Darkinyung

The author's second contemporary Gothic (The Thin Woman, 1984), overwrought and overlong, finds willful, gorgeous Tessa Fields, now 21, determined to find her true mother. Left in a basket on the doorstep of kindly Reverend and Mrs. Fields, her adoptive mother by now long-dead, Tessa's quest has honed in on the tiny village of Flaxby Meade and the ancestral home of the Tramwell sisters - Hyacinth and Primrose. Welcomed as a temporary houseguest, with some double-edged help from on-again, off-again boyfriend Harry Harkness, Tessa finds an odd assemblage - the gentle sisters, who are selling off treasures to keep Cloisters going, mostly to oily antique-dealer Clyde Beasley; an ex-burglar butler named Butler; Chantal, a gypsy housemaid with recent ties to Harry; village nurse and midwife Maude Krumpet and her adopted, quick-witted young Bertie. There are also the neighboring Grundys, mother and son, at whose house Tessa again meets art-expert Angus Hunt, her ex-employer. Eventually, it's Hunt who's found stabbed to death, and Godfrey Grundy is a second victim. But by now some readers will scarcely care. A lighthearted romp has become a bore; once-charming Tessa is a tiresome teen-ager at any age, and all the guests have stayed too long at the party. (Kirkus Reviews)