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MYSTERY/Gilman, Dorothy
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1st Floor MYSTERY/Gilman, Dorothy Due Apr 17, 2024
Subjects
Genres
Romantic suspense fiction
Published
New York : Ballantine Pub. Group 1999.
Language
English
Main Author
Dorothy Gilman, 1923- (-)
Edition
1st ed
Physical Description
199 p. ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780345432964
9780449003640
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

When Andrew Thale visits "Thale's Folly," his deceased Aunt Harriet's homestead in Massachuset's Berkshires, he is living a life of quiet desperation. A stalled novelist, the 26-year-old is surveying the supposedly vacant Folly for his father, Horace, a hard-driving businessman. In fact, four of Harriet's friends live in the house. A car accident strands Andrew there, but he stays on, lulled by the summer, beguiled by the inhabitants, and intrigued by mysteries on the property. In contrast to Gilman's Mrs. Polifax mysteries, this delightful book is a novel with a mystery as well as information on herbal lore. At first, it seems Gilman is rounding up the usual literary suspects, but her genial and well-paced writing, vivid landscapes, and quirky characters are greater than the sum of the cliches. This highly recommended book would appeal to those who like Winifred Elze's Changeling Garden (1995), Susan Wittig Albert's China Bayles series, or anyone wanting a suspenseful romp with little violence. --John Rowen

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Sowing her pages with quotations from Renaissance herbals, Gilman (author of the Mrs. Pollifax mysteries) cultivates a quaint (and not overly sophisticated) novel of romantic suspense. When eccentric Harriet Thales died, her farmhouse in Western Massachusetts‘called Thale's Folly‘was inherited by her corporate shark nephew, who now resents the bundle of money he's been paying in taxes. He sends his son, Andrew, whose failed writing career has relegated him to a back office hack job at his father's company, to check out the old place. Andrew finds that the purportedly empty house is home to an enchanting group of squatters: a six-foot spinster who begins a new short story every day; a sharp-eyed practitioner of Wiccan magic; a Marxist Luddite; and a 19-year old waif named Tarragon. The waif, of course, fascinates Andrew the most. Snoopers and would-be murderers add an element of suspense as the fate of Thale's Folly is determined and Aunt Harriet's peculiar legacy is revealed. Gilman relies too heavily on her characters' idiosyncrasies to do the work of characterization for her, but her fans will probably enjoy being gently propelled on a pleasant narrative track. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

The creator of the Mrs. Pollifax mysteries introduces a new protagonist‘a struggling young novelist whose father asks him to investigate the family property left when Aunt Harriet died. There he finds a bunch of squatters and gets drawn into a mystery. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

