Madam, Will You Talk? (1955) by Mary Stewart #ParisInJuly2024 #20booksofsummer24

🚘 Set in the 1950s (about ten years after WWII), a British widow named Charity Selborne is on holiday in Provence with her friend Louise. At the hotel she gets acquainted with a 13-year-old boy and his dog who introduced himself (the boy, not the dog) as David Shelley. Now, Mrs. Selborne was formerly a teacher and is very fond of poems. The boy's name Shelley naturally amused her, and the fact that the boy himself knows of the poet David Shelley. So casually she's jokingly mentioning David Byron, at which, surprisingly, she noticed David turned pale.

🚘 That incident later on became a significant clue to the forthcoming events that will completely change Charity's life. Another important clue related to poets or poems is that another guest of the hotel who was reading T.S. Eliot at breakfast. There's yet another poet-related fact to this story - Charity learned from other guest that David is actually the son of Richard Byron, an antique dealer who had been accused of murder. Mrs. Bristol, who's travelling with David, is Byron's second wife, and David stepmother.

🚘 David and Mrs. Bristol are clearly scared and worried, but of what it who? Charity got the answer when she took David to a local trip, where a man called Richard Coleridge chatted with her - yet another poet! His reaction when she let slip that she knew David, md his persistent question of David's whereabouts made her realize that the man was none other that Richard Byron - David's father, the murderer. Thanks to Charity's quick thinking, she and David had time to flee from Byron's clutch. But how long will it take for him to trace them?

🚘 From the queen of romantic mystery genre, this is more of a gripping thriller with high-speed car chase scenes from Provence to Marseilles, than a mystery. Charity turned out to be a terrific driver and quite a resourceful heroine with iron nerves, though not of the same quality as a sleuth. The romance is cliché, and I think I prefer a proper mystery with a sprinkle of romance than an equal portion of romance and mystery. The romance here feels a bit rushed to be plausible, but too much for just a sprinkle to spice up the thriller. All in all, it's an entertaining page-turner book, where you could explore the roads of Provence and Marseilles in the 1950s.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐1/2

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Paris in July 2024

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20 Books of Summer 2024
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