Let’s say you’re wholesome all American Cathlynn O’Connell, going to an antiques auction in a spooky old abbey in New Hampshire. A piece of Irish glass comes up for sale, one that you love, one that your grandma used to own, one that can’t live without. After the bidding is over (you lost) you run into the owner of the glass and the abbey, Jonas Shades. His wife, Alana, has mysteriously disappeared just two weeks before she was about to inherit a trust fund. Rather than call the police (which might hold up the money) he would like you to step in and pretend to be Alana until he can collect. If you do this he will give you that piece of glass you want so much. This man is handsome but very scary looking. He introduces you to the lawyer administering the trust fund, who seems hoodwinked, when you are introduced as the dead wife. You’re a dead-ringer for a woman the man detests! Jonas has you move into his house, wear his wife’s clothing. You find divorce papers stuffed into the closet. You confront your fake hubby who continues to stare at you lustfully but isn’t real keen on calling the police. You think maybe he did away with the wife. What would you do?

Well, if you’re the heroine of The Blackmailed Bride you go out and buy yourself a new dress for the next social function that your fake hubby will be taking you to.

The Blackmailed Bride is romantic suspense from the old school, by which I mean, not the bodice rippers of the 70s but the contemporary gothic stories of the 60s and 70s. Its all there: the brooding mysterious “husband,” the promiscuous first wife who is murdered, the innocent heroine who believes against all odds that the sexy gloomy hero, contrary to all the evidence, did not do away with wife number one, even though she deserved it.

The suspense in The Blackmailed Bride, as in the old books, is all about the heroine worrying that the hero may kill her before he gets her into bed. The mystery is not very mysterious. We witness Alana’s murder in the Prologue. She’s apparently on her way to meet a lover. Serves her right! Similarly the murderer is revealed in the first fifty pages albeit only to the reader.

Cathlynn O’Connel, is not the shy shrinking violet of the old gothics but her feistiness often defies logic. When agreeing to “play Alana” for Jonas she says, “All right, I accept, but I refuse to do anything illegal. I won’t call yourself by your wife’s name. I won’t sign any documents. And if I find that you are using me to defraud Alana, I’ll report you to the authorities.” Who is this woman kidding? She is pretending to be the man’s missing wife to get her trust fund. We are talking big time denial here.

Jonas, an ulta-tortured hero, is obsessed with gaining the funds to research a cure for a deadly disease. Why is he so desperate to cure this disease? You’ll have to guess because I’m not telling. To enjoy this book you’ve got to accept the premise that Jonas’ problems justify perpetrating a fraud. I sympathized with him but there are always better ways of getting money than stealing. Alana’s main crime, in the first part of the book, is that she slept with other men and that she preferred the city to the country. Though loose morals and lack of appreciation for rural life are not necessarily attractive qualities, surely anyone deserves a police investigation when they disappear.

None of this is helped by the fact that the writing style of The Blackmailed Bride is as over-the-top as the story. These people speak to each other in the kind of sentences that used to appear on the silent movie screens. Here’s Jonas describing missing wife, Alana: “All right, she was heartless, selfish. She didn’t have a soul. If she did it, it belonged to the devil.” All right already.

There may be some readers out there who miss the old gothics and will welcome this attempt to update the genre. If so give it a try, but I’d go dig up an old Mary Stewart.