Surrender My Love: Cable cars and Swiss hotels

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!

Surrender My Love: Cocker Spaniel Zoos

Okay – so instead of offering constant apologies I’m going to abandon all schedules. My aim will be to do two posts a week, but no promises as to when they arrive. Surprises for all! I suggest taking advantage of the rss feed for now…

Last time we saw Krista she had just been pushed down the stairs by an unknown assailant. She wakes up surrounded by all of the tour group, including an especially shaken Ryan (he calls her ‘darling’). Luckily she’s unhurt, except for a twisted ankle. As is often the case with near-death experiences and injuries in romance novels, the incident brings Krista and Ryan closer together: he carries her all the way to the bus. 

Another reference to marriage rituals and customs is made as they all drive to Marrakesh. Halfway there Hamid points out Imichil where the “Moroccan marriage market” is held. Eve is disdainful and wonders that “selling women like slaves” still goes on, but Hamid is not happy at the suggestion that it’s slavery. He argues that “slavery has nothing to do with it […] Imichil is a tribal area where our people merely cling to their ancient customs” (83). And then the men make a series of jokes about their own wives: basically, ‘take my wife, please’. 

When they finally reach Marrakesh, Ryan makes Krista take a bath for her sore muscles. Sexy! The next morning they’re actually getting along for once and banter over their croissants. 

It’s funny, because usually these ‘tourist’ setting novels are not actually about tourists. Often the hero and heroine are in the country because one of them lives there or works there or some other reason. But in this novel, Krista and Ryan actually are tourists (despite their ostensible ‘zoo’ job rationale). So the next place they go is the souk in Marrakesh, a hotspot of Moroccan tourism. They see a snake charmer and make jokes about belly dancers.

And then they actually do go to the zoo, the Toubkal Zoo and Botanical Gardens, which sadly are not that impressive.  The zoo does have some camels. And a few lions and leopards in small, but clean cages. And some pedigree dogs, including cocker spaniels and German shepherds! Yes, dogs.

This is suspicious. Why is Hamid taking them to a boring zoo? Is he just a terrible guide or is there something else going on? He leaves Ryan and Krista to look around the zoo while he conducts some ‘business’.  

In any case, after a quick tour, Krista wanders off by herself (she has a habit of doing this). She doesn’t like to see Eve and Ryan interacting, but won’t admit it. Hamid catches her alone and asks her another favour. He wants her to look up a friend of his when she’s in Switzerland (their next destination). Apparently this friend is studying biology in Heidelberg, but will be on vacation in Switzerland. He will be hanging out at the zoo there and Krista could just meet him easily. Hamid suggests she show the friend the little book in Arabic that he gave her and he could translate the supposed proverbs that it contains. 

So suspicious! And it’s not even a very good cover? That’s not really the kind of favour you ask of someone.  Please, meet my friend who hangs out in zoos. Why?

And then Hamid warns Krista that she and Ryan might want to cut their trip in Morocco short, because she is in danger. She doesn’t think it’s likely they’ll do that, but she does promise to talk to Ryan about it. To me, it actually sounds like Hamid is threatening Krista but it’s going over her head. “I sincerely hope there won’t be any trouble” he says, “but sometimes innocent people get hurt in our political maneuverings” dot…dot…dot… (120). 

Well, what is Hamid involved in, and why is he so intent on having Krista bring his little book to Switzerland? And why doesn’t she find this suspicious at all? Next installment!

Surrender My Love: Twin beds and dark stairways

Apologies for the lateness of this post!

When we last saw them, Ryan and Krista (I keep on accidentally typing Ryan and Trista – I think we all know why) had just met the other members of their Moroccan tour, including genial Jeff, seductive Eve and their guide Hamid.

As the bus trip begins, we get the full complement of trivia  about Morocco. For example, Krista wonders why there are so many people going towards the cemetery. Hamid informs us all that “This is Friday, a Holy Day in the Moslem religion.  Families go to our cemeteries to spend the day with the dead” (40). Someone, of course, asks about how many wives men are allowed and one of the travelers answers: “'Each man can legally have four wives,' he droned in precise tones. ‘The present king has two—a Moroccan woman who is the mother of the Crown Prince and a French wife as well’” (42).

It’s not surprising that Janice Radway, in Reading the Romance (1984), found that the small-town American romance readers she spoke with felt that reading romances educated them about the world.  Many Harlequins from the 1970s, especially Harlequin Presents, (and Signet romances too, as we see here) set in international settings play up this aspect, sometimes even offering a short ‘facts about the country’ at the back of the book.

We sense the first hint of the promised mystery and intrigue when their tour is slowed down by a roadblock up ahead. Apparently there was an assassination attempt on the King a few years ago and security has been stepped up since then. Before they reach the roadblock, Hamid gets off the highway and takes them to a small café in a nearby town, supposedly because the line for the roadblock might clear a bit later. Krista takes a little walk off from the rest of the group and Hamid joins her. He gives her a gift of a small booklet written in Arabic and bound in red Moroccan leather and asks her not to tell any of the other travelers, because they might be hurt. 

This is very suspicious and Krista doesn’t seem enthused (although she is more confused than suspicious - she doesn't know she's in a romantic suspense novel), but I suppose there’s not an easy way to refuse the purported gift of a book. 

