Stories about widows and widowers
I’ve just published my latest novel, A Ribbon Of MoonlightA Ribbon Of Moonlight, as an ebook.
It deals with the adventures of a young widow just after WW2, so for fun, I’ve come up with five other suspense novels involving widows or widowers.
Madam, Will You Talk?
There has to be a Mary Stewart in the list and luckily one fits. Madam Will You Talk was the first in Mary Stewart’s classic series of romantic suspense novels featuring beautiful and spirited heroines having adventures in mildly exotic and agreeable parts of Europe. This one was published and set in 1948, so as with A Ribbon Of Moonlight, it’s only just after the war. What strikes me in books like this and Christie’s A Murder Is Announced which were written in the immediate aftermath of the war is how matter of fact everyone is about a cataclysmic event which today we talk of in hushed reverential tones. Back then, they just had to live it.
In the story, our heroine, Charity, is recently widowed – her husband, Johnny, died in the war. She is still coming to terms with his death and occasionally cries over him when she thinks there’s no one else around. She and her friend Louise have come on holiday to the south of France. Thanks to Charity’s marriage, she is now well-off and doesn’t need to carry on working as a teacher, which is what Louise still does and they both appear to dislike intensely. All we learn about Johnny is that he was a daredevil who was good at driving, but he must also have been rich. Charity’s grief does not prevent her from showing the proper Mary Stewart heroine’s interest in other people and willingness to interfere when she sees injustice or cruelty, leading to an exciting adventure.
Rebecca
A widower this time, and one of fiction’s most famous. This is Daphne du Maurier's classic story of rich, idle Maxim de Winter and how he meets the unnamed young heroine in France, marries her and whisks her back to his country house Manderley where she is assailed by constant reminders of Maxim’s first wife Rebecca. It's an absolute classic and has inspired countless other stories, including mine – while Kay is the widow herself in A Ribbon Of Moonlight, her nervousness and feeling of not belonging when she travels to stay at her husband’s family home is very much inspired by Rebecca.
Death Comes as the End
This ingenious Agatha Christie is set in Ancient Egypt (Christie creating yet another entire genre, the hisotircal crime novel, almost in passing) and some readers have criticized it for being historically inaccurate or not having a good plot, but I think both accusations are unfair. Christie worked closely with a historian of the period to get the details right and her set of characters and plot are, to me, compelling.
Young widow Renisenb has returned to her father’s house after her husband’s sudden death. She tries to fit back into her world as she knew it before, but somehow it isn’t possible. Everything seems to have changed, or perhaps it is she herself who has changed. She seems to be the only person in the household who wants to be able to sit and think and to be herself, not defined by her role and relationship to the rest of the family.
We meet bossy dictatorial Imhotep, the head of the household and his three sons - gentle Yahmose, handsome over-confident Sobek and spoiled teenage Ipy. Then there is Yahmose’s shrill, domineering wife Satipy, Sobek’s placid wife Kait, Imhotep’s perceptive and mocking mother Esa and the spiteful, secretive servant Henet. As with all the best Christies, I get deeply engrossed in the beautifully realised characters and it’s only when people start dying that I remember this is, after all, a detective story.
Danger Point
A Patricia Wentworth mystery, solved by the inimitable Miss Silver. Young, handsome Dale Jerningham is the owner of the showpiece country house of Tanfield. Wealthy American heiress Lisle van Decken is his second wife and she struggles to establish herself in a household which already seems complete without her – Dale’s cousins Alicia and Rafe grew up at Tanfield and they all seem content without her. Lisle is already wondering about her place in this world when accidents start happening …
Like Death Comes As The End, this is a detective story, but like that book, it’s set in a richly realised world. It is set just before a war – in fact, it is 1939 but it may as well be the Edwardian era, with its idyllic country house, tennis parties and afternoon tea under the spreading oak. I would happily reread the story even if there were no murders, but this is part of the Miss Silver series, so murder there is…
You Only Live Twice
Another widower, in the celebrated form of James Bond. His wife Tracy having been shot by Blofeld on their wedding-day, Bond is a man at breaking point, barely functional, so M decides to send him on a complicated Japanese mission to distract him.
You Only Live Twice is an oddity of a novel – Fleming seems to have simply decided to cram two random interests (Japanese culture and poisonous plants) into one story and hope for the best. The main problem with the story is the villain’s evil scheme, which is just a bit too passive to drive the plot. But really, of course, the plot is being driven by the wounded Bond and his desperate struggle to survive what Blofeld has done to him and the violence of his own grief.
