Night Ward
By Noah Gordon, ©1959 On call … for love. The nurse – beautiful, blonde, and recently jilted by her fiance – has sworn off love. The doctor – handsome and wealthy – is torn between his society background and his medical future. The policeman – ambitious and honest – is on the trail of a psychopathic killer loose on hospital grounds. Each man wants to marry her. But complications of the heart set in when she finds herself falling in love … with both of them.
GRADE: B+
BEST QUOTES:
“The Red Sox were at bat, and as Ted Williams stepped to the plate Mrs. Hanscom poured herself a large glass of lemonade and drained it thirstily. Then, as Williams flied out to center field, she got up, sighed, and switched channels until she found a soap opera that would make her cry, too.”
“Any nurse who expects a doctor to be able to keep an appointment is either a fool or an optimist.”
“Massachusetts men, it seemed, like to make their dates interesting.”
REVIEW:
Ruth Mason, RN, is a doubly tragic figure: Orphaned at age 15, she lived with friends of her parents in Monterey, went to nursing school while her high school sweetheart attended Stanford, and waited some more while he did a tour in the Navy … and then a friend filled her in on the fact that he’d married a wealthy young woman from San Diego. So as the story opens, Ruth is doing what many stalwart VNRN heroines who have been jilted do: fleeing California for the small town of Dutton, Massachusetts, where her mother hailed from, but where she herself had never lived. She quickly lands a job on the night shift at Dutton Memorial Hospital, and soon after that hears the rumors about Dr. Alden MacKenzie, a gorgeous and talented doctor who never, ever dates nurses. Well, we’ll see about that!Life in this small town are not as dull as one might expect; there’s a crazed lunatic running around knifing folks in the back, even killing some. Ruth, of course, is soon caring for one of the victims and fending off Detective Sergeant Ed Gillis, who hails from South Boston and is eager to question the latest victim.
You’ll be shocked to hear that soon Dr. MacKenzie has asked Ruth out, and during their date he tells her that his mother, with whom he still lives, is planning out his career as the town’s “society doctor”—meaning he will see rich, psychosomatic patients that require not much more than hand-holding. He’s not wild about the idea—he’d rather go into research—but is unable to stand up to his mother. Ruth is unimpressed.
She begins dating Sgt. Gillis as well, though the doctor puts on the full-court press—but when he brings her home to meet mommie dearest, the matriarch tells Ruth that her son needs a wife with social standing, and since she has none, she is not suitable wife material. Ruth, to her credit, tells Mrs. MacKenzie that her ideas are all wrong for her son and will ruin his life and career as an important cancer researcher. The doctor himself seems intent on marrying Ruth – but then at the hospital ball, he becomes very drunk and is the driver in a hit-and-run accident, and then is arrested on suspicion of being the knifer. Ruth has words with Ed Gillis about this, which seems to doom their relationship, much to Ruth’s chagrin.
They do make up, however, on the hospital roof, with kisses and promises, but after Ed has to leave, Ruth is attacked by the crazed killer! Usually at this point in a VNRN, the man would return to save her, but our sturdy heroine needs no assistance, thank you, and between her brains and her brawn, is able to dispose of the attacker with just a mere flesh wound to show for it. Now she just has to choose a man, which isn’t as easy as you’d think: Her gumption has rubbed off on Dr. MacKenzie (now cleared of murder charges and taking a taxi for a while until his driver’s license is reinstated), who has decided to go into cancer research after all, in Nagasaki, where there should be plenty of patients to treat.
This book is decently written: not especially campy or amusing, however, and the characters are a smidge too flat to make this an A-level book. But I am always mightily impressed with a heroine who can land a punch or a one-liner with equal aplomb, and care for her patients with compassion and intelligence to boot. The cover art even makes it a book worth looking at, in addition to reading. So I can without reservation suggest you spend some time on Night Ward.
Nurse Missing
By Elizabeth Kellier, ©1961Cover illustration by Lou Marchetti
When Anne Leatherington, a young R.N., accepted a private case at Craigash, an isolated ancient estate in the Scottish Highlands, she found herself confronted by one mystery after another. Suddenly, a torrent of questions overwhelmed her as she became a victim of her own curiosity. Why was her patient, the seemingly harmless, senile Mrs. McGray, terrified of her own stepson, Charles, the brooding owner of Craigash? And why was his past such a grim secret? But the darkest mystery of all was what had become of Anne’s predecessor, the previous nurse who had disappeared in curious circumstances. As Anne glimpsed the terrifying answers she would realize that the truth could destroy her and the man she had come to love.
GRADE: C
REVIEW:
REVIEW:
Some novels are overly contrived, and this, I am sorry to report, is one of them. Anne Leatherington (speaking of contrived, how about that last name?) is a bit of a cipher as far as characters go, just sort of drifting along from one situation to another. Though she demonstrates an avid interest in interrogating everyone, she takes little actual initiative beyond that, right up until the end, when a frenzy of uncharacteristic action brings the whole mystery to a tidy close, only about 100 pages later than she should have.
Anne’s been hired to care for the elderly Mrs. McGray, who is a withered creature residing at a manor in the wilds of Scotland. En route to her new post, she’s thrust into mystery by the taxi driver, who tells Anne that the woman who previously held her position disappeared about two years ago, and hints that someone at Craigash manor “had something to do wi’ it.” Our strong, intrepid heroine is immediately overcome by the sensation that “some heavy, unseen door over at Craigash swung back reluctantly and waited for me to enter a fear-infested room that I might otherwise have escaped. Then, however, I was unaware of Fate’s stealthy hand shifting the course of my life, except perhaps as an icy finger pressed swiftly against my cheek, leaving me with a sense of uneasy anticipation and a tremor of fear which swept down my spine like a flame.” This, dear readers, is what we call over-reaction.
