Karamour - a Fawcett Gold Medal gothic

I purchased this book a number of years ago, not because it was a gothic novel, but because the cover had some resemblance to the third cover art of The Bluebeard Room, the seventy-seventh Nancy Drew mystery. Both covers feature a man and a woman on a stairwell with a stone wall behind them, the woman higher on the stairs holding an oil lamp.  While not identical and published approximately twenty years apart, the similarity was enough to get me to pick it up.  Now, though, as I am avidly reading through all of my gothics, I thought I would pick this one up and see just what story lies behind that ominous cover...

Karamour, published in 1968 by Fawcett Publications under their "Fawcett Gold Medal" imprint, was written by Ariadne Pritchett.  I found next to nothing about the author, other than the fact she wrote four other gothic novels between 1968 and 1976.  If this book is any indication of her writing style, I would have to say that her books certainly do not follow the standard gothic form.  Yes, we still get the young woman in the spooky mansion, and yes, we still get the two men fighting over her, one of whom is good and the other is evil (but which is which?); however, the young woman is not the main focal point of the story.  Pritchett alternates points-of-view for this story numerous times throughout the book.  It changes from one person to another without warning, and even though we do follow each of the characters at some point, the author does manage to keep the secrets from being revealed too early in the story so that there are no major spoilers to ruin the story.

From the opening chapter when a boat carrying Lord Dunsan, his wife, his two children, and their governess, Enid Garth, is dashed against the rocky shore during a horrific storm, one is under the impression that young Enid will be the protagonist of the story.  After all, the cover blurb tells readers that "[s]aved from the angry sea, she became the innocent prey of a danger even more terrifying than the horror she had just escaped."  Even the synopsis on the back of the book leads one to believe Enid is the main character.  However, Pritchett spends little time on Enid during the first act, when Enid lies in bid recovering from nearly drowning at sea.  Instead, we follow Daniel Hawks as he takes Enid from the local town minister and moves her to his own great house, where he expects his Haitian slave, Hanna, to take care of her.  But Hanna is wary, claiming the girl will bring nothing but trouble.  Then we switch gears and follow Leigh Rainey, the local schoolmaster who is definitely more than what he claims to be.  Unlike the rest of the town, he is not fearful of Hawks and has no problem standing up to him - especially when it comes to Enid's welfare.  

Pritchett also gives readers a taste of Nancy, who is Hawks' mistress and who makes it crystal clear she does not want Enid in the house, as well as Mrs. Whipple, who is Rainey's landlady and for a short time Enid's nurse.  Then there is the pirate, Keen, who is always looking for treasures to steal and will do whatever it takes to accomplish the goal.  All of these characters - and I do mean ALL of them - are connected in ways that the reader does not discover right away.  But as the story progresses, we learn each of their secrets and soon discover that the threat to Enid is not the one she thinks it is!  I give the author credit for weaving a rather complicated web, and honestly, I think the constantly changing point-of-view helps to keep the reader from being left too much in the dark, but at the same time, providing just the right amount of information about each character at the right time to feed into the suspense.  And I am happy to say that my suspicions about Rainey proved to be correct, which definitely made me a happy camper!

There is a small amount of voodoo in the tale, and Pritchett plays up the whole terror connected with the storm several times throughout the book.  And while she is young and somewhat weakened by her near-drowning, Enid ultimately proves to be much smarter and quicker on the draw than anyone gives her credit for, as she ultimately solves the mystery of what is really happening in this small town along the Cornish Coast of England - a revelation that puts her life in jeopardy from more than one person.

The cover art is provided by Harry Bennett (Harry Bennett - Artist), who did a number of paperbacks in several genres for various publishers over the years.  If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you might remember I mentioned he did the cover for Hurricane Nurse and that I own one of his cover paintings for a young adult novel published in 1972.  I have to say that while this cover definitely sets the mood for the story, the woman is not depicted with any beauty whatsoever.  I definitely prefer his work on Hurricane Nurse and The End of Innocence far better than this one.

Overall, I enjoyed the story, and it offers up a different style than most of the gothics from that period. It does provide a rather intriguing mystery, and one should be warned that it pushes the envelope somewhat (for its time) with the sexual content (poor Enid is revealed naked on more than one occasion).  This is something the standard gothic shies away from, but Pritchett has no problem depicting the characters in very harsh situations.  I suppose that only makes the story that much darker, as the reader begins to worry that one of these characters is more violent than we first assume.  The book is worth the read, and the cover blurb describes the story with 100% accuracy!

RATING:  9 tankards of mulled wine out of 10 for daring to put the book's heroine in far more danger than just someone trying to frighten her away from the dark house, and yet still giving her the strength to come out on top!