One of the author's determinedly charming stories, apart from her Mrs. Pollifax series (Incident at Badamya, etc.). Andrew Thale, son of stuffy corporate V.P. Horace, has been asked by his father to look over the property in Massachusetts that Horace had inherited, in the absence of a will, from his reclusive Aunt Harriet Thale five years before. Horace has been paying taxes on the empty house and its 25 acres ever since and is now thinking of selling or developing the property. Andrew, author of two well-received novels, is in a creative limbo and has, in desperation, been writing the newsletter for Meredith Machines, the family business. He dutifully departs in a company car for the remote, potholed road that leads to the Thale farmhouse, which lacks heat, electricity and phone but is far from empty. Living there in contented penury are the strays Harriet Thale collected before her demise: elegant Miss L`Hommedieu, housekeeper-cook Gussie; passionate Marxist Leo, and beautiful young Tarragon. Andrew gets yet another surprise when he discovers his mother, who'd left Horace seven years ago, living happily in a cottage on the property. There are more odd twists in store for Andrew'the arrival of his father, the discovery of a hidden mill, but most important, the rediscovery of his creative self. A sweetly entertaining fairy tale sure to delight the author's many fans.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Chapter 1 Andrew was bored. He was also--as usual--depressed. About the uncertainties of his future. About this idiotic reentry into his father's world, and certainly about this party he'd been forced to attend. It was the usual corporate affair, but with a number of faux bohemians thrown in, obviously out of a misguided effort to prove how broad-minded the company could be because the party was being held in honor of an author. Xavier Saabo's book was entitled The Zen of Machinery --the word Zen was big these days--and he was here because in his book he'd said very nice things about Meredith Machines, Inc., and Andrew's father was a vice president of Meredith Machines, Inc. Which was why Andrew was present--under duress, as usual. At the moment, with some irony, Andrew was noticing how carefully Xavier ignored the cluster of SoHo guests who had been invited expressly for him. What no one had foreseen, of course--Andrew understood this perfectly--was that the less affluent contingent were looking upon Xavier with contempt because he had joined the philistines, and Xavier was regarding them with contempt because he had long since exchanged his low-rent loft for an apartment on Park Avenue. These musings on the creative life--of which Andrew had once been a member--were diverted when he saw that Jennifer Tallant had arrived, looking positively seductive in a black silk sheath. In his several years of college, they had seen rather a lot of each other until he realized that Jennifer assumed his ambition was to become a corporate VP like his father. He was glad now to see that she was escorted to the party by Charlie Drumm, who would very definitely become a VP, if not president of his own company, given time, and Andrew was thinking kind and charitable thoughts about her when his father suddenly appeared: tall, fit, silver-haired, and important. Authoritative, too. "Andrew," he said sternly, "you're not mingling." "You mean merging, don't you?" quipped Andrew, since Meredith Machines was in the process of an important merger with PGH Plastics, Inc. His father was not amused. " Mingle ," he said, and turned away to continue his own mingling. He and his father had already quarreled earlier in the day. Summoning Andrew from his cubicle in the nether regions of the company, where he wrote copy for the Meredith Newsletter , also under duress, his father had announced that today was Friday. "I've noticed," Andrew said warily. "I've an assignment for you, Andrew," he told him. "Family business." "Family?" This had puzzled Andrew, for there had not been much family since his mother had left his father seven years ago. There had never been an explanation for this; once upon a time Andrew had assumed that she must have been unfaithful, but now that he knew his father better he thought she need only have found him as much of a machine as those that Meredith produced. What made this difficult for Andrew to understand was that he'd been told that in his youth his father had been a guitar-playing political activist, leading protest marches and working for civil rights, yet somewhere along the way he'd traded those values for profit margins, sales figures, acquisitions, competition, and bottom lines. It was possible at times to feel sorry for him, but not today. He said again, " Family? " "Yes, I want you to look into property left me by my aunt Harriet Thale. It's in western Massachusetts, about a four-hour drive from Manhattan, and you should be able to wrap it up in a day." Andrew struggled to remember who this relative could be whom he'd certainly never met. "An aunt Harriet Thale?" he repeated, frowning. "But she died all of five years ago, didn't she? Why this sudden interest now in the property?" "Because," his father said patiently, "I've been paying taxes on one very empty old house surrounded by twenty-five acres, and I've been too busy with the merger to look into it. It's time a decision is made." "You can't expect me--" "--to make a decision?" His tone implied that he found his son incapable of any business decision at all. "Of course not. From you I ask for an assessment of what's there. A description. The property's in a godforsaken area, distant from any tourist attractions, but it's time to establish its value so I can decide whether to sell, hold, or whether those twenty-five acres could be developed. Take a camera. It's miles from nowhere but it's time to learn precisely what the situation is." "Miles from nowhere," Andrew repeated, and suddenly grinned. "I remember now, it was called Thale's Folly! She was the recluse of the family, wasn't she? The family eccentric?" "She was an embarrassment to us all," snapped his father. "I suppose you think that's amusing." "I think it's very amusing," Andrew said. " I wish I'd met her. The house is empty?" "Of course it's empty," growled his father. "You can borrow a company car and leave early tomorrow morning--" "Tomorrow! You mean Saturday?" His father knew very well how precious his two days of freedom were to him. "--and on your way out my secretary will give you a survey map of Tottsville, the deed describing its boundaries, and directions to Thale's Folly." Andrew could not help but feel this ridiculous assignment was being presented to him as a subtle form of punishment. His father had patiently seen him through those first days following what he referred to as "Andrew's unfortunate incident"--which did not quite do justice to Andrew's waking up nights in a cold sweat, or the absence of concentration that kept him from what he loved best and had assumed would be his life's work--but he failed to understand why Andrew couldn't simply get on with things now. In a word, he was taking too long to recover. Which of course was a perfectly rational viewpoint. As he returned to his dull work of writing copy for the company newsletter Andrew found himself devoutly wishing for a--well, what? For a less rational world, he thought. He was to get one. Excerpted from Thale's Folly by Dorothy Gilman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.