When Anne arrives at the manor, Martha Perryman the housekeeper perfectly channels Mrs. Danvers of Rebecca, displaying a cold and solicitous manner, severe bun, thin mouth, cold gray eyes, and monosyllabic sentences. She’s ridiculously devoted to Charles McGray, the owner of the manor, who is 30, arrogant, and rude to Anne at their first meeting. He’s involved with Stella Cunningham, a beautiful young woman with a fondness for horses and a well-shaped head—but we know that’s not going to last!
We find out the missing nurse was a friendless orphan named Gerda with a difficult German last name, but the more we learn, the more mysteries bloom: If Gerda had left the manor that cold and stormy Friday night, how did she get away from the remote spot? If someone drove her, who was it? Why did she not come for her last paycheck? What’s so difficult about the name Schwarzenberg? And then the housemaid reveals that Gerda was going to have a baby … and a photo of the missing nurse is found in Mrs. McGray’s drawer … and it’s exactly like a half-finished painting that Anne came across in an unused room down the hall … and Mrs. McGray seems so frightened of her stepson that she tries to jump out her bedroom window one evening just to get away from him …
When Anne arrives at the manor, Martha Perryman the housekeeper perfectly channels Mrs. Danvers of Rebecca, displaying a cold and solicitous manner, severe bun, thin mouth, cold gray eyes, and monosyllabic sentences. She’s ridiculously devoted to Charles McGray, the owner of the manor, who is 30, arrogant, and rude to Anne at their first meeting. He’s involved with Stella Cunningham, a beautiful young woman with a fondness for horses and a well-shaped head—but we know that’s not going to last!
We find out the missing nurse was a friendless orphan named Gerda with a difficult German last name, but the more we learn, the more mysteries bloom: If Gerda had left the manor that cold and stormy Friday night, how did she get away from the remote spot? If someone drove her, who was it? Why did she not come for her last paycheck? What’s so difficult about the name Schwarzenberg? And then the housemaid reveals that Gerda was going to have a baby … and a photo of the missing nurse is found in Mrs. McGray’s drawer … and it’s exactly like a half-finished painting that Anne came across in an unused room down the hall … and Mrs. McGray seems so frightened of her stepson that she tries to jump out her bedroom window one evening just to get away from him …
Suddenly, in the book’s greatest mystery, it is revealed that Anne is in love with Charles; since he has been nothing but cold, remote, and all but nonexistent in her life to date, the reason why is completely unfathomable. And shortly after that, we learn that “he was a man like the country which had nurtured and surrounded him, strong, stark, yet with sudden unexpected touches of sensitive gentleness that could catch at a woman’s heart”—touches that have not at all been evident to us. Though he does smile at Anne once; I guess that’s what she meant. Soon he’s kissing her, but through a very oblique slip so mild that only the leading actors in a VNRN would pick up on it, she reveals that she knows that he painted the missing nurse’s portrait, and now he avoids her altogether, because this is clearly dangerous and offensive information.
To fill the hours Anne goes out with local playboy Paul Harrison, who is cash-strapped and makes no bones about it. In her usual ham-handed way, Anne attempts to pump Paul for information and ends up revealing more than she learns, that she thinks Charles murdered the nurse because she was pregnant with his child. A gleam springs to Paul’s eye and he begins to speak of blackmail—and soon he’s paid off his car, which he had been on the brink of losing to the repo man!
Her career as an interrogator in shambles, Anne turns detective. She departs from Craigash on the convenient excuse that her patient has died, and heads for the nursing agency, obtaining the address they had on file for nurse Gerda. The folks at that address, it turns out, had bought the house from a Miss Schwarzenberg—but the sale occurred after Gerda had left Craigash! So Anne heads for the realtor’s office and begs for a copy of the bill of sale, which has another address for Miss Schwarzenberg. This clue is too much for our delicate Anne, and she instantly faints dead away. As soon as she recovers, however, she sets off for this new address, where she is led to Miss Schwarzenberg’s room and finds the alleged murder victim in a dressing gown reading magazines!!!
Their conversation is held off-stage, but the next scene opens with Gerda and Anne heading back to Craigash for a happy reunion between all the relevant parties. Well, maybe not so happy for some, as the guilty party snaps, “You’re more successful at amateur sleuthing than keeping your patients alive, Nurse Leatherington!” It’s a valid point. A lot of tidying up has to be done between quite a few of the characters, so as to straighten out all the loose ends and red herrings, but eventually it’s done, and all that’s left is for Anne’s man to claim her and we can close the book.
Their conversation is held off-stage, but the next scene opens with Gerda and Anne heading back to Craigash for a happy reunion between all the relevant parties. Well, maybe not so happy for some, as the guilty party snaps, “You’re more successful at amateur sleuthing than keeping your patients alive, Nurse Leatherington!” It’s a valid point. A lot of tidying up has to be done between quite a few of the characters, so as to straighten out all the loose ends and red herrings, but eventually it’s done, and all that’s left is for Anne’s man to claim her and we can close the book.
