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The Gabriel Hounds Mass Market Paperback – Nov. 28 2006
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It's all a grand adventure when Christy Mansel unexpectedly runs into her cousin Charles in Damascus. And being young, rich, impetuous, and used to doing whatever they please, they decide to barge in uninvited on their eccentric Great-Aunt Harriet—despite a long-standing family rule strictly forbidding unannounced visits. A strange new world awaits Charles and Christy beyond the gates of Dar Ibrahim—"Lady Harriet's" ancient, crumbling palace in High Lebanon—where a physician is always in residence and a handful of Arab servants attends to the odd old woman's every need.
But there is a very good—very sinister—reason why guests are not welcome at Dar Ibrahim. And the young cousins are about to discover that, as difficult as it is to break into the dark, imposing edifice, it may prove even harder still to escape . . .
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperTorch
- Publication dateNov. 28 2006
- Dimensions10.64 x 2.13 x 17.15 cm
- ISBN-100061145394
- ISBN-13978-0061145391
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Review
“The pull of the Stewart narrative spell is powerful.” (Buffalo Evening News)
“One of the modern masters in the suspense field.” (Chattanooga Times)
“Nobody does it better.” (Elizabeth Noble)
“Mary Stewart’s novels are the stuff of legend.” (Orlando Sentinel)
“I’ve always loved Mary Stewart’s wonderful novels of suspense, romance and exotic adventure.” (Barbara Michaels)
“I cannot think of anyone who tells such stories quite so well.” (New York Times)
“Don’t wait for a rainy day to curl up with a book by Mary Stewart.” (Sandra Brown)
“An author skilled at blending suspense with drama and romance.” (Columbus Dispatch)
“A master craftsman.” (Richmond News Leader)
“Mary Stewart’s suspense novels are as riveting today as when first written...Sheer delight then, sheer delight now.” (Carolyn Hart)
About the Author
Mart Stewart is one of the most widely read fiction writers of our time. The author of twenty novels, a volume of poetry, and three books for young readers, she is admired for both her contemporary stories of romantic suspense and her historical novels. Born in England, she has lived for many years in Scotland.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Gabriel Hounds
By Mary StewartHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright ©2006 Mary StewartAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0061145394
Chapter One
No vain discourse shalt thou hear therein:
Therein shall be a gushing fountain;
Therein shall be raised couches,
And goblets ready placed,
And cushions laid in order,
And carpets spread forth.
—The Koran: Sura LXXXVII
I met him in the sunset called straight.
I had come out of the dark shop doorway into the dazzle of the Damascus sun, my arms full of silks. I didn't see anything at first, because the sun was right in my eyes and he was in shadow, just where the Straight Street becomes a dim tunnel under its high corrugated iron roof.
The souk was crowded. Someone stopped in front of me to take a photograph. A crowd of youths went by, eyeing me and calling comments in Arabic, punctuated by "Miss" and " 'Allo" and "Good-bye." A small grey donkey pattered past under a load of vegetables three times its own width. A taxi shaved me so near that I took a half step back into the shop doorway and the shopkeeper, at my elbow, put out a protective hand for his rolls of silk. The taxi swerved, horn blaring, past the donkey, parted a tight group of ragged children the way a ship parts water, and aimed without any slackening of speed at the bottleneck where the street narrowed sharply between jutting rows of stalls.
It was then that I saw him. He had been standing, head bent, in front of a jeweler's stall, turning over some small gilt trinket in his hand. At the blast of the taxi's horn he glanced up and stepped quickly out of the way. The step took him from black shadow full into the sun's glare, and, with a queer jerk of the heart, I saw who it was. I had known he was in this part of the world, and I suppose it was no odder to meet him in the middle of Damascus than anywhere else, but I stood there in the sunlight, gazing, I suppose rather blankly, at the averted profile, four years strange to me, yet so immediately familiar, and somehow so inevitably here.
The taxi vanished into the black tunnel of the main souk with a jarring of gears and another yell of its horn. Between us the dirty hot street was empty. One of the rolls of silk slipped from my hands, and I grabbed for it, to catch it in a cascade of crimson just before it reached the filthy ground. The movement and the blinding colour must have caught his attention, for he turned, and our eyes met. I saw them widen, then he dropped the gilt object back on the jeweler's stall and, ignoring the stream of bad American which the man was shouting after him, crossed the street towards me. The years rolled back more swiftly even than the crimson silk as he said, with exactly the same intonation with which a small boy had daily greeted his even smaller worshipper:
"Oh, hullo! It's you!"
