An Offer of Marriage

by Lynna Cooper

Book by Cooper, Lynna

Mass Market Paperback

First published August 3, 1976

About the author

Gardner Francis Cooper Fox was an American writer known best for creating numerous comic book characters for DC Comics. Comic book historians estimate that he wrote more than 4,000 comics stories, including 1,500 for DC Comics.
Fox is known as the co-creator of DC Comics heroes the Flash, Hawkman, Doctor Fate and the original Sandman, and was the writer who first teamed those and other heroes as the Justice Society of America. Fox introduced the concept of the Multiverse to DC Comics in the 1961 story "Flash of Two Worlds!"

Pseudonyms: Gardner Fox, Gardner F. Fox, Jefferson Cooper, Bart Sommers, Paul Dean, Ray Gardner, Rod Gray, Larry Dean, Robert Starr, Don Blake, Ed Blake, Warner Blake, Michael Blake, Tex Blane, Willis Blane, Ed Carlisle, Edgar Weston, Tex Slade, Eddie Duane, Simon Majors, James Kendricks, Troy Conway, Kevin Matthews

Reviews

[Rob Imes · Rating 2 out of 5]

AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE by Lynna Cooper was published by Signet in August 1976. "Lynna Cooper" was actually a pen-name for Gardner Fox. best known for writing DC comics during the Golden and Silver Ages of comic books, and science fiction novels in the pulp era. Fox wrote over a dozen romance novels for Signet in the 1970s and early 1980s under the Lynna Cooper pseudonym. Given this background, I was eager to read this novel. Sadly, however, I found it a hard slog despite the book's brevity.

This is a romantic suspense novel that fails on both counts. The heroine isn't sure if the wealthy man that she married really loves her, or even if she loves him. (She married him, a total stranger, to satisfy his deathbed request, but he soon made a full recovery.) Does he really love her or is he just using her? Questions like that are repeated throughout the book, always from the heroine's perspective; the man's thoughts are not shared with the reader, making him seem more of a remote figure. This contributes to the "suspense" I suppose, but the question drags on too long. The real "suspense" aspect concerns a bearded man who apparently is trying to kill our heroine. He is spotted hanging around outside her cottage, but no clue is given to solve this mystery until literally 10 pages before the novel ends, and the action involving the bearded man is wrapped up way too quickly. (There is one offhand comment made halfway through the book that turns out to be a clue to what is going on, but it would have been more satisfying if additional clues had been given.) Skipping so fast past the only "action" in this story was a missed opportunity.

The book is written professionally, but there are some annoying quirks, particularly the constant references to one of the characters as "the blond woman." The hero's car is constantly referred to by what kind of car it is (an Iso Grifo) as if that mattets (it doesn't). The heroine "giggled" a lot when "laughed" would have seemed more appropriate for her serious personality.

There's not much that happens in this novel. It's only 173 pages, but entire chapters could have been eliminated without affecting the story. The book wasn't all bad --- it had some atmospheric outdoorsy scenes that I enjoyed -- but overall it was disappointingly dull.