The Villains

by Charlotte Keppel

Left penniless by their parents' death, Nanette and Leonie go to live with their frosty aunt at Cudden Hall, where they come face to face with secrets, danger, and high passion

Genres: Gothic

226 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1980

About the author

Ursula Torday was born on 19 Febraury 1912 (some sources say his birth in 1888 or 1914) in London, England, UK, daughter of mixed parents, her mother was Scottish and her father was Hungarian. She studied at Kensington High School in London, before went to the Oxford University, where she obteined a BA in English at Lady Margaret Hall College, and later a Social Science Certificate at London School of Economics.

In 1930s, she published her first three novels with her real name, Ursula Torday. During the World War II she worked as a probation officer for the Citizen's Advice Bureau, and during the next seven years afterwars, she also running a refugee scheme for Jewish children, inspiration for several of her future novels like, The Briar Patch (aka Young Lucifer) and The Children (aka Wednesday's Children) as Charity Blackstock. She worked as a typist at the National Central Library in London, inspiration for her future novel Dewey Death as Charity Blackstock. She also teaching English to adult students.

She returned to publishing in early 1950s, using the pseudonyms of Paula Allardyce, Charity Blackstock (in some cases reedited as Lee Blackstock in USA), to sign her gothic romance and mistery novels, later she also used the pseudonym of Charlotte Keppel. Her novel Miss Fenny (aka The Woman in the Woods) as Charity or Lee Blackstock was nominated for Edgar Award. In 1961, her novel Witches' Sabbath won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Ursula Torday passed away in 1997.

Reviews

[_inbetween_]

I still remembered two of Keppel's romantic thrillers from amongst the many similar hardcover library books I read as a child (in translation). They seemed in some ways unsettling and harsh, but the tiny romance being all the more achievement, and the unsettling wasn't the type of non-con historicals.

Now that current historical romances are so badly written, I wanted to see if memory served me right - after all the only Holt I read in the meantime was a weaker one and was so awfully bad that I thought my memory must have failed me there.

But Keppel is a better writer; when she starts out with the heroine as a child, then that girl is likable but not a smug self-loving git, because she makes mistakes, but none of them contrived or OOC. This is the huge difference to today's writers like Deanna Raybourne. The love-interest as initially (perceived) antagonistic is also the same, and the (again very brief) open love scene is like I remembered, slightly different and appealing.

There is genuine adventure, but the explanation why the hero had (not) done what he did (not do) was less satisfactory IMO, as was the anticipated unhappy end of the villain, who sort of got away. The hero's suffering was given due space, neither over-written nor cavalierly handled as in Liz Carlyle. A rival's death seemed initially to be as hateful as the one in Chadwick's "Wild Hunt", but the rival is given full due, admired and grieved.

It's been a few days since I read it, and a few other books in-between, but apart from inconsistencies the book once again left me wanting to somehow get one more Keppel novel, just to see ....

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1744, recently orphaned sisters Nanette (18) and Leonie (15) are taken in by their late uncle's widow, a Gothic novelist who lives along the remote coast. They are not expecting much: Nanette had a disastrous visit there as a child and matters haven't improved. Indeed, they find not a refuge, but a strange group of hangers-on and a feeling that something is wrong. A flawed but nevertheless engaging story, "The Villains" has many of the elements that makes Charlotte Keppel's work distinctive: atmosphere, a deep grounding in the Georgian period, an interest in the historical realities of gender and class, and complex, three-dimensional characters. What is frustrating in this book is that these elements don't really come together as cleanly as they should. One subplot fizzles, some characters never really receive more than sketchy development, and the complicated texture of the world Keppel is creating ultimately gets in the way of the tidy resolutions of the genre in which she writes. Despite those issues, the novel is a pleasure for lovers of gothic novels who like them a little more substantial, even if part of the soufflé doesn't rise.

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huzzah. After a few years of looking, I tracked down a lovely clean copy of this book. Like all of Keppel's work, the emphasis is on the atmosphere and the prickly characters.