Collecting Book

Night Ward

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, ©1961
Cover 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:

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 …

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.

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

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

When Donna Mitchell left City Hospitalfor private nursing, she didn’t expect her first job to take her halfway around the world—to Istanbul. But there she was, accompanying her employer-patient—a wealthy importer named Eastman—on a business trip. Besides Donna, Mr. Eastman had with him his secretary, Penelope Winslow, and Steve Chandler, his accountant. Donna liked Steve from the moment they met and sensed that he like her, yet he tried to talk her into quitting the job! She couldn’t imagine why … until an accidentally overheard conversation made he wonder about the nature of Mr. Eastman’s business in Istanbul. He was there to buy a rare emerald-studded necklace, the Green Medallion, and everything about the transaction had to be kept secret. Was it possible the necklace had been stolen, Donna wondered. If so, did Steve know it? The questions were still unanswered when a murderer struck … and the Green Medallion vanished!

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, Donna must sort out her love life. She can’t decide if she really loves Dr. Richard DeForest, whom she describes as moody, presumptuous, condescending, arrogant, and unbearable, concluding, “she did not like her young doctor very much.” Yet even in the middle of sort of breaking up with him (“I just need to get away for a while, to sort out my thoughts about you,” she tells him), she thinks, “She still felt something for him.” As he has aptly demonstrated throughout this scene that he is a complete Neanderthal, we can’t imagine why she would, or ever did.

On the slow boat to Turkey, Donna begins to realize Mr. Eastman is not the innocent businessman when Steve tells her not to ask questions or “get involved,” and that she is in danger on this trip. When they finally arrive, they are ensconced in the “glamorous” Istanbul Hilton, which sports luxuries including “the latest automatic elevators.” It’s not too long before she stumbles across a meeting between Mr. Eastman and “two very dark gentlemen with heavy moustaches, looking very Turkish,” during which they discuss a necklace called the Green Medallion. During her eavesdropping, she notices that Steve is wearing a holstered gun—“Accountants definitely did not carry guns,” thinks our astute heroine, finally starting to catch up.

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 to apologize for his atrocious behavior. Naturally the wishy-washy Donna is soon dropping tears on the pages, wondering, “maybe she still loved Richard,” even though she’s also starting to fall for Steve, of course.

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. Steve himself is revealed to be a Federal agent, and Penny is packed off to the Turkish authorities, to be extradited to the U.S. for “a short time in a nice comfortable American prison, and then get a legitimate job.” Uh, yeah, you keep telling yourself that.

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 immediately. “Instead of trying to understand her situation, instead of listening to what it was all about, he had made up his mind that she was silly to further expose herself to the situation, and that was that.” Exactly! No, wait—“She had been right. Richard was incorrigible. He was a domineering, arrogant man who obviously felt that girls and wives should be treated like children, to be seen but not heard. He simply lacked a basic respect for her as a woman.” Right. Three pages later, Steve tells her he is taking her to the police station to be kept in protective custody, because “it might get rough at times. I don’t want you involved in it.” Our tough, courageous nurse, who has just stood up for her independence and autonomy, “smiled her warmest, broadest smile and put her arm through Steve’s. ‘All right, Steve. I’ll do whatever you say,’ ” she tells him.

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.