Turkish Rondo

Anne Stevenson

In Turkish Rondo, Anne Stevenson once again combines the classic ingredients of her novels of romance and suspense and demonstrates anew the sure storytelling skill that is winning her an ever-widening audience of avid readers. Her heroine is Frances Howard, a plucky and attractive young Englishwoman. Her setting is contemporary Turkey and Greece, the teeming cities of Athens and Istanbul, the remote mountains of Anatolia and the long-buried archaeological ruins of Macedonia. The identity of her hero, as always, is in doubt. Is it Robert Denning, the handsome ne'er-do-well writer whom Frances marries after only the briefest of courtships? Or is it John Nairn, Robert's American friend who reputedly comes through in Frances's times of need? Frances realizes that the question of which of these men she really loves can be answered only after she uncovers the truth about Robert. For shortly after their wedding he vanishes, leaving behind, as almost the only due to his whereabouts, a small golden bull that his father brought back from an Urartian tomb in eastern Turkey. Undeterred by arguments that she should leave well enough alone or by an act of physical violence committed against her, Frances sets out to find Robert. Her search leads her to threats, murder, a startling revelation about her husband's family and finally to a dramatic confrontation on the Turkish-Russian border, where the past and the present converge in a thrilling denouement.