Motherhunt by
Cynthia Rosi
pbk out June 98
(Headline)
at £5.99
An unusual mixture of a book, a plot in the Gothic-Romantic vein but with liberal injections of foul language and steamy...if physically improbable ...sex, as if to assure the reader that this is very much literature of the unromantic 90’s.
The major actor in this drama is Patrick, a ravishingly handsome, virile, etc, youth of American and Lakota Sioux blood, very much a currently fashionable “in" mixture. The most powerfully-realised character, though, is the Wicked Parent figure of his father, a repressive evangelical preacher in the American bible-belt mode, violently abusive to his children and, it is implied, a latent pervert, though he never actually gets to do anything outstandingly shocking. But the atmosphere of nervous tension which hangs about him….will he explode? when? why?...does have the feel of true experience.
As he is the obvious candidate for villain of the piece however, suspense collapses very readily when Patrick, in quest of his lost, magical Sioux mother, finds out that she has been murdered ten years previously when the family visited London. Readers at once draw their own conclusions as to the guilty party. This reader was a great deal more mystified by the lackadaisical ineptitude of the British Police when convincing alibis appear to have been thin on the ground.
A further character, Kitsy, current incumbent of the suburban house which was the scene of the crime, herself a rebel against her youthful past, takes in and takes to the scrumptious Patrick. She beds and breakfasts him, as well as transporting him to and from Wales in search of one of his father's ex - colleagues, from whom the motive for the murder must be extracted. This proves to be another religious nut, this time home-grown. For a female apparently of deep hypocrisy and nastiness she comes across as a rather insubstantial figure, as much daft as depraved, though she does finally and inadvertently reveal the truth.
The coincidences in the plot which allow the penniless Patrick to get the cash to fly across the Atlantic and which conveniently oust Kitsy's husband in time for him to find room in her house and heart are, we gather, due to the lingering influence of his mystical, magical mother, watching over her son. We could have done with more of a build-up of this supernatural element. It could have given greater emphasis to the Gothic nature of the plot and added a much more powerful frisson to the story, which cannot rely on realism to make its impact.
Motherhunt by
Cynthia Rosi