In any case, they get through the roadblock just fine and reach their hotel in Fez. Krista had mused that Fez looks “like something out of the Arabian Nights”, but their hotel is “an extravagantly modern two-story stucco building which looked more like Palm Springs than the fabled interior of Morocco” (56). Krista and Ryan, of course, have to share a room, since the original bookings were made for the previous Director of the Zoo and his wife. And they’re actually married! The room, however, has two twin beds, which you would think would satisfy Krista’s sensibilities, but she also goes to the trouble of dragging a heavy leather screen from the balcony inside and placing it in-between the two beds.  I wonder whether a twin-bed arrangement was the standard one for hotel rooms at the time? Anyone? I’ve never seen this in my experience: it’s usually either two full or double beds or one double or queen. 

Ryan is a little insulted by this. But the rest of the night is uneventful. 

The next day the group tours the city and ends up at the college of Bou Inania. They all climb a dark and twisty staircase up to the roof of the college to see the view of the medina. Everyone is impressed by the architecture, the mosaics and the fountain. While Ryan and Jeff are taking photos, Krista takes the stairs back down to the bus.  This is when the intrigue really gets going, as the quiet stairwell suddenly feels "oppressive and threatening" (74). Then, Krista is pushed by an unknown person and falls down the stairs. 

Who was it? And why would they want to hurt a lowly zoo employee? Maybe we’ll find out on Monday…

Surrender My Love: I got fake-married for this?

Another desert romance from the 1970s. This one is, surprising, not a Harlequin. It’s published by Signet: Surrender My Love, by Glenna Finley, 1974 (not to be confused with Johanna Lindsey’s historical romance of the same name).

Like Court of the Veils, this romance is more of a desert romance than a sheik romance. It’s set in Morocco, but none of the main characters are sheiks. The back blurb also says it’s a “tale of love and danger” but I haven’t reached the danger part yet…So, be prepared for excitement!

Surrender my Love has the most terribly motivated fake marriage that I have ever read. Krista Blake and Ryan Talbot both work for an American zoo.  Their boss and his wife were invited to a zoo tour and government junket in Morocco (and Europe, although the book is set in the Moroccan part of the tour). At the last minute, they are unable to go and Krista and Ryan take their place. For reasons that are not clear to me, Ryan and Krista get married before they go on the trip because they think that will cause less workplace gossip? But they’re planning on getting an annulment afterwards, which will, I assume, cause an enormous amount of gossip.

THIS MAKES NO SENSE. Obviously, Ryan is secretly in love with Krista, and that’s his motivation, but even then, it makes no sense that they’ve gotten married. This is 1974! They’re on a trip for work! A zoo trip! Other fake-marriage or fake-engagement romances are often also fairly implausible, but at least they make sense. A tycoon thinks that a business owner will only sell him the business if he believes the tycoon is a stable family-man? That makes sense. It's a silly reason to get married, but it makes sense. There is no indication in this novel, however, that anyone else cares whether they are married or not. Sigh…

Anyway, the novel begins with their ferry trip from Spain to Morocco. Krista and Ryan are not getting along well. They snipe at each other and Ryan offers Krista unsolicited advice about the possibilities of sunstroke. They exposition the reason for their fake-marriage. Krista is skeptical about the necessity of it (yes!), but Ryan suggests that one reason for it is that zoo curators “don’t operate in the ‘beautiful people’ league. No affairs—no swinging swap sessions—we’re the conservative, dull, reliable sort who just pay taxes” (9). Okay, then.

When they arrive in to the dock at Tangier, Krista is surprise to find that it doesn’t look “very different from the rest of the world” (17). While Ryan had earlier referenced the romantic trope of sheik abduction, with a waiter in place of a sheik (“you’ll probably fall madly in love with a Moroccan waiter. Over here, they snatch you up and carry you off to the edge of the Sahara” (16)), he dismisses Krista’s expectations that Morocco will look like “a Charles Boyer movie”, as he describes it (17).  References to other media set in the Orient are popular in sheik romances, even if the references disclaim the connections. In fact, this reminds me of when I went on a bus tour for research in Morocco – we watched Casablanca on the bus on our way back to Casablanca!

In some ways, this book is like a tour of Morocco: we’re presented with a lot of interesting facts and trivia about the country and customs. For example, Krista and Ryan discuss whether the men they see in the port are wearing djellabahs or caftans; Ryan tells Krista “for your information, they're djellabahs.  Caftans are the same thing but a more deluxe model. They come in all colors” (18). We also learn that the reason some of the signs are in French is that “the French and Spanish left their mark when they occupied this part of the world” (19).

Krista and Ryan’s fellow travelers are: 

Hamid, the tour guide, who is in his early twenties; Herb Freeman, who’s in hospital administration; Jeff Snow, who’s in PR for the State Department; Mr. Weston, who’s in Public Health in the States, and his wife; and Eve Lenz (the Other Woman), who’s a pediatric psychologist, originally from Vienna and now living in the States.  Mysteriously, Eve was apparently a consultant to the Vienna zoo before she moved to the States. 

A very mixed bag. And they’re all piled into the bus and taken on a journey through Morocco. 

Next up… Is Ryan attracted to the glamorous Eve Lenz? And why are there so many roadblocks?