I believe in improvement. Even for a journeyman writer like W. E. D. (Marilyn) Ross. At least in his Dark Shadows books. For much of the series the plot is largely the same: a young woman is threatened and finds herself in Collinwood. Often the threat comes in the form of a mysterious stranger. The woman falls in love with Barnabas Collins, but in the end it doesn’t work out. The bad guys are stopped, however, whether they’re supernatural or not. In Barnabas, Quentin and the Hidden Tomb things have moved on somewhat. The main female character, Ellen, a southern belle from just after the Civil War, doesn’t fall for Barnabas. She is attracted to him, of course, but not really in love. That’s a plus. And Barnabas is temporarily cured of his vampirism in this story. Quentin is, despite earlier story lines, really pretty good, if misunderstood.
This installment begins in the Hudson Valley where Ellen’s intended lives. Unbeknownst to her, her fiancé has died and has been substituted with his identical twin vampire brother. This northern family lost their fortune during the war and need the marriage to bring Ellen’s cash into the coffers/coffin. Ellen is rescued by Barnabas, who is a family friend. He takes her to Maine, figuring she’ll be safe there. Unlike other women in the series, she has already fallen in love with someone other than Barnabas, so the tension is focused elsewhere. The disguised enemies come, of course, but this story feels a bit less formulaic.
As I’ve confessed numerous times regarding this series, these are guilty pleasure books from my childhood. I don’t read them expecting belles lettres, but rather a rush of nostalgia. They seldom fail to deliver on that front. There are a limited number of them. They hearken to a different time when the ability to crank out book after book (Ross published at least 24 novels the year this one appeared—that’s the rate of two per month) didn’t hurt your ability to find a publisher. Some of his fiction, I’m told, is quite good. Others, such as the Dark Shadows books, are of a different purpose. They were meant to supplement the income on an unexpectedly successful soap opera that would go on to become a cultural icon. It will be no surprise that Barnabas and Ellen prevail in the end. The enemies are unmasked and, strangely for the series, the vampire is destroyed. And the legend lives on.