At 190 pages, this story is much too long. The slooooow revelation of the various clues in the first half makes for fairly dull reading, as the author tries to build a suspense about an issue that it’s really difficult to care about. There’s little life to the characters or the writing, almost no humor to speak of, no camp, and nothing, even with this many pages, to pin up under the Best Quotes section. Too many of Anne’s musing (but not amusing) questions pepper the story: “Was the gossip true?” “What about that portrait, anyway?” “How long would she go on?” “Had Charles ever loved any woman properly?” “Had Paul’s nonchalant remarks touched a spring that had unlocked the hidden door of truth or was I simply being rash and imaginative?” By the time I finished this book, I never wanted to see another question mark again. If it had been shorter and a little less forced, and endowed with a heroine with a bit more spine and a love interest who had at least some minor charm about him, it might have been a relatively pleasant book. But that’s a long list of ifs, so perhaps it would be best if we just acknowledge that this book doesn’t have much to recommend it.
Caribbean Nurse
By Diana Douglas (pseud. Richard Wilkes-Hunter), ©1972
Cover illustration by Josep Maria Miralles
For lovely, blond Rowena Garland, being head nurse at the clinic of the luxury hotel on Lago Island in the Caribbean was the perfect job—glamorous, exciting, and full of surprises. She had never expected to be working with a doctor as attractive as Paul Martin. Or that this handsome young man with the deep blue eyes would become interested in her. But the biggest surprise was the mysterious man she encountered on the beach early one morning. Little did Rowena suspect that this intriguing stranger would involve her in mystery, danger—and romance. She would be forced to face the ultimate challenge of her nursing career, and make the most crucial decision of her life—to follow the true yearnings of her heart …
GRADE: C
BEST QUOTES:
“I feel the two of them—nursing and marriage—don’t really go together. My feeling is that you can be committed to only one or the other.”
“It was a known fact, proven over and over again, that by giving a complaint, no matter how paltry, the importance of their interest, doctors only served to perpetuate it. The patient was stuck with the complaint, and the doctor stuck with the patient.”
REVIEW:
I pick up a book by Diana Douglas/aka Richard Wilkes-Hunter with more than a little trepidation: The eight other books by this author that I have read have garnered a pretty solid C- average, and not a lot of high praise. But duty calls, so I waded into Caribbean Nurse to offer up this travelogue. It’s like many of this author’s other books, namely simple and boring. This one has the significant bonus, however, of not being overtly misogynistic or irritating. The opening pages, however, gave me significant concern: When we first meet nurse Rowena Garland, she’s wearing a string bikini, plopping down next to the only other person on the beach, and striking up an intrusive conversation in which she expounds to the man, who is sporting a thick robe, hat, and zinc oxide stripe on his nose, about the therapeutic benefits of sunshine. All while rolling around on her towel as we are treated to descriptions of her “well-shaped” or “long golden” body. “You’re probably thinking I’m a kook or something,” she says; if he’s not, I certainly am.
After he retreats back to his car, which is driven by two men in suits with binoculars, she returns to the Buccaneer Inn, which has been established on the Caribbean’s Lago Island as a destination for wealthy individuals who want to undergo medical care in an exotic location. Before long it is revealed that the hotel has been acquired by billionaire Ryan Stressor—who, you will not be surprised to learn, was the gentleman on the beach that Rowena had been harassing in the opening chapter. After ejecting all the paying guests, Stressor and his staff move in, leaving Rowena and hotel doctor Paul Martin with little to do but swim on the beach every day—and pander to the hypochondriac Ryan, who is prone to staying up all night and pestering Rowena with demands for medical attention for various minor complaints that he’s convinced are killing him. He’s also excessively concerned about security, and maintains a force of armed guards that rivals an American president’s. “Many people wouldn’t even stop at murder to prevent, or to learn about in advance so they might profit at our expense,” he explains with grammar to rival any of the Bush clan, and a not insignificant dose of paranoia to boot.
Rowena has enough gumption that she calls Ryan out, telling him to stop being such a baby and get some exercise. All sequestered away in his penthouse suite, she says, “there is only one way for you to escape, and that is into your snug shelter of ill health.” So with the help of a staff member’s daughter, she encourages him out onto the beach—after a bristling perimeter of security guards has been established—and day by day he grows more tanned and healthy. The climax of the book comes with an assassination attempt that any four-year-old could have seen coming. After Ryan emerges from surgery, he insists that Rowena marry him, a proposal that we expected from the opening chapters but that nonetheless feels sudden, given the fact that he has made no overtures whatsoever up to this point. Another surprise follows: Rowena declares that she is in love with Dr. Paul Martin, a man about whom she has previously stated after their one date (to “eat real Creole food and watch a frenzied display of local dancing”) that what she felt for Paul “wasn’t love at all.” The only thing of actual interest in this story, little as it may be, is the fact that it ends after this conversation between Ryan and Rowena; the scene in which Rowena breaks her news to Paul is to be played off-stage at a later date. It’s a scene probably far more exciting when imagined than if it had been written out by this author, though, so we’re probably better off. Overall this book could certainly have been a lot worse—and we know the author is certainly capable of it—but there really isn’t anything to recommend it, either, apart from the glorious cover illustration.
Nurse in Istanbul
By Ralph E. Hayes, ©1970When Donna Mitchell left City Hospital for private nursing, she didn’t expect her first job to take her halfway around the world—to Istanbul Istanbul
GRADE: C
BEST QUOTES:
“Is this a nurse or a go-go girl?”
