Touch Not the Cat: The classic suspense novel from the Queen of the Romantic Mystery

Product Information

Stewart implicates most of the characters at one time or another including Bryony’s three younger cousins, an American family leasing out Ashley Court, an estate farmer who was a childhood friend of Bryony's, and even the local vicar. Bryony. Tell Bryony. Tell her. Howard. James. Would have told. The paper, it’s in William’s brook. In the library. Emerson, the keys. The cat, it’s the cat on the pavement. The map. The letter. In the brook … Tell Bryony. My little Bryony be careful. Danger … Perhaps the boy knows. Tell the boy. Trust. Depend. Do what’s right. Blessing.” What Mary Stewart’s fans remark on most is her wonderful storytelling, her sharply depicted settings and the sympathetic and lively characters. She was one of the most prominent writers of the romantic suspense subgenre, effortlessly blending romance novels and mystery. She combined the two genres, maintaining the mystery whilst focusing on the relationship — or at this time a simple courtship — between two people. She devised the story so that by going through the process of solving the mystery, the hero’s personality is “illuminated”— thereby helping the heroine to fall in love with him. One critic remarked:

Mary Stewart herself described Touch Not the Cat as 'a modern adventure story spiced with romance (or romance spiced with adventure; it depends whether you are advertising it for men or for women)'. [4] Touch Not the Cat is a romantic suspense novel by the late, great Mary Stewart. The tale follows the travails and triumphs of one Bryony Ashley, a young, thoughtful woman. Bryony is one in a long line of Ashleys responsible for looking after the family estate of Ashley Court. But when tragedy strikes, what potentially murderous secrets will the old ancestral home reveal? The Burdens of Home The clan motto is ‘Touch not the cat bot a glove’. ‘Bot’ means without. The ‘glove’ of a wildcat is the pad. If the cat is ‘ungloved’, its claws are unsheathed. The motto serves as a warning that one should beware when the wildcat’s claws are ‘without a glove’.

Get Our Weekly Newsletter

At this point I seriously began to wonder whether Mary Stewart was writing a parody of a romantic novel. Thankfully they are few.

there is a secret stair, as a matter of fact; it’s a very tame affair but it may have been useful in its day. In a way it’s a sort of secret inside a secret – it goes down from the Priest’s Hole into the wine-cellars.” But anyway, if you can get past this concept, the plot is pretty good, and has all the suspense you've come to expect if you're a Mary Stewart fan. In fact, Touch Not the Cat really kept me mystified as to the identity of the telepathic lover right up until the reveal...and even then, Stewart didn't make it any easier for the reader to breathe a sigh of relief and mutter, "so that's who it was!".During the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, Spanish gold – now known as the treasure of Loch Arkaig – was landed on the west coast of Scotland to help the campaign. It was taken to Loch Arkaig for safekeeping, but some of the gold disappeared and has never been accounted for. Fingers have been pointed at Cluny Macpherson as he had been entrusted to look after the treasure. Bryony decides to return home to live in her father’s small cottage and solve the mystery of what her father was trying to say. The cottage sits on Ashley Court, her family’s estate which, due to an entail stipulating only the male heirs will inherit, will become the property of her father’s cousin, and then subsequently his sons. The other legality in place is a trust that states all family members, including female Bryony, have to agree should anything be put up for sale. Bryony has known these terms her entire life and accepts them graciously. However, it soon seems likely her father's warnings have something to do with this entail and trust.

urn:oclc:472200072 Republisher_date 20140526131743 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20140523133710 Scanner scribe4.toronto.archive.org Scanningcenter uoft Worldcat (source edition) With regards to Bryony herself, I didn't exactly dislike her as a heroine, however I did find her far too much a pushover in the way she just accepted things and let the twins walk all over her. Even when it came to her 'lover' she seemed very passive in her decision making, for instance New Zealand was his dream, yet because of this 'shared mind' between them, it just automatically became her dream too. The Clan Macpherson is sometimes known as the Clan of the Three Brothers due to the fact that Ewan Ban Macpherson had three sons. Kenneth Macpherson of Clunie, Iain Macpherson of Pitman and Gillies Macpherson of Invereshie. Mcpherson Name Meaning Scottish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac an Phearsain ‘son of the parson’ (see Parsons). This is the surname of various ecclesiastical families in Aberdeenshire and Argyll; it is also established in northern Ireland. Was Clan MacPherson at Culloden? Perhaps it's because I am not a very intelligent person that I did not enjoy this as much as others. IDK. I mean I DID like it in some ways, but I think it mostly frustrated me because it wasn't what I was expecting.

After her father is killed in a hit and run, our heroine, Bryony, receives a transcript of his deathbed ramblings to try and interpret. One word on the list which is pretty clear is ‘danger’. However, Mary Stewart also makes explicit mention of the Gothic conventions, and she is disparaging of them. The narrator, Zoe Mills, was a first time for me, but I thought she nailed Bryony's voice and did great at the rest of the cast which were predominately male. I thought she even got Herr Goddard's German accent and even the American family from California. Most of the time, she narrated with a minimum of acting, but it was great how she swept me up during the climax scene with a bit more. I'll be keeping an eye out for more of her work. All this time in a moated grange straight out of Tennyson, and not even the sniff of a ghost or a secret passage or any of the things you might expect!” Bryony replies:

Nevertheless, a supernatural element remains in the novel: there is telepathy and there is the final scene of the 1835 lovers, who appear to be re-united after death.

My Book Notes

There is no longer the manpower nor the money to maintain Ashley Court as it once was. Much of the land has been sold off, public tours and rich American tenants are about the only source of income on the old estate. Bryony and her father had long since moved out of the manor house and into a cottage on the grounds. RELATED: TEN NOVELS FOR FANS OF JANE EYRE