Phyllis Whitney was one of my favorite authors during the teenage years. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed her work.

Her writing is dense, but still reads quickly. I don't mean dense in a bad way. I simply mean that her writing paints detailed word pictures for the reader. E.G., describing the interior of a church: "Out of the sun's heat, the air inside seemed several degrees cooler....At the foot of the main aisle, the high walls of wooden pews rose on either hand, and her apprehension increased....Susan tilted her head back to encompass high spaces of floating light - light that poured in filtered beams through three oxeye windows set into deep eaves."

The other thing that I love about her writing is that she literally keeps you guessing till the very end, much like Hitchcock or Christie. You may think you know who-done-it, but you may very well be wrong.

Finally, I love the way this one ended - the actual story, yes, but also the manner in which it is written. You have the exciting climax; then you have a calm chapter to tie up the loose ends. Think of the battle scene at the end of the original Star Wars; then the scene with the award ceremony. Very satisfying.

In another life, this would have been a quick afternoon's or evening's read. Now, life gets in the way. ( )

If reviews came with musical accompaniment, you'd be hearing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah as you read this. I've finally finished this book.

There's a combination of factors involved in the blame for my incredibly slow progress: I'm in a slump, and therefore easily distracted by anything right now - it doesn't even have to be shiny; life has been busy and when I did sit down to read, interruptions abounded; this is not Whitney's best work. By a long shot.

Susan's father took her away from her grandmother's home and cut off all contact, after the death of her mother under mysterious circumstances. Susan was the only witness and at 5, suppressed the memories. Now her father's dead, she's an adult, and she's returning to her grandmother's home in Virginia to get to know her and figure out why she can't remember her own mother. But grandma has a trunk-load of secrets she's less than enthusiastic about sharing, and nobody else seems to want Susan to come back at all.

This is one of Whitney's later books, written in the 80's, and she's still got her magic touch when it comes to atmosphere, setting, and characters. But the story dragged... the pacing was continental drift slow, and there was so much time spent in the heads of the characters, it was a challenge to keep myself engaged. And when everything came together with a solution/ending that was twisted in that way in which Whitney excelled (this is an author who really understood long-simmering anger and epic grudges), I was so ...exhausted by the slow pacing that I just couldn't feel the punch I should have.

It's good, it's even a bit haunting, but you have to really be patient with it, and in the midst of a slump, patience is thin on the ground. ( )

A romantic-mystery novel with a style.