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
Cool, sun-warm English summer with a sense of old stone and green fields: the Roman Wall country in June, a ruined house beside a prosperous manor farm, and a dry, observant narrator's voice that moves through hedgerows, staircases and sunlit rooms with careful attention to appearance and gesture. The mood is suspense laced with romance, a gentle unease that tightens into real menace in the second half, with a few sharp moments of danger but no gore and little on-page brutality; violence is brief and frightening rather than graphic, and any romance stays chaste and understated. Think of a comfortable mid-century suspense novel: lightly ironic, a little glamorous, built on wit and disguise rather than dread-soaked horror. The pacing is steady and conversational, with short bursts of urgency and long, pleasant stretches of household detail, dinners, walks and quiet conversations. Its arcs follow a plain, lonely young woman tasting a life she was never offered, and two wary heirs forced to decide whom to trust. It suits a rainy Sunday, a comfort reread, or a long train journey, and is for readers who enjoy classic British mystery and romantic suspense, the pleasure of watching a secret slowly come undone.
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