The final installment! Mysteries solved and romances
resolved…
In the last installment, the whole party was exploring a
rather sad zoo. Krista wandered off by
herself, as you do, and was convinced by Hamid to visit his friend in
Switzerland, and then warned that she is surrounded by danger on all sides. Fun
times!
The group re-assembles back at the bus. Krista sees Eve (our
Other Woman) kiss Ryan on the cheek before they board the bus and is cool with
Ryan for the entire ride. They’re snippy with each other and Ryan eventually
threatens to take her over his knee and spank her. I feel like this is not as
popular a trope as it used to be.
Anyway, the tourist experience continues as the party goes to
a Moroccan casino for dinner and a show. Jeff and Ryan wonder what kind of wine
to have with couscous and the waiter recommends champagne. It wouldn’t be my
choice, but I suppose champagne goes with everything. Eve commandeers Ryan for
a dance and Krista is a bit catty about it to Jeff, who reveals that Eve has a
fiancé. That solves Krista’s jealousy issues and she talks it out with Ryan.
‘Communication problems’ will get you every time! That resolved, they spend a
pleasant evening dancing and talking together and eating what sounds like a
delicious dinner.
And then on to the show, which includes belly-dancing,
snake-charming, and dancing with swords.
Ryan and Krista find the sword-dance a bit repetitive and so decide to
head off to the casino. Right after
they’ve risen from their seats there’s a gasp of horror from the audience – one
of the dancers’ swords has found its way into the seats they were just sitting
at! And it sounds like these were not tame decorative swords.
Ryan and Krista are in shock. They could have been seriously
injured! It’s only then that Krista thinks to tell Ryan about the warning she
had from Hamid. Ryan gets firm and says they’re flying out of Morocco at the
next possible flight. Back at the hotel Krista has a restless, nightmare-filled
sleep. Like any man totally not in love with his ‘fake’ wife, Ryan kindly gets
her a glass of water, some sleeping pills, a cool washcloth and changes her
nightgown for her. Indeed.
The flight goes off without a hitch and Ryan and Krista
arrive in Milan (their first stop on their way to Switzerland), ready to travel
to their next zoo. When Krista tells
Ryan about her promise to Hamid to meet with his friend, Ryan becomes
suspicious (of course!). He wonders why
they would need Hamid’s friend to translate the little red book.
Exhausted by their journey, Krista and Ryan stop in Lucerne
instead of taking the train all the way to Basel. This leads to a situation
which always happens in set-ups like this: the last hotel room available only
has one bed! What will they do? Krista
suggests they can be adults and share the bed platonically, but Ryan refuses.
He finally shows his cards and tells Krista that “we have a perfectly good
marriage certificate and I’m damned tired of playing games” (154). If they’re
sleeping in the same bed together, they’ll be doing more than sleeping. If
Krista doesn’t want to do that, then they won’t sleep in the same bed.
Krista is startled and finds it difficult to make a
decision. She’s definitely attracted to him (and in love with him), but it’s
like one complicated game of chicken. She doesn’t want to show her interest
without knowing first that he’s in love with her. But after a bit of thought,
she realizes she does want to sleep with him, so might as well go for it. And
then they have sex while a storm rages on outside: “the tempest outside was
nothing compared to the one which had raged between them” (156).
When Krista wakes up in the morning Ryan seems to have
completely disappeared. Incredibly hurt, she decides to leave Lucerne by
herself and fly back to the United States. As I said before, ‘communication
problems’. The concierge books her a ticket, but suggests she goes explore
Lucerne while she’s waiting for the train. So Krista heads out on an excursion
up Mount Pilatus. This book is very successful with its tourism, because I
definitely want to take this cable-car trip up the Swiss mountains!
Unfortunately, Krista is not so enthusiastic about heights.
And once she reaches the top and gets out to see the sights, she finds herself
essentially trapped on a mountain with…guess who…Hamid! She is for some reason
initially neither suspicious nor worried. Until Hamid threatens to throw her
off the mountain if she doesn’t give him his little book back. But it turns out
she doesn’t have it – Ryan does. Hamid keeps a close hold on her as they travel
back down the mountain, but as they get out of their tram car, they’re
surrounded by a large group of men who grab hold of Hamid and bundle him into a
car before Krista even knows what’s happened. And then Jeff and Ryan are there
to catch her when she faints.
Explanations ensue: Ryan had left that morning to get the
red book translated by someone from the government. It turns out that Hamid was
suspected of having stolen some restricted Moroccan government documents,
supposedly of interest to ‘extremists’. He was using Krista to try and get the
information out of the country. They never really explain what the info was. Anyway,
that was the Swiss police who bundled him into the car. That’s the suspense
part of the plot resolved. And then the romance is resolved when Ryan reveals that
he had left Krista a note, but she never got it. Ryan finally reveals that he’s
been in love with Krista ever since she started working with him and that the
whole trip was a way to get her to pay attention to him. I don’t see why he
didn’t just ask her out on a date, but that’s me. They declare their love and
all is well.
I don’t know if I have any ‘summing up’ thoughts on this
book. It’s enjoyable as a sight-seeing tour, but both Morocco and Switzerland
are really just background to Ryan and Krista’s relationship, which could
be solved by one simple straightforward conversation. For a book with a
political intrigue suspense plot, the actual politics involved are very fuzzy.
I keep on thinking we’re getting closer to real ‘sheik romance’ territory, but
the 70s seem to be lasting forever…
Next up, a movie magazine break and then
another Violet Winspear novel – this one has a hero who’s ‘half Russian prince,
half man of the desert’. It sounds promising!