“They definitely did not tell me in nursing school that there would be days like this.”
“Donna was suddenly very impressed with Steve’s ability in hand-to-hand combat.”
REVIEW:
The back cover blurb, above, is one of the more dull ones I’ve come across—and an apt predictor of what’s inside that same cover. Our heroine, Donna Mitchell, is a paradoxical creature who can’t decide if she really loves the genuine ass she is dating, yet the next minute is credited with being so steady of mind that she single-handedly recovers a priceless stolen artifact (a tribute we readers, who have witnessed the whole affair, will receive with astonishment). I guess it’s possible to be both, but the author does not have the talent or depth to pull off a character this complex.
We first meet Donna when she is interviewing for a private nursing job for the “wealthy but aging gentleman with a serious heart condition,” like there is any other kind in a VNRN. Everything that is wrong with the status of women in 1970 is summed up by the opening remarks of his secretary: “You are a lovely girl,” the woman tells Donna. “I think Mr. Eastman will be pleased. I’m unmarried, dear, and you may call me Penny.” Mr. Eastman’s accountant, Steve Chandler, tries to warn Donna against accepting the job, but here she shows her spunky side: “I’m quite capable of taking care of myself,” she snaps at him, a declaration we later find to be completely untrue.
Before she leaves for Turkey
On the slow boat to Turkey
Cue the postman, who brings a letter from Richard. As it happens, he is in Beirut , and informs Donna that he’ll be popping up to Istanbul
She does get in a little sight-seeing, visiting the Grand Bazaar, and when she returns, she finds that Mr. Eastman has “stepped out of character” and bought her a brass lamp (upon which Donna wishes for love, ew!). Not long afterward, the old man is found beaten to death in his room. Over the corpse, Steve decides to enlighten Donna regarding the fact that “Mr. Eastman was a dapper gentleman of the underworld,” who had come to Istanbul to purchase the Green Medallion, which had been stolen from the Topkapı Palace U.S.
On their way home from the police station, however, Steve and Donna’s cab is chased and shot at. The pair jumps out at a corner and ducks into the old Roman cisterns, where they jump into the water and hide behind literally the first column they come to. Donna barely endures this brush with death without shrieking at the thought of “all sorts of slimy things crawling on her legs in the dark water” and the bat that had flitted by them—neither of which actually bother her. The bad guys follow them into the cistern but can’t be bothered to venture beyond the doorway before quitting the scene. “Come on, honey,” Steve says. “Let’s get out of here.”
Back at the hotel, they discover that the medallion is actually hidden in Donna’s brass lamp! While Steve steps out to hide it somewhere until they can deliver it to the police, Donna meets Richard for breakfast. After she tells him that her employer is a smuggler who was murdered yesterday and she’s at the hotel with an armed government agent, Richard insists Donna leave Istanbul
But as fate would have it, they are captured and imprisoned in a stone cell, kiss, dig their way out through the ubiquitously loose bars, kiss, escape in a stolen car but are pursued by the gunmen, kiss, jump a ferry, kiss, disarm two of the gunmen with karate chops to the neck (that was Steve, actually), kiss, and are recaptured and forced to the top of a minaret. Donna saves the day by pretending to faint, allowing Steve to jump the gunman, whose pistol “went flying to the floor beside Donna.” Guess what our brave heroine does? “She stared at it fearfully as the two men fought. She could not bring herself to pick it up. She had never held a gun in her life.” It isn’t until Steve has actually knocked the bad guy unconscious that Donna “picked up the gun gingerly and handed it to him.” Thanks, honey. Then they kiss again.
The medallion returned to the Turkish authorities and the caper wrapped up, now we are given Donna’s new-born insecurities about her relationship with Steve. Though the book comes to a damp close after the crazy kids have clasped hands, “gazed into each other’s eyes and were ecstatically happy,” the fact that it’s over quickly is the best thing about it. I appreciate that the author makes a show of presenting Donna as a strong, capable person (and a very competent nurse), but in the end she is nearly helpless in the worst moments, and this dichotomy makes me dislike both the heroine and the book.
Calling Dr. Jane
Book 3 of 6By Adeline McElfresh, ©1957
She was in love with her future husband, and Doctor Jane Langford eagerly prepared to join him at his remote African medical mission station. But then Doctor Paul Hamlin arrived to take over Jane’s busy practice. And as they worked side by side, the darkly handsome young doctor made no secret of his growing desire for Jane, his determination to keep her for himself. As Jane’s warm but errant heart responded to Doctor Paul she was faced with the greatest challenge she had ever known … Against the background of the busy, hectic world of modern medicine is told this challenging story of a young, beautiful woman’s search for truth and honesty.
GRADE: A-
BEST QUOTES:
“Being short and dumpy may have its compensations but I don’t know what they are.”
“So long as there is one person in the world, there will be senselessness.”
“There ought to be a law against you.”
REVIEW:
Having spent very little time with Dr. Jane Langford and Bill Latham, her fiancé, in Doctor Jane, I had hoped we might get to see them together in Book 3 of the Doctor Jane series. But no—on page one, Bill has been in Africa doing missionary work for the past three months. Back in Halesville, Indiana, Dr. Paul Hamlin, a refugee from New York, has stepped onto the scene, and is supposed to take over the practice from Jane, oh, about now. But Jane just hasn’t yet bought that plane ticket. And now Bill is getting letters from Jane, and “something was there, between the lines.” Oh, no, Mr. Bill!
