Customer Reviews

The Beckoning Door: A Mystery

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mabel? Short for Margaret? No, we're told it's just Mable. Now doesn't that name alone evoke a Minnesota long gone? Mable Seeley might be seen as Minnesota's Raymond Chandler. While Cathy Kingman (the heroine) is a bit more Minnesota-nice than Chandler's Philip Marlow, she isn't one whit less intelligent and brave. Just as Chandler takes us to 1930's L.A., Seeley returns us to mid-century, small-town Minnesota. All the characters that made up that world are here: the rich, the poor and the working stiffs; at a time when cool people still smoked and radio was all there was at home on the sultry, mosquito-filled evenings of summer. Besides sex and violence, of course. But the big two are understated in this book--mysteries were about plots then, not titillation.

Mike Nardine

First published in 1950, The Beckoning Door is a reprint of Mabel Seeley's classic mystery. Small-town Midwestern woman Cathy Kingman longs to escape the sleepy dwelling of Long Meadow, and resents her cousin Sylvia who seized Cathy's inheritance and broke up her relationship. When Sylvia is murdered, suspicion immediately falls upon Cathy, and to prove her innocence she must find the real killer! Told from Cathy's first-person perspective, The Beckoning Door is at times mysterious, at times heart-pounding, and crafts a net of intrigue that withstands the test of time.

I like Mabel Seeley's style.

I loved Crying Sisters. What I didn't know was the reason I loved Crying Sisters, more than

any other of her other novels.

The Beckoning Door is weak. The writing has moments of excellence mixed with moments of underdevelopment.

The reason that the story is weak is because the heroine is passive. In the Crying sisters,

the heroine is active in every moment, every thought, every action, unless she is unconscious.

Miss Seeley never was unable to identify that principle, that of an active heroine as opposed to

a passive one.

I love the wonderful descriptions for which the book is worth reading.

However, the most wonderful descriptions are weakened when they amount to a

theme-less story.

If you want her best story, which is a 10, try Crying Sisters.

This book will leave you guessing at the outcome until the last page. Who will win the heroine's heart and love? Pick up a copy today to find out how this mystery/romance ends. This tale embraces the twilight hour, when romance is in the air and passion rouses the senses. This tale is a compelling, suspenseful, and passoinate lovestory. I'm a big fan of traditional, old-fashioned, mystery novels, (Love the book covers too!) and since I'm a modern-day writer, I strive to bring that elegance unto the written page. As a result, my books are dark, mysterious, romantic, and sometimes eerie, with the recurring gloomy mansion, a beautiful, inquisitive heroine, and a brooding, but handsome hero and/or anti-hero. My heroines will always be feisty, young, and beautiful, and my heroes, brooding, suave and extremely attractive. Once you begin reading one of my stories, before you know it, you will find yourself swept up in the suspenseful, romantic intrigue as you hurry to turn those pages!

Her prose is quite unique and a bit different from the "norm of romances" you may be used to reading. I can promise you that her books (like my own) will be so appealing and believable that you will find yourself walking in the heroine's shoes, seeing through her eyes, speaking her words, feeling her fears, her struggles, her anguish, her melancholy and even her ecstasy.

The endings are sometime surprising... sometimes happy... sometimes bittersweet... but they are NEVER boring, or predictable!