CASTLE MALINDINE

Young Bella Harley loves but cannot quite believe her father--who has a long history of financial difficulties and social delusions--when he insists on returning to County Mayo where he claims that Castle Malindine should rightfully be his and hers via an unrecognized marriage. He dies accidentally (?) when he tries to prove his rights and the Malindine banshee wails, leaving poor Bella captive in the castle where she witnesses yet another murder before she's retrieved by a solid Fenian. . . . The period and parlance seems a little more authentically reconstructed than usual, but when all is said and done, Castle Malindine is still a gothic patty shell.