I wasn't a small girl any more, I was twenty-two, and this was only my cousin Charles, whom of course I didn't worship any more. For some reason it seemed important to make this clear. I tried to echo his tone, but only managed to achieve a sort of idiotic deadpan calm. "Hullo. How nice to see you. How you've grown!"
"Haven't I just, and I shave nearly every week now." He grinned at me, and suddenly it wasn't the small boy any more. "Christy love, thank goodness I've found you! What in the world are you doing here?"
"Didn't you know I was in Damascus?"
"I knew you were coming, but I couldn't find out when. I meant, what are you doing on your own? I thought you were here with a package tour?"
"Oh, I am," I said, "I just got kind of detached. Did Mummy tell you about it?"
"She told my mother, who passed it on to me, but nobody seemed very clear what you were doing or just when you'd be here, or even where you'd be staying. You might have known I'd want to catch up with you. Don't you ever give anyone your address?"
"I thought I had."
"You did tell your mother a hotel, but it was the wrong one. When I rang them up they told me your group had gone to Jerusalem, and when I telephoned there they referred me back to Damascus. You cover your tracks well, young Christy."
"I'm sorry," I said, "if I'd known there was a chance of meeting you before Beirut . . . Our itinerary was changed, that's all, something to do with the flight bookings, so we're doing the tour back to front, and they had to alter the Damascus hotel. Oh, blast, and we leave for Beirut tomorrow! We've been here three days now. Have you been here all the time?"
"Only since yesterday. The man I have to see in Damascus isn't coming home till Saturday, but when I was told you'd be about due to arrive here, I came straight up. As you say, blast. Look, perhaps it's a good thing they've turned your tour arsy-versy—you needn't go tomorrow, surely? I've got to wait here till the weekend, myself, so why don't you cut loose from your group and we'll do Damascus together and then go on to Beirut? You're not bound to stay with them, are you?" He looked down at me, raising his brows. "What on earth are you doing in a package tour, anyway? I wouldn't have thought it was exactly your thing."
"I suppose not, but I got a sudden yen to see this part of the world, and I didn't know a thing about it, and they make it so easy—they do everything about bookings and things, and there's a courier who speaks Arabic and knows the score. I couldn't very well come on my own, could I?"
Continues...
Excerpted from The Gabriel Houndsby Mary Stewart Copyright ©2006 by Mary Stewart. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : HarperTorch; Reprint edition (Nov. 28 2006)
- Language : English
- Mass Market Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061145394
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061145391
- Item weight : 163 g
- Dimensions : 10.64 x 2.13 x 17.15 cm
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Lady Mary Stewart, born Mary Florence Elinor Rainbow, was a popular English novelist, and taught at the school of John Norquay elementary for 30 to 35 years.
She was one of the most widely read fiction writers of our time. The author of twenty novels, a volume of poetry, and three books for young readers, she was admired for both her contemporary stories of romantic suspense and her historical novels. Born in England, she lived for many years in Scotland, spending time between Edinburgh and the West Highlands. Mary Stewart's legacy as an author is vast. She is considered by many to be the mother of the modern romantic suspense novel. She was among the first to integrate mystery and love story, seamlessly blending the two elements in such a way that each strengthens the other.
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I still love the Mary Stewart mysteries. Yes, they're somewhat dated, but I'm transported back to the girl in her early teens who gobbled them up like potato chips.
The heroine of this tale, is Christy Mansell and she's really not the nicest of people. *LOL* She's 22 years old and oh so world-weary. She's very typically upperclass British just this side of snobby - oh hell, she's actually a moneyed snob, okay? But she owns it, saving her from being detestable.
The hero is her cousin Charles Mansell - they are the children of identical twin brothers, you see. He's a few years older and knows just about everything there is to know. Again, he's that long, lanky, languid British young man that was so popular in the late 60s.
I particularly loved this book because it took place in Lebanon with saluki dogs, ancient palaces, marketplaces and small Arabic villages with small Arabic children. It was in my Violet Winspear days too, when I first read it, so that primed the pump so to speak.
Anyway, it was a pleasure to dive back into a much-loved book by a much-loved author. (And I must mention my love for the new ebook covers. They're scrumptious!)
