Of the romantic suspense novels I have read over the years, The Third Heiress is one of the first I have found to be genuinely suspenseful. Even better, it accomplishes that feat without piling up bodies all over the place. And though isn’t a time-travel, the story also uses paranormal elements to spin a tale in two time periods at once.

Poor Jill Gallagher thought she had it all. Orphaned young and lonely all her life, she thought her prince had come when she got engaged to rich, handsome Hal Sheldon. But as the story begins, Hal calls off their engagement as she drives them to a weekend getaway. Bad timing. Jill, distraught, loses control of the car and wraps it around a tree. With his dying breath, Hal adds insult to injury: “I love you…Kate.”

Jill escorts Hal’s body home to England, where she meets his aristocratic family. They obviously don’t know what to make of Jill and her claimed engagement. None of them are kind to her, but they also don’t come off as the stuffy snobs so beloved by Disney movies and Doritos commercials. Instead, they are clearly a family stricken by shock and grief, and Jill doesn’t blame them for taking some of it out on her. To her credit, she’s also savvy enough to see that the gulf between herself and Hal was wider than she ever knew, and realizes that their relationship never had much of a chance. At the same time, she is no doormat, and accepts the family’s pain without giving in to any abuse.

In Hal’s bedroom Jill finds an old photograph of two young women, on the back of which Hal has written “Kate Gallagher and Anne Bensonhurst, the summer of 1906.” Could this be the mysterious Kate? Is the last name, and the fact that she looks like Jill, a coincidence? Jill decides to investigate, both for the connection to Hal and for the possibility of finding a family she’s never known. She soon learns that Anne is Hal’s father’s mother, and that Kate was her best friend who vanished in 1908, never to be seen again. During her quest she is alternately helped and hindered by Hal’s cousin Alex, an orphan like herself who was raised by Hal’s family and is determined to preserve their honor. Although Alex and Jill are attracted to one another, it becomes harder for Jill to trust him as her investigation begins to strike closer to home.

There was a lot about Jill to like. She’s uneducated but very bright, often a tough combination to depict well. She’s compassionate and sensitive without being a wimpette. She seems awfully brand-conscious for a poor dancer, but I suppose she reads magazines like the rest of us and picked up some wine trivia from Hal. Also, she’s a bit too ready to accept what appear to be mysterious dreams and visions of Kate from beyond the grave, but perhaps her psychic best friend had an influence on her. We know her hero is intelligent and insightful, not because Jill ever thinks “Boy, is this guy intelligent and insightful” but because he goes around saying intelligent, insightful things. You can’t ask for more than that.

The contemporary story bogs down a bit late in the book, but Kate’s story bridges the gap nicely. Though it’s shown in fragments, the characters are strong and the story is emotionally involving. Although the victims of the past were innocent, it’s clear that the tragedy that befell them was rooted in their own actions, which made me feel the pain of it all the more.

Overall, The Third Heiress blends a dab of contemporary suspense with old-fashioned Gothic elements very nicely. While the contemporary story may not rev up enough for diehard thriller fans, the older story lends both timelines the gradual tension build-up of an old haunted house movie. Combining the characterization of a romance with the plot and pace of a suspense novel is a difficult task, and this book accomplishes it while neatly avoiding many stereotypes. I enjoyed this book and will watch for this author in the future.