It deals with the adventures of a young widow just after WW2, so for fun, I’ve come up with five other suspense novels involving widows or widowers.
Madam, Will You Talk?
There has to be a Mary Stewart in the list and luckily one fits. Madam Will You Talk was the first in Mary Stewart’s classic series of romantic suspense novels featuring beautiful and spirited heroines having adventures in mildly exotic and agreeable parts of Europe. This one was published and set in 1948, so as with A Ribbon Of Moonlight, it’s only just after the war. What strikes me in books like this and Christie’s A Murder Is Announced which were written in the immediate aftermath of the war is how matter of fact everyone is about a cataclysmic event which today we talk of in hushed reverential tones. Back then, they just had to live it.
In the story, our heroine, Charity, is recently widowed – her husband, Johnny, died in the war. She is still coming to terms with his death and occasionally cries over him when she thinks there’s no one else around. She and her friend Louise have come on holiday to the south of France. Thanks to Charity’s marriage, she is now well-off and doesn’t need to carry on working as a teacher, which is what Louise still does and they both appear to dislike intensely. All we learn about Johnny is that he was a daredevil who was good at driving, but he must also have been rich. Charity’s grief does not prevent her from showing the proper Mary Stewart heroine’s interest in other people and willingness to interfere when she sees injustice or cruelty, leading to an exciting adventure.
Rebecca
A widower this time, and one of fiction’s most famous. This is Daphne du Maurier's classic story of rich, idle Maxim de Winter and how he meets the unnamed young heroine in France, marries her and whisks her back to his country house Manderley where she is assailed by constant reminders of Maxim’s first wife Rebecca. It's an absolute classic and has inspired countless other stories, including mine – while Kay is the widow herself in A Ribbon Of Moonlight, her nervousness and feeling of not belonging when she travels to stay at her husband’s family home is very much inspired by Rebecca.
Death Comes as the End
This ingenious Agatha Christie is set in Ancient Egypt (Christie creating yet another entire genre, the hisotircal crime novel, almost in passing) and some readers have criticized it for being historically inaccurate or not having a good plot, but I think both accusations are unfair. Christie worked closely with a historian of the period to get the details right and her set of characters and plot are, to me, compelling.
Young widow Renisenb has returned to her father’s house after her husband’s sudden death. She tries to fit back into her world as she knew it before, but somehow it isn’t possible. Everything seems to have changed, or perhaps it is she herself who has changed. She seems to be the only person in the household who wants to be able to sit and think and to be herself, not defined by her role and relationship to the rest of the family.
We meet bossy dictatorial Imhotep, the head of the household and his three sons - gentle Yahmose, handsome over-confident Sobek and spoiled teenage Ipy. Then there is Yahmose’s shrill, domineering wife Satipy, Sobek’s placid wife Kait, Imhotep’s perceptive and mocking mother Esa and the spiteful, secretive servant Henet. As with all the best Christies, I get deeply engrossed in the beautifully realised characters and it’s only when people start dying that I remember this is, after all, a detective story.
Danger Point
A Patricia Wentworth mystery, solved by the inimitable Miss Silver. Young, handsome Dale Jerningham is the owner of the showpiece country house of Tanfield. Wealthy American heiress Lisle van Decken is his second wife and she struggles to establish herself in a household which already seems complete without her – Dale’s cousins Alicia and Rafe grew up at Tanfield and they all seem content without her. Lisle is already wondering about her place in this world when accidents start happening …
Like Death Comes As The End, this is a detective story, but like that book, it’s set in a richly realised world. It is set just before a war – in fact, it is 1939 but it may as well be the Edwardian era, with its idyllic country house, tennis parties and afternoon tea under the spreading oak. I would happily reread the story even if there were no murders, but this is part of the Miss Silver series, so murder there is…
You Only Live Twice
Another widower, in the celebrated form of James Bond. His wife Tracy having been shot by Blofeld on their wedding-day, Bond is a man at breaking point, barely functional, so M decides to send him on a complicated Japanese mission to distract him.
You Only Live Twice is an oddity of a novel – Fleming seems to have simply decided to cram two random interests (Japanese culture and poisonous plants) into one story and hope for the best. The main problem with the story is the villain’s evil scheme, which is just a bit too passive to drive the plot. But really, of course, the plot is being driven by the wounded Bond and his desperate struggle to survive what Blofeld has done to him and the violence of his own grief.
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