Jane starts off by protesting too much—and soon she’s up to her schoolgirl-crush usual, swooning over Paul. And then, before too long, Jane is kissing him and picking out a new house for them to live in after they’re married, the fickle wench. Meanwhile, there are strange goings-on: An unnamed doctor refused to see a woman with appendicitis because she was poor, and the woman nearly died … a strange, overly wired man barges into Jane’s office looking for Paul … later that same night, the local druggist is bashed on the head and killed, but all his money is still in the drawer … someone is prowling around outside Jane’s house at night, looking in the outbuildings …
For the most part, this book is incredibly delightful. The writing is amusing and interesting, and the little, sharp details that Adeline McElfresh tosses in almost off-handedly create a brilliantly realistic picture; at times I wondered if certain passages weren’t an actual diary of someone’s day rather than a fiction story, they felt so true. Most of the time we are out and about with Jane, through the various hospitals and homes and doctor’s offices, meeting a fairly substantial population of named patients and hospital staff. In some books, these hordes of characters can become overwhelming, but here, we get enough story about some patients that we easily remember them when they pop up again later, while others drop quietly away, serving as a quiet demonstration of Jane’s reach throughout the community and its importance to her.
The problem, as has been with the first two Dr. Jane books, is Jane’s utter lack of maturity when it comes to her love life. She falls like a ton of bricks for men we’ve barely met, and even after she’s engaged to Paul, we still don’t get to know him very well. Rather, what sticks is the quick observations of the things Paul doesn’t like, which also happen to be the things Jane loves: “Paul said they were medieval not to have an office nurse, as well as a secretary,” “Paul frankly admitted that he had no idea country doctors got out and around so early,” “he thinks we’re pretty small potatoes,” “no wonder Paul found Halesville dull sometimes.” These little droppings never bode well, and you won’t be surprised to learn that they weren’t wrong here, either.
The mystery of the book is not at all surprising when it eventually unfolds—which it does in two lightning-fast pages at the end, too fast to follow easily—and the red herrings that had been so convincing as they appeared are just as convincingly disposed of. Adeline McElfresh is a top-notch writer and a real joy when she is at the top of her game, as she is here. It’s just Jane’s lack of any sense whatsoever when it comes to a pretty face that misses the mark. I keep hoping that as Jane gains more experience with boys—she’s now had four beaux—she will wise up some, but so far, no such luck. Let’s hope that her next stop, Africa, proves she’s learned a trick or two.
Dr. Jane’s Choice
Book 6 of 6By Adeline McElfresh, ©1961
Cover illustration by John W. Scott
To hundreds of thousands of readers, Doctor Jane Langford (later briefly married to the Reverend Bill Latham) is the most beloved heroine in all medical romance literature. Sternly incorruptible, but often hesitant as she chooses what is right and what is desirable—a gifted surgeon and general practitioner, but a woman first and foremost—Doctor Jane strikes an answering chord in every reader’s heart, for Jane is more than a dedicated professional, she is a woman needing masculine strength and love. In this present novel, Jane is faced with the most important choice of her life—how she reaches that choice makes for one of Adeline McElfresh’s most engrossing novels.
GRADE: B+
BEST QUOTES:
“Don’t you talk her right arm off, Henry. She might need it in surgery in the morning.”
“She wanted to share his life, divide herself between being Mrs. Dave Riley and Dr. Jane Latham.”
REVIEW:
When we last left Dr. Jane Langford Latham, she was mourning her husband, Bill, killed in Africa by a crocodile, and I am not kidding. She thinks she’s falling for reporter Dave Riley, whom she first met in Africa and who followed her home to Halesville, Indiana, so as to write and wait for her to come around. But Jane isn’t sure, because she really, really loved Bill. So she takes a job at the nearby City Hospital—where she did her residency, by the way (see Dr. Jane, Interne)—as director of outpatient medicine.
When we last left Dr. Jane Langford Latham, she was mourning her husband, Bill, killed in Africa by a crocodile, and I am not kidding. She thinks she’s falling for reporter Dave Riley, whom she first met in Africa and who followed her home to Halesville, Indiana, so as to write and wait for her to come around. But Jane isn’t sure, because she really, really loved Bill. So she takes a job at the nearby City Hospital—where she did her residency, by the way (see Dr. Jane, Interne)—as director of outpatient medicine.
In the course of her work, she discovers that a local woman who lives in the seedy part of town performs abortions, and goes on the warpath, declaring that she will “not stop until that woman is found, arrested, jailed.” Perhaps not coincidentally, a young pregnant woman from that same neighborhood is found drowned, and now the book turns into a mystery story. Whodunnit? Well, this local reporter, Charley Lewis, takes up the case, and the book is divided between following Jane and her patients, and Charley in his attempts to track down the girl’s killer.
I could go into more detail about the case and Jane’s success as a doctor despite her gender, but it’s not really important, and if you didn’t figure out what Jane’s Choice is going to be at the beginning of the last book, Dr.Jane Comes Home, then I won’t spoil it for you. The central question for the reviewer and the reader is, should you read these six books? The problem is that they are neither good enough to make the answer a clear yes, nor bad enough to make it an emphatic no. I always appreciate the quiet competence of the writing, which is occasionally humorous, and here we find a little inside joke: “If you two will excuse me, I’ve got Elizabeth Wesley’s new book. About doctors,” says the wife of Dr. Warren, her former attending in Dr. Jane, Interne. (Elizabeth Wesley is, of course, a pen name of Adeline McElfresh’s!)
