The Ivy Tree
1961
- missing persons
- false personation
- fiction
- fiction, romance, general
- mystery
- romance
- suspense
- fiction, romance, suspense
- fiction, thrillers, general
- missing persons, fiction
The story
A TRICK OF COLORING... HER WALK... THE WAY SHE SMILED... An English June in the Roman Wall countryside; the ruin of a beautiful old house standing cheek-by-jowl with the solid, sunlit prosperity of the manor farm - a lovely place, and a rich inheritance for one of the two remaining Winslow heirs. There had been a third, but Annabel Winslow had died four years ago - so when a young woman calling herself Annabel Winslow comes 'home' to Whitescar, Con Winslow and his half-sister Lisa must find out whether she really is who she says she is. Mary Grey has nothing to look forward to except a future as colorless as her name. So if she looks, walks, and smiles so much like the glamorous missing heiress Annabel Winslow, why not be her for a little while? To the lonely young woman--living in a dreary furnished room, faced with an uncertain future--the impersonation offered intriguing possibilities. If Mary looked so much like the missing heiress, why should she not be an heiress? And so plain Mary became the glamorous Annabel. But she did not live happily ever after. In fact, she almost did not live at all. Because someone wanted Annabel Winslow missing ... permanently.
What it’s like
Mary Stewart's The Ivy Tree (1961) moves through a green, sun-warmed English June with the quiet unease of a house that is not what it appears to be. Its pacing is patient and atmospheric, letting the decaying grandeur of Whitescar and the prosperous farm beside it seep into every scene, before a tightening suspense takes hold. The emotional register is wry and romantic, with a lonely, drab young woman's sudden reinvention turning into something cooler and more dangerous. Stewart's prose is lucid, observant and faintly ironic, attentive to light on stone, the smell of hay, and the small social fencing of a household that is wary of a stranger. Its arc follows a self-effacing woman who discovers that borrowed glamour brings borrowed risk, shifting from playful deception toward real fear. The thrills arrive as sharp, unexpected jolts in ordinary, sunlit surroundings, while a current of gentle comedy and warm romantic tension runs beneath the unease. It suits readers who love classic British suspense, gothic-tinged country settings, and heroines who must think fast and trust their own nerve.
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