Cold Chill of Coptos - a Beagle Gothic

This is the first Gothic novel I've read by author Kay Ashby.  I could find next to nothing about this author online, other than the fact that she wrote what appears to be five Gothics between 1972 and 1976.  Of those books, this one and Climb a Dark Cliff seem to be her most popular ones.  I found one site that referenced Ashby as "one of my pseudonymous authors who wrote atmospheric Gothic paperbacks during the boom of the late 1960s and early 1970s," but there is nothing to verify this was a pseudonym.  In fact, the copyright page of this book would seem to indicate otherwise, as the copyright is 1974 by Kay Ashby, and further down that same page, it indicates this edition of the book was published "by arrangement with the author and the author's agent, Larry Sternig Literary Agency."  Surprisingly, the agency still exists today as Sternig & Byrne Literary Agency (Larry Sternig having taken on Jack Byrne as a full partner in 1995, just four years before Sternig's death).

 

Cold Chill of Coptos is not a historical Gothic, but is set in the current time period of when it was published (the mid-1970s).  Janelle ("Jan") Sheridan is summoned by her mother to the isolated house of her ex-fiance to celebrate her cousin Carla's birthday.  Jan is none-too-thrilled about the call, and although she has no desire to go, she cannot disobey her mother's command.  The question is, as the tagline on the cover reads, "[w]as her summons to the isolated house a sentence of death?"  It is obvious from the start there is tension in the family.  Jan's mother insists she refer to her by her given name of Hester and not by "Mom" or "Mother."  She also has always doted more on her cousin Carla than her own daughter since the avalanche that claimed the lives of Jan's father and Carla's parents all those years ago.  While not jealous, per se, Jan is obviously not happy that Carla always seems to get special treatment and gets whatever she wants - including Jan's fiance, who left her for her cousin.  So, with some trepidation, Jan heads for the desert home of Brian Ward, which can only be reached by private plane, as there are no roads that lead to the place.

 

In some ways, Ashby's writing reminds me much of the old Nancy Drew mysteries, where every chapter ends with either a physical danger as a cliffhanger or an emotional cliffhanger.  Jan, from the moment she arrives at Coptos, is plagued with dangers and suspicions.  From the shower filled with crawling, deadly scorpions (p. 23), to getting lost in the rock mazes out in the desert (p. 43), to being left alone in a ghost town with a fierce storm blowing through (p. 60), to having a large boulder nearly crush her, killing her horse (p. 72), to being tricked into a dark and dangerous cavern, where she is locked in (p. 109), Jan finds her life constantly being threatened.  While she knows someone is trying to kill her, everyone at Coptos discounts her concerns, Hester telling her she is being melodramatic.

 

Ashby provides the reader with plenty of suspects when it come to the question of who wants to do away with Jan Sheridan.  The obvious suspect is Hester, as she is the one who showed Jan to the bedroom with the deadly scorpions; she is the one who tells Jan it is safe to take a walk alone in the desert; she is the one who tells the others Jan is in the truck when they are leaving the ghost town due to the storm; and she is the one who suggests to Jan the missing young boy, Peter, could be down in the cavern.  But why would a mother want to kill her own daughter?  Hayden Hays is the designer who has come to Coptos to help Brian refurbish the great house and who is demanding Jan marry him.  Is he willing to kill her if he can't have her?  And why is Hester paying him large sums of money?  Philip John Wests a/k/a "Far" West is the pilot that takes Jan and Hayden out to Coptos and does errands for Hester and Brian.  Is his interest in Jan simply for her money, or does he have more sinister intentions?  There is also Carla, Jan's own cousin.  She knows Jan is going to inherit millions from her father's estate, and if Jan dies before the estate settles, the money will go to her and Hester.  Will she risk everything to get Jan out of the way so she can inherit the fortune?  And last, but not least, is Jan's ex-fiance, Brian.  Does he regret walking away from an heiress, and is he willing to kill so that his current fiance will get the money instead?

 

For those wondering, Coptos was a major ancient Egyptian city on the east bank of the Nile.  It was a primary cult center for the Egyptian fertility god, Min (who is mentioned a couple of times in this book), and later Isis, and it was also the capital of the fifth, or Coptite, nome of Upper Egypt.  The city was also a major trade center, since it was located at the crossroad between the Nile Valley and the Eastern Desert routes to the Red Sea.  Today, the archaeological remains of the city sit beneath the modern market town of Qift.  In addition to this Egyptian history used in the book, Ashby also includes some German history, with one of the rooms in Copots being painted to resemble the eastern hall of Schloss WeiBenstein in Pommersflden, Germany, in which the artist Giovanni Marchini painted an illusion that depicts painted columns flanking a collapsing entryway (p. 27).  Ashby also quotes the English poet, Andrew Marvell, using a stanza from one of his poems as an inscription on an antique lectern (p. 31).

 

The cover art is provided by Walter Popp (1920-2002), who started out as a freelance artist for pulp magazines, before moving on to painting covers for true crime magazines and men's adventure magazines.  It wasn't until later in his career that he collaborated with his wife, Marie, on book covers for Gothic romance novels.  This particular cover features a generic scene, of sorts, with a woman who I assuming is meant to be Jan in her nightown, running away from a house back in the distance (not at all the way Coptos is described in the book),  At least the land is depicted as a desert, with the obvious cacti and prickly bushes scattered about.  There is no scene in the book where Jan is running outside at night in her nightgown.  One has to wonder if the publisher gave the artists any specifics when commissioning cover art, or if the artists were just given very general facts and told to create an image with a woman running from a house.  Don't get me wrong, the art is gorgeous to look at, but it does not accurately depict anything from the story at all.

While the story is somewhat typical fare for a Gothic, I will admit to enjoying the Nancy Drew feel to the whole thing.  Jan has to be suspicious of everyone, and the final chase from the dark caverns, through the desert rocks, and ultimately up the precarious ledge that leads to the balcony outside Jan's room at the house is intense, with Ashby being very careful not to reveal the identity of her pursuer until the last possible moment - rocking Jan's world with some surprising revelations that change more than one relationship in the story. The ending alone makes the book worth reading. 

 

RATING:  8 leather-bound books next to candle stubs out of 10 for placing the story in a not-so-typical Gothic setting, which opens the door for all kinds of unique dangers to our young heroine.