The books are interesting, but they don’t have a lot of zest or camp to give them sparkle. I enjoyed Jane, but six books about her is a bit much, considering that the format or story of every book was essentially the same: All about Jane and her daily life, and then at the end, a big decision, usually more or less out of the blue, about some man, the “romance” being almost irrelevant to the rest of the book. The mystery that pervades the plot of this book is not a first for the Dr. Jane series—see Calling Dr. Jane—but it’s a bit of a distraction from what is supposed to be the central point, i.e. Jane. So if you don’t have a better book to reach for, go ahead and make the investment in Dr. Jane, but don’t expect her to leap off the page and dazzle you. She’s much too sedate for that.
Country Club Nurse
By Dorothy Cole, ©1967They were the glamorous super-rich—could she help heal their broken lives? Caring for an overindulged young socialite at the wealthy Chanticleer Club, Nurse Erda Sanders soon finds a new romance among “the beautiful people”—as well as plots and counterplots threatening not only her principles but lives!
GRADE: C-
BEST QUOTES:
“Oh, don’t try any of your nurse psychology on me. Go on to bed.”
“Go change your dress. You’ll be more comfortable in something less forbidding.”
“They read the newspapers together every day and discussed the state of the world politically, as well as socially. Although Erda was upset by the various riots around the country, she tried not to show it so she wouldn’t upset her patient.”
“I got fed up and gave him back his ring. It didn’t amount to anything anyway. You could scarcely see the stone.”
REVIEW:
After the delightfully daffy Nurse at the Fair, I had been looking forward to another encounter with author Dorothy Cole. Unfortunately, the second date leaves me far less impressed: Country Club Nurse is pretty dumb, but not nearly as out-and-out dopey as its sister, and nowhere near as entertaining, I am sorry to report.
Erda Sanders is coming home after a month-long assignment in upstate New York to the apartment she shares on 85th St between York and East End Avenues (we’re actually given the exact bus route she takes from Grand Central, but I won’t bore you) when she sees a young woman “with Miss Clairol honey blonde hair” run over by a boy on a bicycle. Erda is hired on the spot to care for socialite housewife Jessica Prentis, moves into the patient’s apartment, and spends a week watching with increasing irritation over the spoiled, demanding patient and witnessing numerous loud arguments between manipulative Jessica and her domineering husband Bart.
When Bart is at work, Jessica hangs out with Lenny Williams, who “was what could be called ‘a hippie.’ At least Erda guessed that was what they called ‘beatniks’ now. She didn’t keep up with such things.” Lenny coaxes money from Jessica and steals her engagement ring, but Jessica has an unexplained attachment to the seedy lad and continues to support him. Bart, needless to say, is not fond of the youth, and the pair fights about Lenny as well.
Upon her arrival into the domestic scene, Erda immediately begins to pose a lot of questions about her new employers: “Was Jessica Prentis really the only woman in Bart Prentis’ life? Did he really love her, in spite of the fact that he hadn’t shown any evidence of it that afternoon? And where did his grandmother fit into the picture?” (The question about the grandmother is about as odd to the reader as it appears here.) Jessica eggs on Erda’s natural detective instincts by asking random questions such as, “Did you ever want to kill someone?” Furthermore, when Jessica meets up with Lenny, they converse about his aunt, home from the hospital, and that incites Erda’s paranoid delusions too: “All the way up in the taxi she’d wondered about the conversation concerning Lenny’s aunt, and why she should be bitter against the Prentis family.” In another book, these questions might be foreshadowing, but it must be acknowledged that a good 75 percent of Erda’s suspicious musings go absolutely nowhere.
So when the Prentises offer Erda the opportunity to come with them to the Chanticleer Country Club on Long Island for the duration of the summer, Erda tags along despite the fact that she really doesn’t like her patient at all, who incidentally is increasingly mobile and in fact goes out shopping daily. Not long after she arrives, Erda’s duties are transferred to the mysterious grandmother, Mrs. Isabelle Prentis, who is spry enough at 80 that Erda can barely keep up with her when they walk the club grounds. With Bart’s aunt Jean and her son Joseph also in residence, the family of five manages to fight viciously at every meal. Isabelle at one point declares to Erda, “I’m not a favorite with my family. All families don’t love each other. And I am a very rich woman.” Now the nurse has this to obsess over—combined with Jessica’s idle question about murder, she’s really building it into something with legs: “But she wouldn’t! Not in cold blood!”
Meanwhile, Erda is falling for Joseph, who is a physics professor at Amherst wounded twice in Vietnam
Isabelle suddenly comes down with food poisoning, and after a lot of questioning through about 20 pages it’s determined it was the lobster salad—though everyone completely goes to pieces about this, especially the author, who gives Bart “a murderous expression” on one page and induces him to say that a planned family cruise to Halifax “might be murder.” Recovered, Isabelle spots a new maid in the hallway and is convinced that it’s actually her dead son’s widow Elise—Bart’s mother—arrived to follow through on a threat made eight years ago to kill Isabelle. Sure enough, Isabelle shortly goes into insulin shock, and it is found that her normal medications had been substituted for much stronger pills. Then, during yet another of their epic battles, Jessica spills the beans to Bart that Lenny the Hippie is actually his cousin, Elise’s sister’s son, and the money Jessica gives to Lenny is for Elise, who is dying of cancer. In response to this news, Bart promises to beat his mother’s location out of Lenny, and Erda discreetly slips away, returning to her room to ponder the Prentis’ marriage all night.
