The Castle Captive

by Susan Ratcliffe

Back Cover: CAPTIVE OF TERROR! Lovely young Marge Winthrop journeyed to England to stay with her distant relative, Tom Bourney, who had inherited his family's ancient castle. Arriving at the castle, she finds Tom's servants have fled after a series of horrible accidents. Tom believes himself subject to the ancient a Bourne curse. And he has a companion - a slender, cool-eyed, somehow threatening man who calls himself a clairvoyant and feeds Tom's fear of the ghost. Marge's common sense leads her to attempt to solve the castle's mystery and put an end to this superstition. But on her first night in her room, a horrifying shriek sounds outside her window, and she looks out into the leering face of a man dead 800 years!

Inside Cover: Then she saw it! The face! Twisted, horrible, wretched with violent hatred. . . Marge began to scream, and now she was paralyzed by fear. Terror gripped her with a cold fist, and held her with unrelenting force. The face grinned. it was a grin prompted by lasciviousness -- the eyes roved over her nightgowned body. He raised a hand, and Marge saw the halberd, the end of the blade darker than the haft--blood! There was a strange illumination surrounding this evil figure who hovered threateningly--eighty feet above the ground!
Then there was another sound. Over her head, a wrenching, creaking sound. In helpless, impotent terror, Marge lay down and huddled under the blankets. Something cold and metallically gleaming came crashing towards her--it was the battle ax!

Genres: Gothic

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

Reviews

[dolly · Rating 1 out of 5]

i bought this book for the cover, a beautiful illustration by Robert Foster. the actual book was a hot mess. from marge, the main character, falling in love with her own cousin immediately after meeting him, to the obvious bad guys with names that are functionally the same except for one letter tom and tim. it definitely made the climactic scenes a bit more confusing. and the absolutely ridiculous twist ending COMMUNISTS?? communists were behind all of this?? i actually laughed it was so weird and sudden this book was just an experiment in bad gothic romance tropes gone wrong.