A very different offering from my favourite contemporary writer. This time Lady Stewart gives us a couple of protagonists who are difficult to empathise with. They are both extremely good-looking, admittedly “spoiled”, free-spirited scions of a very wealthy banking family with all the arrogance, self-assurance and even smugness that their privileged upbringing would be expected to provide. Despite the slightly annoying personalities of a young headstrong girl who is often “irritated” and a leading man who is flippant at best and constantly quoting from more or less obscure literature, I found myself deeply involved in the plot and pleasurably engaged in trying to solve the mystery as the story went along.
This is perhaps the most “dated” of Stewart's books and therein lies most of the interest, as she vividly describes places and especially attitudes that are gone forever. It's difficult nowadays to imagine a 22-year-old girl blithely travelling around Syria and Lebanon on her own but in this narrative there is only a suggestion of potential danger and Christy feels, as she frequently reminds her family, that she is perfectly capable of looking after herself. The pacing of the story is also unusual and different from Lady Stewart's other novels in that we get a pretty intense episode, then the tension slackens and the plot meanders seemingly back to square one before picking up again with a vengeance to the breathless finish. In my view, five stars are fully justified by the excellent quality of the writing, sense of place and originality of the plot (although inspired by the life of Lady Hester Stanhope, an adventurous British aristocrat who embraced the Arab world and became a local legend for her eccentric lifestyle in the early 1800's).
I found the book enjoyable and intriguing but, when compared with the rest of Mary Stewart's opus, I was less interested in the driving themes of the story and to me the romance element was so understated as to be almost an afterthought. I did end up liking the two cousins but I felt the character development here was a little laboured. What I usually find enchanting about this author is the effortless narrative gift she displays whereas here one could almost feel the sheer hard work involved in making the story hang together. If you have read other MS books, this one might surprise you. However, if you are new to this author, you may want to start with something like “Nine Coaches Waiting”, “The Moon Spinners”, “Touch Not The Cat”, the fabulous “This Rough Magic” or her strong début novel “Madam, Will You Talk?”.
Top reviews from other countries
In my years of reading I've yet to find Stewart's equal in the "exotic locale/romantic suspense" genre. (Maybe a few Susanna Kearsley books, but if any other reader here knows of other authors, I'd love some suggestions.) Stewart's descriptive abilities can put you right into the locations and events so well that you almost feel you're there, her low-key romance satisfies the romance lover, and her mysteries are usually topnotch, with some great moments of excitement and suspense.
This story has young rich Christy Mansel in Syria/Lebanon on holiday, where she accidentally runs into second cousin Charles on the street in Damascus. They discuss future sightseeing together and a possible visit to eccentric Aunt Harriet, living in an old palace (Dar Ibrahim) outside Beirut, in a life she seems to have patterned after 19th century adventurer Lady Hester Stanhope.
Christy is first to get to Dar Ibrahim, finds the palace in disrepair, populated with rather unfriendly servants and a young Englishman whose relationship to her aunt borders on his being her keeper. Christy manages one unsatisfying visit with her eccentric aunt, who has adopted male Arab dress and strange habits. From there the tale becomes more and more interesting and exciting.
Charles gets involved, although he and Christy are seldom together for long in the story, and the intrigue becomes very intriguing, with drugs, drug addicts, drug smugglers, and that mystery of elusive Aunt Harriet. All will be resolved in an action-packed, beautifully-written adventure with a superlative denouement that'll keep you on the edge of your seat.
Two not-so-favorable observations I have upon rereading this book are that 1) there's a wealthy white superiority/entitlement vibe with the "natives" being more "primitive" than Christy and her kind, and 2) the romance, sweet as it is, doesn't sit super well with me because the two are cousins (although of the kissing kind) who grew up together and look enough alike to be twins (so we are told). Neither issue, however, takes away from the interest and excitement of the story and both are signs of the earlier time. You can find more political correctness in stories nowadays (even if there aren't really that many more PC people in the world).
This book is set in the Middle East and includes a Lady Hester Stanhope wannabe as the mysterious hostess. I fell in love with the countryside as Stewart described it. The villains were appropriately wicked, and the love interest was a bit of a surprise.
All in all, it was a good book as long as allowances are made for when it was written. It did move a bit slowly for my taste, hence the four-star rating. Most Mary Stewart fans will like it; if long descriptive passages aren't something you enjoy, then this book might be one you should skim.