The next day, as the family is taking the club launch out to the yacht, a speedboat appears and begins to closely circle their boat, throwing several people into the water. Lenny is at the helm, hopped up on LSD, and Bart attempts to swim to Lenny’s boat and is run over. Bobbing in the water and barely able to draw breath, Erda is never too busy to come up with a string of pointless questions: “Why, she wondered, was Bart deliberately endangering his life? Was it because he thought he could stop Lenny’s crazy speeding or because he wanted to beat him up and force him to tell where his mother, Elise was?” Bart is going down for the third time when Jessica, sporting the green bikini that Isabelle strictly forbade her to wear, dives in and keeps him afloat until the Coast Guard arrives to collar Lenny and haul the Prentises from the drink. Lenny is babbling about his aunt, who had committed suicide with sleeping pills the day before, leaving a note saying that she had tried to kill Isabelle and was terminally ill anyway. Now that she’s dead, though, “we’ll never know how Elise managed to duplicate the regular insulin pills in appearance,” darn the luck.
Though Lenny is guilty of at least third-degree murder, whether he is brought to trial is apparently the Prentis family’s decision, and they opt not to press charges. In the literal wake of this tragic scene, Joseph starts kissing the daylights out of Erda and then proposes, so now it looks like she’ll be heading off to Amherst when the season ends. I wish I could tell you I felt some sort of pleasure at this ending, but all I could do was hope for an engagement long enough to allow poor Joseph to come to his senses.
There’s definitely a goodly amount of stupidity in this book, but it’s not as over the top as was Nurse at the Fair. Mostly it’s just dumb, without one bit of inadvertent brilliance in it. Erda comes across as a cramped, prudish character with a penchant for asking absurd and irrelevant questions, and most of the time her “nursing” is really just babysitting wealthy people who don’t like to be alone, hardly admirable work. The inconsistencies in this book are endless: how could a shallow infant like Jessica have kept the secret about Elise for so long? Why does Lenny keep the secret as well? Why does Elise suddenly pop up after eight years to murder Isabelle yet have no desire to see her son? Why do these people who do nothing but scream at each other continue to gather every night of every summer at the club to exercise their animosities? What in God’s name does Joseph see in Erda? How did Elise know that Isabelle took insulin? How did she manage to duplicate the regular pills in appearance? If the inconsistencies felt intentional, as they almost did with Nurse at the Fair, you could chalk them up as a knowing wink from an author endeavoring to entertain a savvy audience with a bit of camp. But at the country club, they just come across as sloppy and pointless, and the intelligent reader is better off staying in Manhattan
A Nurse on Horseback
By Adelaide Humphries, ©1959When Nora Williams completed her nurse’s training and went home to the lawless West, she was determined to stay in this remote country where a nurse was so desperately needed. But then one day, on a lonely mountain trail, as Nora was riding to a sick child, the silence was shattered by the bark of a gun. Suddenly Nora knew that the bullet was meant for her! Who was trying to keep this dedicated young nurse from her task of helping the poor and defenseless in this wild country?
GRADE: B
BEST QUOTES:
“Every young girl likes to pretty-up at the end of the day for the evening ahead.”
“I should think such a beautiful girl could demand for more. And having a professional career is not altogether what I had in mind, though probably that will lead to marriage, too—which must be what you most desire for her.”
REVIEW:
It’s true, as advertised on the back cover blurb above, that this book starts off with a fairly literal bang when someone takes a shot at nurse Nora Williams as she ride—horseback, of course—to see a patient not long after arriving in the west to live out her days on her Aunt Til’s ranch. She believes, though, that the shot was made by a hunter, and she’s more concerned about the fact that her horse threw her and then ran off, leaving her with several miles to walk before reaching her destination. And it’s really not much more than a device to place her into close contact with the cowboy who comes riding down the path, Dan Corby. Naturally, Nora draws a gun on him and accuses him of having fired the shot “at my mare—or at me!” which is not what she had just been thinking a few moments earlier. He offers her a look at his gun to show it hasn’t been fired, and when it’s clean, she asks him for a ride and swings up behind him onto his own horse, the floozy.Anyway, all that and her nursing visit over, Dan takes her home and is promptly hired to be ranch foreman. The ranch is in financial trouble, of course, and the mortgage is owned by banker Burt McCulley, who is pressing Til to sell the ranch. But Til has a trick up her sleeve; a young man who invested all her life’s savings for her is coming to deliver the enormous profits he’s reaped in a week. The day Thomas Jeffries is due on the ranch, Til rides out to meet him, but comes back alone, and Thomas never shows up—until a week later, when he is found murdered in the desert. And it’s discovered that he’d lost all Til’s money to boot! Which means that Til won’t be able to pay off the mortgage, and is a suspect for murder!
To solve both these problems, Nora lies to the sheriff about Til’s whereabouts that day and then dates banker Bart, who proposes on the first date: “I might remind you that if you marry me, all your worries—your aunt’s worries—will be over,” he tells her, the suave lothario. To reassure her that he is not motivated to propose because of her aunt’s property, he points out that she will make a good mistress of his own huge ranch since “you come from good stock.” To her credit, Nora thinks, “You might have thought he was picking out the finest breed of cattle,” but she winds up accepting him anyway, and the fact that this will make her essentially a whore isn’t discussed.
