come to the Greek island to forget dreary England and disappointing love. She had come to nurse a disturbed woman back to health, to lose herself in her work, only to find the woman’s family strangely lacking in concern. Mrs. Kemp said they had killed her son, Kenneth. They said Mrs. Kemp was crazy. And all the while the bright-blue sea sparkled in the background, mocking Melissa’s growing panic as all hell closed in.
What is a nice nurse like you doing in a sinister place like this?
The main character, Melissa, is almost unhinged in her determined cheerfulness, until the archeologist, Russell Vinson, who is working in the ruined monastery on the hill, touches her. “His fingers were powerful but gentle on her arm, but she felt as if she had been stung by a bee,” and she is suddenly struck by the idea that “he was really two people in one — and both characters were constantly vying for supremacy in his make-up.”
It’s written in that amazingly bombastic way gothics sometimes are, everyone is Too Cheerful or Too Sinister and many of the sentences are punctuated with an exclamation point, just in case you weren’t reading them in breathless terror.
I’m also filled with wonder by her reaction to this guy.
Anyway, do you think you could remain sildent under torture?
This book was non-stop action. Melissa arrives at Villa Ambios to nurse a broken heart and a woman who is convinced that her son was murdered, but Melissa never truly nurses the woman, within about 48 hours, spent almost constantly, literally, swimming in and out of danger, the murder is solved and Melissa’s broken heart is fully mended by her passion for a secret policeman. This book has an inordinate amount of exclamations! It asks you to suspend a lot of disbelief! Especially with regard to how much blood a person can lose and still row boats and swim great distances over and over again.
Does Melissa flee the villa in a pink ball gown and dress gloves?
Of course not.
She does spend a lot of time running back and forth between the villa and the beach though, usually hiding in some bushes to change into her swimming suit, though she finally thinks to just put it on under her clothes by the end of the book! Hallelujah!
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