"The Vanishing" by Wendy Webb (Hyperion, 304 pages, $15.99)
'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again … "
The opening line of Daphne DuMaurier's 1938 classic, "Rebecca," still evokes chills in fans of Gothic fiction. DuMaurier's opening captures concisely two of the genre's most suggestive and significant motifs: a narrator recalling a nightmarish time in her life, and a mansion filled with secrets where her nightmare occurs.
"When I awakened that first morning at Havenwood … "
This opening line of Wendy Webb's contemporary Gothic thriller, "The Vanishing," pays homage to DuMaurier's classic. But Webb infuses her narrator, Julia Bishop, with modern sensibilities, and manipulates the genre's melodrama skillfully.
Julia's nightmare begins when her husband kills himself, leaving her implicated in his financial crimes. Julia is orphaned, with "no husband, no money, no friends or family." With trepidation, she accepts an offer to become a companion to Amaris Sinclair, an "ancient and completely youthful" wealthy recluse, believed to be dead, whose own Gothic novels were best sellers. Sinclair's books are "frightening Gothic tales about madness and murder and monstrosities," and Julia's life becomes such a tale.
But Havenwood is the real center of Webb's story. A replica of a Scottish estate on the "edge of the Boundary Waters," it makes Manderley look like a quaint cabin in the woods.
"Lake of Tears" by Mary Logue (Tyrus Books, 224 pages, $24.99)