Then Aunt Til fires Dan, for reasons she fails to explain. And starts coughing a lot, and staying in bed, and talking about dying. And confesses that it was she who shot at Nora, because she wanted Nora to go back to the East Coast and never find out that the ranch was heading into foreclosure. It’s an overly lame note that could have been avoided, and it doesn’t even make sense—how could Til possibly hide the fact that the ranch had been lost to the rest of her family, no matter where they are, when she has to find another place to live?
Things go from bad to worse for Nora and her beaux: Dan is arrested for the murder of Thomas Jeffries, because apparently he’d been riding the range that night as well, and Jeffries’ saddlebag is found in Dan’s bunk. And Bart’s unimpressive reputation is further sullied when Nora learns that Bart’s men are burning down the ranches of farmers who won’t sell out to Bart. Then the sheriff shows up at the ranch with Nora’s little gun—the one she’d threatened Dan with in the first chapter, remember?—which was discovered near where Thomas Jeffries’ body had been discovered, and has been found to be the murder weapon. The sheriff is about to arrest Nora when Til—hold onto your hats, friends—confesses to the murder. Before the sheriff can drag her off to jail, however, Til conveniently collapses and dies in Nora’s arms. To top off one perfunctory, obvious scene with another, the final chapter finds Nora nearly drowning in a river, to be rescued by Dan and discovered to have broken off her engagement to Bart.
The problem with this book is that it bitterly disappoints: Early on it manages to depict Dan and his interest in Nora in a completely believable and appealing way, only to totally squander your emotional investment with a whole host of absurd and obvious scenarios that dot the remaining three-fourths of the book. I truthfully mourned the book that could have been. So while I can easily recommend that you pick up this book, I have to also suggest that you strongly consider putting it down again after page 30.
Nurse against the Town
By Jane Converse (pseud. Adele Kay Maritano), ©1966
“Murderer” they whispered of the man she loved. Why did the people of Barfield avoid their doctor? Why did they whisper “criminal” about its director, Dr. Jerry Sterling, when they talked of the mysterious death of his beautiful wife, Naomi? And what was driving Naomi’s brother, Henry Barfield, to use his membership on the hospital board to ruin Dr. Sterling? Desperately, pretty Ellen struggled to find the answers. Pitted against her consuming love for Jerry Sterling were the hostility of the neighbors and the terrible suspicious she could not shake free from her own mind. In a story shaken with passion, hiding at its heart a dreadful secret, Ellen Whitaker finds herself all but alone as the nurse against the town.
GRADE: D+
BEST QUOTES:
“Ellen’s mind had posed the awesome questions about Jerry Sterling’s innocence. Her heart answered them.”
REVIEW:
Ellen Whitaker has left her post in Chicago and come back to Barfield, Colorado, her home town, for one simple reason: She is desperately in love with Dr. Jerry Sterling. She knew him when she was just a kid, see—though “the senior class president and undisputed scholastic leader at Barfield High had barely known of a shy, chestnut-haired freshman’s existence”—and was so besotted even then that “his decision to become a doctor had spurred Ellen’s desire to become a nurse.” When he went off to college, she had “lived” for holidays when she might catch “only surreptitious glances” of him—and then she saw nothing at all of him until now, eight years later. Her devotion to Dr. Sterling is held up as an admirable thing, but to me it seems like a very unhealthy obsession.
In the interim, Dr. Sterling married beautiful heiress Naomi Barfield, but she was found dead in a ditch a year later, victim of “an illegal operation,” wink, wink. It’s rumored that she ran around with a lot of men and that Dr. Sterling tried to end her pregnancy but botched the job. Never mind that he has an airtight alibi for the time of death, the locals won’t have anything to do with him or the hospital he runs in town, so it’s uninhabited pretty much all the time. Naturally, Ellen feels this is an opportunity that she should jump into: working at an empty hospital hoping to catch glimpses of Dr. Sterling, who, widower for a year as the book opens, might begin to start looking around any minute now. But since he really only passes her in the hall every now and then, it’s not clear why he might opt for her. While she’s waiting for him to notice her, she befriends Dr. Sterling’s best friend, Porter Hubbard, and they even start dating, though she’s made it clear to him that her heart lies elsewhere.
All this is set up by page 20, and the rest of the book is an endless back-and-forth between Porter and Ellen about how they can help Dr. Sterling and whether Porter can convince Ellen to marry him. Eventually a Dark Secret is brought to light, but it doesn’t really change anything: We still don’t know who killed Naomi. Or actually, we probably do: We find out about an old doctor who had made a small practice of giving abortions, and who had committed suicide “right after that awful thing with Naomi.” But we’ve been aware of him since about midway through the book, so if he’s the killer, neither we nor the townspeople of Barfield should be at all surprised. We don’t know who the father of Naomi’s baby is, nor are we likely to, since it is common knowledge that she slept with pretty much every man in town. Yet, somehow, Dr. Sterling’s reputation is restored, and somehow manages to fall into Ellen’s arms at the end.
After Surf Safari Nurse, brilliant in so many ways, I will cut Jane Converse a lot of slack, but this is a phoned-in job, not worthy of her. Nothing happens throughout the book, the “climax” is actually irrelevant to the plot, and Dr. Sterling is such a complete stranger to both us and to Ellen that her infatuation with him is more than a little creepy. The writing is pleasant, as Jane Converse usually is, but it takes more than good sentences to make for a good story, and Nurse against the Town is anything but that.
Copyright © C-buk2016
