Romantic Suspense: MADAM WILL YOU TALK

[sartorias]

I was barely thirteen when I first read Mary Stewart’s Madam Will You Talk. It set the bar high for romantic suspense for me-and all these years later, it still works

Comments

[whswhs]

Does Dorothy Heydt's The Interior Life (assuming you know it, which seems likely) fit your standards for "really like"? It seems as if it might be describable in the terms you use.

[sartorias]

Not really. I think that one is more of a domestic fantasy, more closer to some of Jo Walton's books, maybe. Not in the same category as Mary Stewart.

[whswhs]

Oh, okay, thanks.

[anna_wing]

I remember that one! Though I admit it is mostly for the descriptions of food... there is an omelette fine herbes that the heroine eats while on the run from the hero, and a stupendous banquet that he feeds her when he catches up.

[puddleshark]

I somehow managed to miss Madam Will You Talk when I was reading all the books as a child - perhaps the local library never had it... I shall remedy that now! Thank you.

[heleninwales]

I'm not sure that I read it either when I was on my Mary Stewart kick as a teenager.

I wonder if her books could get me reading fiction again? In recent years I've found it difficult to find books that grab me. Part of the problem is that I've been finding it hard to care about fictional people and their problems when the political situation is creating so many real problems.

One thing that did delight me about Mary Stewart when I discovered it was that her husband was the professor of geology at Edinburgh University. Many of her books are set in places with interesting geology because when her husband went abroad on geology field trips, she would go along too and while he went out looking at rocks, she would write.

[sartorias]

She writes wonderfully about landscapes. One of the main joys about this one is how she describes the south of France.