DANGEROUS DECEPTIONS

by Arabella Seymour ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1986

Brow-furrowing romantic suspense from the author of A Passion in the Blood (1985), set in the Channel Islands during WW II. Its heroine is Evelyn Tregeale, orphaned daughter of a nightclub singer and a disinherited Jersey Islander whose snooty family couldn't brook their first-born's attachment to a performer. Evelyn herself is an artist and Old Master refurbisher, in love with married man Jack Neville; he cons her into forging a Giorgione, then leaves her flat. Devastated, Ev swallows her pride and writes to Aunt Blanche Tregeale, who gets her mother and elder sister Julia to allow Evelyn to come to the old manse on Jersey to recuperate. Enter one Richard Mahone, claiming to be the son of another old Jersey family. The Tregeales welcome him with open arms--especially Evelyn, who marries him because he looks so much like Jack Neville. Turns out, though, that he's conspiring with a housemaid to ruin Evelyn, that Aunt Julia is feeding poor Aunt Blanche booze to keep her hopelessly addicted (bemuse Julia's always been jealous of pretty Blanche's looks), and that once the Germans overrun Jersey, Evelyn's new husband is willing to peddle her to a Nazi officer in return for safe passage off the Island. Then enter one boisterous, bighearted American flier, Ross Klein, who notices the mesh of troubles Evelyn's surrounded by and extricates her from it. Overwrought; marred by a meager plot that pivots on outlandish coincidences (like the eleventh-hour revelation that Richard Mahone is Jack Neville's cousin); peopled, for the most part, by caricatures. One to miss, for all its Sturm und Drang.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1986

Categories: FICTION