British Author Challenge March 2021: Eleanor Hibbert & Vaseem Khan

You may know Eleanor Hibbert better as Victoria Holt, Jean Plaidy, Philippa Carr, or one of several other pseudonyms. Hibbert wrote over 200 books in a variety of genres, including historical fiction, thriller, non-fiction, and gothic romance.

Selected works
As Jean Plaidy:
Plantagenet Saga
Tudor Saga
Lucrezia Borgia
Queen Victoria Tetralogy

As Victoria Holt:
Mistress of Mellyn
Bride of Pendorric
The Shivering Sands
The Pride of the Peacock

As Philippa Carr:
Daughters of England series

As Elbur Ford:
Poison in Pimlico
The Flesh and the Devil
Bed Disturbed
Evil in the House

As Kathleen Kellow:
Danse Macabre
Rooms at Mrs. Oliver's
It Began in Vauxhall Gardens
Call of the Blood
Rochester, the Mad Earl

Vaseem Khan writes mystery novels set in India. His first book, The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, came out in 2015 and he has published a novel a year since.

Works
Baby Ganesh Agency Investigations novels:
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra
The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown
The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star
Murder at the Grand Raj Palace
Bad Day at the Vulture Club

Malabar House series:
Midnight at Malabar House
The Dying Day (A provisional title. Expected publication is sometime in 2021.)

Jean Plaidy's The Thistle and the Rose was my choice - Margaret Tudor sounded intriguing.

>3 m.belljackson: I have that one on the shelves, but I'm not sure yet if I want to start with the historicals or one of her gothic romances.

I'll be reading We'll Meet Again since I have it sitting unread on my shelves. I'd also like to squeeze in something by Vaseem Khan if I have time at the end of the month. The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra looks like it will be the easiest to get my hands on.

>4 amanda4242:

Romance sounds more inviting than the other Tudor doomed women.

As a teenager I remember loving Bride Of Pendorric, of course can't remember a thing about it beyond enjoying it. I picked up a copy recently (I must have read my mother's copy), so plan to reread that.

>5 cbl_tn: I'm pretty sure I have We'll Meet Again on my shelves, too. I've just checked out The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra from the library so I'll be reading that one within the next three weeks.

>6 m.belljackson: Sadly in gothic romances the heroines run a high risk of suffering nearly as much as a historical princess or queen.

>7 Caroline_McElwee: I've been going back and forth on whether I should go with Bride Of Pendorric or Mistress of Mellyn.

I love the Inspector Chopra Mysteries. I might see if the next one is available in audio when I have a long drive this coming weekend.

>11 thornton37814: I've really come to appreciate audiobooks in the past few years. I still prefer eyeball reading, but it's so nice to be able to listen to a book while doing chores or when I'm too tired to keep my eyes open but not tired enough to fall asleep.

I know I read a lot of Jean Plaidy/Victoria Holt in high school, and found them totally immersive. I don't have any on hand now, it appears. I think I'll try to acquaint myself with Vaseem Khan. Our library doesn't have the first in the series...will I be very lost if I start with No. 2?

>13 laytonwoman3rd: I discovered the Plaidy novels via the library sale table and remember them as highly entertaining reads.

I haven't started on Khan yet, but perhaps thornton37814 can chime in on starting with book two of the series.

Just finished The Hammer of the Scots by Jean Plaidy

>15 PaulCranswick: Howdy, stranger! Been a while since you've stopped by these threads!

I had no idea Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt were the same person! I read and re-read a lot of Victoria Holt as a teen--especially remember Bride of Pendorric, but haven't read any of the Plaidy novels.

Vaseem Khan I had never heard of, so I downloaded The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra to my Kindle, finished it, and am on to book 2.

>13 laytonwoman3rd: Having just read the first book and half of the second book this week, I would say they definitely read as a series, but there is enough reviewing of the background that I think you'd be ok starting with Book 2.

>17 AnneDC: I didn't realize Plaidy and Holt were the same person either until I was researching potential selections for the challenge. She certainly was a prolific author!

Mistress of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Since I resemble a hedgehog, at least I am not spineless.

This one owes a huge debt to Jane Eyre, but where Brontë's heroine is a meek little mouse, Holt's is as prickly as a hedgehog and has a spine of steel.

Martha Leigh is an impoverished gentlewoman who takes a job as governess to the daughter of Connan TreMellyn, a recently widowed wealthy Cornish landowner. As this is a gothic romance, mysterious occurrences and brooding men abound, but Miss Leigh is too level-headed and sharp-tongued to be a stereotypical gothic heroine: she is more of a detective than she is a wilting flower. I also award her bonus points because she actually spends a good portion of the novel with the child she is being paid to educate, something an inordinate number of literary governesses fail to do.

While Mistress of Mellyn may not be great art, it is greatly entertaining and would make one hell of a movie.

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan

The cover made me think this was going to be significantly more fluffy than I usually like my mysteries, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that while it's generally light in tone, the characters are interesting and the mystery decently thought out. And yes, the elephant really is charming.

