Legend in Green Velvet (1976)

                   The Monk's Trail - Scotland Tour 2019 - Travel to Ireland and ...

Listening: Fox on the Run

On her way to spending a summer working on a dig in the Scottish highlands, American scottophile and archaeology student Susan takes a week to savor Edinburgh. But then things take a bizarre turn in a series of encounters with local landmark and soapbox nationalist, Auld Tammas. A chance encounter with fiercely bearded James Erskine leads to a partnership as the two find themselves fleeing accusations of murder through the Highlands. As they run, they must try to untangle the conspiracy that's trying to frame them for a crime they didn't commit...and possibly rescue a long-lost national treasure in the process.



Spoilers Below

Legend has a special place in my heart, because I have fond memories of reading it as a grad student living in Scotland. Thematically appropriate.

It's also a delightfully fun book, with a lot of the feel of Camelot Caper--a pair of forced-by-circumstances-to-be-allies racing through a beautiful country, being hunted by a nasty conspiracy, with a bit of historical treasure beckoning tauntingly on the horizon. Jamie and Susan thus land squarely as on my list of favorite MPM romantic pairings, with their antagonistic/flirtatious banter, picturesque setting, and daring-do.

Other favorite things include James' beard (how MPM loves her bristly heroes, and her heroines who loathe them), the charming three 'witches' (in fact all the side characters, from Jamie's father to the archaeological students, with their hilariously unquenchable romanticism), and Susan's surprise last name at the end. The preponderance of cats, always sticking their nose in at the funniest moment is also true MPM style.

There's also something so funny about the seventies references to a pre-Diana Charles, Prince of Wales. We don't think of him as a young man with an overbearing mother, but James and Susan ruthlessly use Jamie's illegitimate and highly entertaining resemblance to the Prince to get out of several scrapes. It's delicious.

And of course, major credit to MPM for not being lazy about her research. Susan quotes every obscure Scottish poem known to man, and then finds another to trot out just when you think she's exhausted them all.

Ultimately, this is one of the lightest books MPM ever wrote, more intentionally cut-rate James Bond than proper mystery, but it's one of her funniest and most entertaining as well. The moral of the story is one I agree with wholeheartedly, after all--we may try hard to be practical and unmoved by legend and lore, but in reality, it's susceptibility to romance that makes us most delightfully human.

Rating: ****

Favorite Line: "Sons of the hounds, come and get meat!"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Dead Sea Cipher (1970)

Image
Listening: Let It Be When Dinah van der Lyn agrees to take a trip through Palestine and Israel in the place of her wheelchair-bound, Biblical scholar father, she thinks it's just a nice prelude to her first operatic role in Germany. But then a scream rends the night at her hotel, and she seems to be the only to have heard it. And when a smooth-talking spy and a fierce archaeologist start dogging her footsteps, it becomes obvious she's become part of something much bigger than a mere tourist trip through the Holy Land. International espionage sweeps her forward on an irresistible tide of romance and adventure to the wadis of the Dead Sea.
Read more

Walker in the Shadows (1979)

Image
                                                            Listening: I Was Made for Lovin' You Recently widowed Pat Robbins and her teenage son Mark are intrigued by the neighbors who move in to the house next door--a twin to their own beloved mid-nineteenth century American Gothic. Their relationship starts roughly when Mark's interest in lovely young Kathy is repulsed by her stern father. But when something ghostly takes a malevolent interest in Kathy, the families draw together to try and unravel whatever grudge the two old houses have been brooding over for centuries...
Read more

The Wizard's Daughter (1980)

Image
  Daydream Believer Left penniless by her father's death, Marianna Ransom must make her own way in life. Beautiful and kind, but hopelessly naive, her attempts at independence lead to disaster. At her lowest ebb, the Dowager Duchess of Devenbrook steps in. Wealthy, beautiful and kind, the Dowager claims Marianne is actually the long-lost daughter of the famed, murdered spiritualist David Holmes, whom she loved as a son. But the privileges suddenly showered on Marianne come at a cost--she is expected to present the spirit of her purported father to the grieving woman. As if that were not bad enough, ghostly visitations do seem to grace her attempts. As the anniversary of the man's death approaches, something dangerous seems to stalk the halls of Marianne's new home...and it seems to be stalking the woman she has come to love as a mother...
Read more