Mask of Treason

by Anne Stevenson

Book by Stevenson, Anne

Genres: Mystery

Mass Market Paperback

First published February 12, 1980

About the author

Felicity Avery (Anne Stevenson, pen name) was born in Cardiff in 1928, she read History at St. Anne’s at the University of Oxford from 1946 to 1949. After her degree, she worked as historical archivist for the Holland-Martin banking family, before turning to journalism and fiction, which was initially published in the form of short stories and serials in magazines and journals. Composed under the nom de guerre of Anne Stevenson, her first novel, Ralph Dacre, was immediately snapped up by Billy Collins in 1967 and quickly became a best seller. It was followed by eight further novels that spanned various genres from thrillers to historical sagas. She has variously been compared to Mary Stewart and, in her pared-down shorter fiction, to Graham Greene and during her most prolific years in 1960s and 1970s, she gathered a considerable number of loyal readers for her intelligent, well-crafted thrillers.

She was married to the economic journalist and naval historian, Ronald Avery (1915-1996) and spent the last years of her life in Oxford, before losing her fight with breast cancer in 2008. She is survived by her daughter, Anne Louise, and grandson, Inigo. There are plans to republish her works in the next couple of years, following a resurgence of interest in her fiction.

Reviews

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in October 1998.

The Mask of Treason is a competent thriller, very much in the mould of Mary Stewart. An innocent young woman gets caught up in terrible events - that is the essence of this plot as of many of Stewart's.

Fiona Grant is a costume designer, in the throes of her first major success, the costumes for an important and well-received production of Der Rosenkavalier. As this transfers from London to Edinburgh to form an important part of the International Festival, she takes advantage of the few days' rest while everything moves north to visit her parents on the West Coast of Scotland.

Asked by her rich uncle to bring his Mercedes north from Glasgow for him, it is during the car journey that her adventures begin, as she comes out of a fog bank and brakes just in time to avoid an accident with a stationary pair of cars, one containing a dead man.

As she travels on north with Wyndham, the naval commander who was in the other car, she becomes involved in a shadowy world of espionage centred around the navy research base on the island opposite the small town in which her father runs a boatyard.

Mask of Treason is an interesting, if gentle, thriller, which is another reason that it reminds the reader of Mary Stewart. If Stewart had continued to write in the same vein as Nine Coaches Waiting, Airs Above the Ground and Wildfire at Midnight instead of moving to a more mystical vein which produced the excellent Arthur novels and the more insipid romances she has written in the last few years, then Mask of Treason is the sort of novel she could easily have gone on to produce.

[Gabrielle Maes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. It's so cute that it's funny

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining if mostly formulaic suspense mystery. I had to roll my eyes a few times at the heroine falling for something that anyone who has ever read one of these books would have seen through instantly. And more than roll my eyes at the gunshot in the opera house that made no noise because the gun had a silencer. But overall it kept me entertained.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book because I saw it recommended as "like Mary Stewart" and indeed it is very much like Mary Stewart--similar time period, similar romantic-suspenseful plot, similar writing style with nature descriptions and an intelligent, refined heroine, and similar setting in the Scottish Highlands.

Is it as good as Mary Stewart? Alas, hahaha no. The book has a nice little exciting plot, but nothing like the deftness of plotting that Stewart does and utterly lacking her gift for hold-your-breath suspense. The prose style is really quite good, carrying one along at a brisk pace, and if the nature descriptions aren't as lyrical as Stewart's, they're not bad. The characters are somewhat interesting too, though I found the heroine and hero the biggest disappointments--especially the hero, who is just a generic nice-looking, brave, competent man. Their love story is the weakest part, I think, being utterly forgettable. I doubt I'll remember anything about it by next week.

Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy the book while I was reading it, because I did. Though I guessed pretty much everything long before it was revealed, I was reasonably anxious to see "what happens next." I enjoyed the seventies milieu with sinister Soviet-bloc spying very much--it's very nostalgic for me with all the Helen MacInnes, M.M. Kaye, Evelyn Anthony, and yes, Mary Stewart books I read back in the day. The book was released in 1979, which happens to be the year I graduated from high school, and it was interesting to remind myself of how different things were waaaaaay back then.


I'm reading "A Relative Stranger" right now by the same author and so far I like it much better.