>19 amanda4242: I know I read that one long ago, and remember that I really enjoyed it. I'm sure I enjoyed it more than Jane Eyre, which just never worked for me.

>20 amanda4242: Our library has a couple from this series, but not No. 1. Aggravating.

>21 laytonwoman3rd: I did enjoy Mistress of Mellyn more than Jane Eyre, mostly because Holt wasn't given to moralizing.

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra is $2.99 on Kindle at the moment.

ETA: It's also on sale for the same price at Barnes and Noble, Google Play, and Kobo.

I read We'll Meet Again by Philippa Carr so that no one else has to. It was published by Hibbert's literary executor after her death. That was a mistake. It should never have seen the light of day. The writing was so awful that it was fascinating. I kept reading to see how much worse it could get.

>23 cbl_tn: Ouch! Thanks for the warning!

I've read To Hold the Crown: The Story of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York by Jean Plaidy.
I had read two of the Cromwell books by Hilary Mantel. So I was already a bit up to date with the history involved. To Hold the Crown is the first of Plaidy's Tudor Saga. Ten books total!
It's the story of King Henry VII, his wife, their two sons, Arthur and Henry (VIII) and Katherine of Aragon. As such it's a bit of a prequel to the books by Mantel.
As a history I thought it was good, interesting times. And how strange those two pretenders, with very similar stories. As a book I often found it a bit slow, and even a bit boring sometimes. There's a lot of repetition, and telling what a character is like, and then repetition of that. But they didn't really come alive for me, with the exception of Katherine.

So it's good when you want to know more about the times, but don't compare it to Hilary Mantel's work.

>25 EllaTim: Mantel's books keep getting raves, but I found them mind-numbingly dull with painfully weak characterizations.

Bride of Pendorric (Victoria Holt) (15/03/21) ***



I read this first when I was a teenager, I suspect off my mother's shelf. I have wondered what I'd think of it now, and the British Author Challenge gave me the excuse to find out.

It was an engaging enough read, and I remembered nothing of the story. A young bride finds herself caught up in a complicated set of family secrets, and the potential victim of one of her new family members.

It put me in mind of a poor Rebecca as most of it is also set in Cornwall. I guessed the main secrets about 2/3rds in.

>27 Caroline_McElwee: First Brontë, then Mantel, and now du Maurier: it seems like it's Holt's/Plaidy's fate to always be compared to other authors!

Finished The Lady in the Tower by Jean Plaidy. I think the history part of the story is very good but not so impressed with the first person narrative. Anne tells us about French Court, the politics of the times and the life at court but also the Catholic church and the birth of the Church of England. Good historical research. I think that reading Hilary Mantel as a companion read would not be a bad thing. Good way to revisit history.

>29 Kristelh: The Plaidy novels are much lighter on the history than seems to be the current trend for historical fiction, but reading the Plantagenet Saga did inspire me to read some non-fiction about the dynasty, which I may not have bothered to do if she had gone into exhaustive detail.

The fifth book in Khan's Baby Ganesh Agency Investigations series, Bad Day at the Vulture Club, is currently 99 cents.

I'll have the April thread up later today.

The April thread is up!

April: https://www.librarything.com/topic/330948
Wildcard: https://www.librarything.com/topic/327998

The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown by Vaseem Khan

The British Crown Jewels are on display in Mumbai and the Koh-i-Noor is stolen; it's up to Inspector Chopra to find the culprit.

I didn't enjoy this entry in the series as much as I did the first. The main mystery is weak, with improbable coincidences and lackluster inspecting taking the place of actual work. Even Khan didn't seem that interested in it: he kept cutting away to little side stories which were much more entertaining.

Ganesha the elephant continues to be adorable.

I may pick up the next volume if I need a completely undemanding read, but Inspector Chopra will never top my list of personal favorite detectives.

I still have the first Chopra in the pile to read later in the year.

Inspector Chopra and the Million Dollar Motor Car by Vaseem Khan

A novella in the Inspector Chopra mysteries series, in which the inspector and his baby elephant investigate the inexplicable theft of a luxury car. Not great literature, but it was an entertaining palate cleanser after my last read.

An omnibus of the first three books in Eleanor Hibbert/Philippa Carr's Daughters of England series is on sale today for $3.99.

https://openroadmedia.com/ebook/the-daughters-of-england-books-13/9781480430174

Menfreya in the Morning by Victoria Holt

A young heiress marries into an impoverished aristocratic family and gothic romance ensues. I'm amazed that nobody has made movies from Holt's books: her endings aren't great, but she tells entertaining tales that would work great as Masterpiece movies.

>37 amanda4242: I know I read that one back in my yout'...don't remember much about it, but I do know I got totally lost in Victoria Holt's stories. You're right, they would be lovely on the screen.

>38 laytonwoman3rd: Menfreya owes a lot to Rebecca, but with a creepy nanny replacing the creepy housekeeper.