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Chargement... Blue Firepar Phyllis A. Whitney
   Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  gpangel | Apr 3, 2023 |    ) lopemopay | Feb 15, 2007 | aucune critique | ajouter une critique
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A bride is swept up in family secrets and the blood diamond trade when she returns to South Africa in this novel by a New York Times-bestselling author. When Chicagoan Susan Hohenfield brings her new husband, Dirk, to her childhood home in Cape Town, it's with the innocence of a young girl. She remembers only the beauty of South Africa--and the pain of being abandoned by her father. Now, with a new perspective, she sees a country destroyed by apartheid. And her father, once accused of diamond smuggling, seems not the ogre she imagined, but a broken man powerless against the prison term that wrenched him from his daughter's arms. At least that's the story Susan has been told. But she'll discover the truth as this intimate family reunion raises grave and troubling new questions. Why is the man responsible for her father's fate still lingering in the shadows? Why has Dirk's former lover arrived with threats and incriminations? And why does Susan feel like a stranger in her own home? Now, in a place that is at once strange and familiar, charged with fear and intrigue, Susan must confront a dangerous past that isn't quite through with her. More than a classic gothic tale, Blue Fire is one of the first novels to deal with the turmoil in South Africa. It was written nearly three decades before the dismantling of apartheid and a half-century before the film Blood Diamond would bring attention to the devastating effects of the smuggling trade. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Phyllis A. Whitney including rare images from the author's estate. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.5Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th CenturyClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (3.63)
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1
Susan, spent her early years in Cape Town but moved to Chicago after a fiery exchange between her parents. After her mother’s death, Dirk, a guy she remembers as a child, shows up in Chicago with the sole purpose of convincing her to come back to South Africa. Initially she is quite resistant, but Dirk refuses to leave, and she ends up falling in love with him. After a whirlwind romance, she and Dirk marry- and she finds herself back in Cape Town after all… and face to face with her estranged father.
Before long, Susan realizes that several people are under the impression she might have some memories related to a missing diamond and are hoping that her being back in Cape Town might shake those memories loose. She is also made aware that her own mother was suspected of diamond theft- a scenario she refuses to entertain. But a series of incidents have Susan on edge- making her hyper-aware of the diamond smuggling operations in Cape Town and the danger she might be in…
Phyllis Whitney was one of a handful of authors back in the sixties and seventies that rose to the top of the mass-produced Gothic/ Romantic suspense genre that was extremely popular at the time. This book, however, does not fall into that category- in my opinion- as it is missing several huge, key elements required to make it fit into the Gothic category. Romantic suspense is also out, though there is a promise of that, but nothing I'd truly call romance. To me, the style seemed more like today’s psychological thriller genre. This story is very suspenseful, and the reader is kept in the dark as to who is or is not trustworthy. The atmosphere is very taut and edgy- especially for its time.
Overall, for a book written over a half a century ago- it's pretty good. There are some dated terms and verbiage one will have to overlook, but kudos to the author for exposing the dangerous, greedy diamond industry long before the general population was made aware it. A solid 'retro-read' for me.
4 stars (