The Gabriel Hounds (by Mary Stewart)

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I am glad I decided to re-read my novels by Mary Stewart. The somewhat tense adventure stories she wrote in the middle of last century are not my preferred genre. Yet I read some of her books as a teenager, and re-discovered them - and others - as an adult. She created believable characters and excellent stories, with the tension never quite turning into horror.

I last read ‘The Gabriel Hounds’ in 2006 and had entirely forgotten what it was about. The main character is Christy and the book is told in the first person from her perspective. We meet her first in a shop in Damascus, where she has lost sight of the touring party she is with. But she spots her cousin Charles and is delighted to be reunited with him. She knew he was in the Middle East, and it turns out that he has deliberately come to find her, so it’s not as much of a coincidence as it first appears.

Charles is of similar age to Christy, and they grew up together, the children of identical twins. They are best friends, but until now have seen each other in a sibling relationship rather than anything stronger. Christy has already made plans to stay in Lebanon, once she gets there, longer than the rest of her party, and Charles agrees to meet her there when he has finished some business.

They discuss their eccentric Great Aunt Harriet, who has been living something of a hermit life in a large house in Lebanon, not far from where Christy will be staying. She’s over eighty and known to be in somewhat failing health, but Charles, at least, remembers her with fondness and they agree to make a visit together a few days later.

But Christy decides, on impulse, to see if she can visit her great-aunt a day earlier. She’s been on a car tour of the area and happens to come close to her aunt’s home. She finds it remarkably difficult to gain entrance; there’s a surly guard who seems to have difficulty speaking at all, a resentful maid, and a young man who is apparently in residence, looking after the household. Everywhere seems dilapidated, even dirty… and Christy is beginning to feel that something suspicious is going on. But then it’s agreed that she can have an audience with her aunt so long as she’s prepared to wait until after 10pm. For one of Aunt Harriet’s eccentricities is that she sleeps in the daytime, and is awake only at night.

There’s a legend about some dogs that bay when someone is about to die; but although they give their name to the book, they don’t actually play that big a part in it. Unlike some of Mary Stewart’s novels, there wasn’t much tension in the early part of the book. And in the later part, while there’s a lot of action and excitement, there isn’t any of the underlying low-key trepidation that I’ve come to expect.

I found some of the description of Aunt Harriet’s home rather confusing. There are passages and different areas, inside and outside. More than once when someone was somewhere outside, I was a tad mystified that they had to get inside and then outside again by a different exit before they were free of the building. I’m not good at visualising and after struggling to make sense of the house, I gave up and just accepted the story. It’s meant to be something of a large and confusing house, but after some exploration, Christy becomes more familiar with it. It might have added to the story if I had been able to follow the geography of the house, but I don’t think it mattered over-much.

There are various revelations and twists to the story, one or two of which I saw coming, but not the majority. I don’t think I had remembered anything, at first. But both Christy and Charles felt somewhat familiar to me, and I did vaguely recall a couple of incidents, as they happened.

Overall I liked this book very much. It was a little slow to get started, but by the time I was half-way through it was very difficult to put down.

Recommended.

Review copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews