The Etruscan Smile: A Novel of Suspense

by Velda Johnston

The Etruscan underworld goddess held the wheat-symbol of life in one hand, and in the other, the sacrificial knife. To Samantha Develin, the ancient figure seemed sinister, and not just because of the chill, enigmatic smile on its bronze lips. The recently discovered statue, Samantha suspected, was connected in some way with her sister's disappearance two months ago. It was in search of her beautiful artist sister that Samantha had flown from New York to Italy. There she took up residence in the centuries-old farmhouse which Althea had been renting for the past several years. Almost immediately, Samantha found that the neighboring people, including an attractive young English archaeologist, seemed anxious for her to leave. What was more, she was sure the Englishman lied when he disclaimed any knowledge of where Althea might be. Then she awakened one night just in time to put out a mysteriously kindled fire that might have destroyed both her and the farmhouse. Someone was determined that she should not find out what had happened to Althea. Although she was tempted to flee back to her Manhattan apartment, Samantha persisted in her search for the reckless, warm-hearted sister she had always adored--a search that would lead her to strange people and reveal disturbing secrets in Althea's life. Here, set in the lovely Tuscan countryside around Florence, is a dramatic story of love and murder and of a long hidden evil.

Genres: Mystery, Gothic, Fiction, Romance

213 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Velda Johnston was a writer of romantic suspense. She also wrote under the pseudonym 'Veronica Jason'.

Reviews

[Sharon Ouderkirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1977, this mystery follows 23 year old Samantha, accompanied by her German Shepherd Caesar, as she travels to Italy to find her missing sister, Althea. They are unusually close because their parents died when Samantha was an infant, and they were raised by their Italian immigrant grandparents. Althea was the oldest, so she acted as a buffer for her grandparents and Samantha as they established a life in the Bronx. Samantha stays in an old farmhouse (Althea's home), while she looks for clues. She has never been to Italy, never been out of the USA, so everything is new, different, and suspect. Everyone she meets wants her to go home; the ruder people comment on her sister's loose morals. And little by little, the facts chip away from Samantha's idolization of Althea.
This highly entertaining mystery starts slowly, but the last 70 pages breeze by in a frantic rush to the finish line. It has been one of my sister's favourites for years (since the 1970s), and I finally got around to reading it. Not sure why I waited, but it was my loss - this thriller is a perfect summer read.

[Dorcas · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

This is a good solid mystery very similar to "My Brother Michael " by Mary Stewart. In fact, we could call it "My Sister Althea ", complete with art, hidden cave, mysterious etruscan statue and suspicious locals.

The first third was fairly slow in setting the scene and if it wasn't for the polyester pantsuits and terrycloth bathrobes that were intriguing me I might have given it up. But that would have been a shame because the story did improve. The mystery grew more tantalizing with each chapter and all loose ends were eventually wrapped up in a satisfying climax.

IN A NUTSHELL:
A young woman travels to Italy to search for her sister who disappeared a few months prior. Subthemes: art and mobsters.

Bottom line: Enjoyable, solid read

CONTENT :
SEX : None. Loose morals are alluded to on the part of some characters.
VIOLENCE:Mild. Showdown at end but not overly descriptive.
PROFANITY : Very Mild
PARANORMAL ELEMENTS: None

MY RATING: PG

[C. (Comment, don't blank click reviews). · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reviews are our reading records and a public service. I have twisted arms to encourage people that it is a duty, not a spoiler, to label disturbing content, or books unmatched to descriptions. I buy real books and need to know ghost titles actually are paranormal, for example. I will sadly warn animal lovers that the loyal dog in this novel did die at the end! Authors, leave happy endings, for creatures at least! For dear, brave Caesar: I remove one star from my ranking.

I have enjoyed three of Velda Johnston’s novels at four stars each. Gothic mystery is among my favourite tones and the 1960s to 1990s are the genre’s sweet spot. Prolific authors however, are going to have some coconut in their chocolate boxes. Samantha’s investigating was intelligent and consistently paced, the atmosphere serious and suspenseful. I will never believe in relatives not providing youths with their histories but leaping over that hole, this mystery had a very unique, well constructed background. It worked in 1977, when gangsters of Italy and New York could be alive, who had been active in the 1920s. Both the extravagant and rustic flavours of Italy appeared vibrantly in this novel; not least, her outdoor terrains.

Addiction was addressed as a sympathetic subject, with the shocking reminder that Italy had no treatment programs for them, even though AA introduced 12 steps in 1935. In Canada as late as 1970, there was nowhere for any mental health recuperation, except in sanatoriums. I guess Italian hospitals were not free, like ours are.

I love that Samantha travelled freely, like seeing her beloved Grandparents but gothic stories seldom included living parents! This novel plateaued at three stars, as soon as I saw that “The Etruscan Smile” was merely a glorified title; not an archaeological adventure!

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this contemporary romantic suspense novel set in Italy, Velda Johnston takes Mary Stewart-land and turns it on its head. The traditional plot of a young woman trying to solve the disappearance of her beloved older sister contains the requisite charming travelogue settings as the plot unfolds, enlivened by an appealing hero and a delightful dog--both unexpected additions to her Italian vacation. However, the mystery at the core is darker and quite frankly uglier than what would be expected in a novel of this genre. As such, "The Etruscan Smile" is a significant example of 1970s Gothic that stretch the boundaries of their genre.

[Capn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is there a term for a great book hiding behind a dreadfully ugly cover? Because I can think of two* instances where the very opposite is true. This is one of them - a handsomely bound hardcover with a panoramic wrap-around watercolour vista of the Tuscan hillscape with a girl, her dog and a humble farmhouse in the foreground. Inside, however, is a cheesy, made-for-TV-movie from the 1970s, complete with what appears to be a glaring plothole, but may just be a loose thread that the author forgot to weave back in, I'm not sure.
(*the other is Penelope Farmer's Castle of Bone - great, weird, sci-fi cover; dull child-minding and limited bizarre crap inside)

I'm writing on the app at the moment, so I'll have to go back and list this book retroactively into the list for "The Dog Dies - A Cautionary List, because not only does that largely ruin a book for me, it was also, I felt, a major plot weakness: drag a dog halfway around the world (somewhere near Poughkeepsie to somewhere near Firenze (Florence), Italy) just so you can have it there for climactic action scenes and fill in all those, "but how did you know I was here?!" situations with "your dog sensed it somehow"-polyfill. There's even a line here along the lines of, "Maybe it's true that dogs have ESP or something similar". Sigh. Much of the book was spent describing tying up poor Caesar here, or not wanting to leave him in a hot car there, or having to go home to let him out, etc. I understand the care required to look after a fur-baby, and I sympathise. But, again, it would have been more logical and better (and probably cheaper) for everyone if she had just put the poor thing in a kennel for a week, rather than sticking him in a crate in cargo and flying him to Italy, and then spending the rest of the time trying to find someone to mind him for large chunks of the trip. Yeesh. He was only there to act as a deterrent at times, and to rush headlong into a dangerous situation to loyally sacrifice himself for the sake his mistress. Cheesy, unnecessarily dramatic, and tragic.

On the face of this, this story appears to be a romantic thriller set in Tuscany (just outside a fictional and isolated hill-town, humorously named 'Isolotta'), and one invoking the atmospheric Etruscan pagan underworld: Italian-American Samantha Develin has flown to her ancestral home to track down her gorgeous, red-headed vixen of an older sister - a successful artist with a bohemian lifestyle to match - who has suddenly disappeared without a trace from the farmhouse she was renting from a wealthy landowner's family (basically, a tenant farmer's hut on the manor grounds).

What this book is, however, is the usual, tired, Italo-Americian Sicilian mob stuff, and the main character flies back to the States midway through to find out the backstory of what's happening in Italy from family there and talk to her old college prof about history (American history, to be accurate). I didn't want to read about driving from NYC to Poughkeepsie, or about the Lions/Rotary club involvement in her small town. It's not Toscana-centric, it just sort of takes place there. This is "Italy" for 'muricans. That's hugely disappointing to me.

There are a few players we are already introduced to in the summary: a British archaeologist, specializing in the Etruscans (he lives next door, down the road, in a room in a similar farmhouse that he rents from an Italian man - who also used to live in New York, of course. He's obsessed with baseball); Arturo, the devastatingly handsome son of the family who owns the lands, and who is a wealthy banker driving a shining red Alfa Romeo; and the missing Althea Develin - absolute stunner and total slut.

What's weird about this book is the character of Althea. At first, she's a gifted artist and sexually liberated 1970s woman that lesser, plainer sister, Samantha, some 8 years her junior and with "hair-coloured hair", worships. While others might see her as "loose", Samantha sees her as a powerful, modern woman, free to live as a man does. All good, makes sense.

But without spoiling the story too much (assuming you'll still want to read it after my review and those of others!), Althea's character gets eroded as time goes on. By the middle of the story, Samantha is already beginning to question her sister's core psychology, an inherent lack self-confidence, and her mental well-being as to why she allows herself to be "used (sexually) by losers": the chief complaint here is that while Althea can (and will) bang anyone, including and certainly not limited to both other characters listed above, her unforgivable fault is that she falls for the "losers" - the neurotic thrice-divorced and balding; the stuttering, unpublished poet who can't make eye-contact due to extreme social anxiety; the alcoholic or addict, and so forth. Samantha begins to see this alleged 'saviour-complex' as some sort of major character flaw in her sister.

So far, acceptable - not the conclusions that perhaps I would reach (I thought Althea's falling for the less gorgeous was perhaps a sign that she wasn't a superficial, hollow twit, and cared more about character than looks - all to her credit, I felt!), but that's immaterial. But, honestly, the tone of the book changes from "it's a beneficial advancement of society that women can be as sexually free as men are" to what felt an awful lot like "slut-shaming": major spoiler follows if you'r e on the app and can't see tags: as if a corollary, Althea has turned to prostitution, and also to blackmailing of her own biological grandfather and his other family, to the tune of half a million dollars, obstensibly for the sake of love, but the love of one who Samantha regards as a total loser junky. Oh, and, because Althea couldn't (wouldn't) keep her legs closed, she managed to ostracize all of the Develin family in Isolotta - an old man spits at Samantha's feet: "Your sister is a puttana" (whore), he growls. All because Althea slept with a handsome local Italian lad who was engaged to a local Italian girl who then decided to call off the marriage, upsetting most of the town as they are all related. EVERYONE BLAMES ALTHEA FOR THIS, the American slut. No one blames the man for cheating on his fiance with the first pretty foreigner that comes his way!!! WTF?!

Okay, this historical double-standard is addressed, but we revisit this same scenario again at the climax of the story, where once again Althea's "looseness" has caused major problems in another family, and it seems like Samantha sides against her own sister. Fine. Alright, I agree - you can't just go around fucking people at random without expecting hurt feelings and adultery. That goes for men and women alike, and yes, historically (and still!) there's a revolting double-standard there where the woman is blamed and the man let off. And, fine, okay - we realise with Samantha that she had put Althea on a pedestal and perhaps Althea wasn't a paragon of virtue, I get it, stipulated. But, I don't know, somehow I got the distinct impression that the author was superficially promoting women's sexual liberation, all the while believing wholeheartedly that "sluts get the bad ending they deserve"! It was a nasty undercurrent that I didn't like.

In an attempt at brevity:

- the archaeological content here is weak. It wasn't enough for this eggheaded reader. I can't decide if there was more content before, and an editor said, "Sweetheart, you gotta cut the archaeological crap out - no one wants to hear about the religious beliefs of the long-dead Etruscans! Put in more fluff instead!", or if Velda Johnston was just a silly, superficial ball of fluff to begin with, and the supposed archaeological content just a ruse to hook unsuspecting nerds like me into reading this. DON'T BUY THIS BOOK EXPECTING *ANYTHING* OF FACTUAL, HISTORICAL INTEREST, OR OF FANTASTICAL, SPOOKY, PAGAN UNDERWORLD GODS - nothing paranormal here to save it. It's far, far worse than (Indiana Jones and) The Temple of Doom - and that's still watchable because of a few good scenes: the opening cabaret of Willy ('Anything Goes'), and Indy's shirtless scene on the rope bridge, which is still the sexiest thing I have ever, ever seen. This book doesn't have anything remotely sexy in it, either, which I found odd if there wasn't archaeology or the paranormal, or even a modern cult reenacting pagan sacrifice. Might just be me... not a romance fan. And, indeed, it was weirdly light on that theme as well.

- I HATE ALL THE MEN IN THIS STORY. Seriously, they are all .. weird. The British archaeologist creeps me out entirely - I kept picturing him being a close-talker with dandruff and halitosis for some reason (he's a lot, lot older than Samantha, and just kisses her on the mouth as it takes his fancy. He becomes the hero/guy who gets her in the end, and I still felt he was icky and inhuman and just kind of gross and insistent, rather than, you know, a likeable person of depth or character. We know he lies, he isn't especially attractive, and.. well, that's about it, in actual fact. Don't even know if he's a good kisser, or if he planted a sloppy, slobbery wet one on her smacker without warning or consent or invitation). Arturo, the handsome one, is suave and well-dressed and then (major spoiler follows if you can't see tags!!!!!) , well, of course he's the killer - I guess you can't be that sexy and be good or at least neutral? Whyever not?! And while I hate romance (I read this for the advertised archaeology, which was a total rip off!), why didn't I get to see this guy naked?! I mean... yeah, why bother? At least the car got some action, racing around. Would have liked more on the petrolhead front as well, here.
Oh, and her college prof! "Yes, I remember you - blonde, good legs, and I think you had some brains. Didn't I give you an A?" (that's a quote). Fuuuuuuck.

- this last one is one big spoiler tag: Althea, the sister, is never found. And her death is only presumed. And we think we know where her body was dumped. And we are fairly sure of who killed her, and why.
The police were involved from the beginning. Samantha is in and out of police stations. Then she gets threats and largely keeps quiet about it. The police don't seem to be following up at all on the missing persons front, even though it's of a foreign national and now there's a search party from the USA receiving threats and whose farmhouse was the target of arson. Riiiiight. Samantha won't leave until she finds Althea (or dies trying). She nearly dies trying. And then, that's the end - sister gone, presumed murdered. Dog shot while saving her life. Presumed murderer and attempted murderer (the gorgeous Arturo) dies conveniently in a wreck of his Alfa as he speeds away from the crime scene. So let's marry (!) that grody old British scholar who kissed me out of the blue (was never sure how she felt about that or if she even enjoyed it!) and was there in time to be the hero (dead dog Caesar was the real hero - dude just struggled the gun away at the end) and wants to marry me, for some reason, in spite of us not knowing each other well and me being suspicious of him for most of the novel, okay. What? No.

-plothole? Althea's car is found abandoned at the stazione in Milan, but she presumably bites it in Isolotta. How did she get there without driving as Samantha had to in her Simca (a make I had never heard of until this book)? You can take the train to Florence, but you'd need the car to get to the countryside. Why didn't she drive? If Arturo drove her car back to Milano Centrale as a ruse, that was never explained. And, if he had, how did he know she was in Milan? Wouldn't he have just driven to the stazione in Firenze/Florence? Less far, less chance of being seen (less time in car), same conclusions to be reached (i.e. that she took a train somewhere).
Also, here's where I get to brag, I am writing this while looking at the stazione (Milano Centrale). :) Why even mention that station without describing it?! It's gorgeous! Built in 1864, marble, winged horses, columns.. it's a monument!). I'm off to Florence myself today, and will be looking in at the same museums as Samantha did. Too bad it wasn't a better read ahead of time!.

In short, just don't. :p I won't be reading any future books by this author.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating Clarification: 3.5 Stars

Entertaining gothic along the lines of Mary Stewart, (more like Mary Stewart-lite).

[Stephanie A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short but well plotted mystery that reads much like a YA novel at first, with a young woman, accompanied by a faithful dog, venturing forth from her New York apartment to visit her sister's rental house in Italy, intent on finding out why said sister has not been heard from in months. I savored each page and loved all the characters, even the absent Althea, in all her personal disaster. The details of the countryside are beautiful, very Old World charm, as are the small town and even her glimpse of the larger city in Milan.

But because it is NOT a YA novel, it is allowed to get significantly darker on the way to solving the missing-sister mystery, and I for one found that very satisfying in context. Not necessarily because I wanted certain things to happen, but because the way it was set up, anything less would have felt cheap. (Although I do wish it had kept one solid YA element of "don't kill the dog.")

[Robert Hudder · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I'm going to make some comparisons here. Don't take them as negative. Reading a popular book published in 1977 and it is of its time. Mario Puzo's novels and a movie about Italian gangsters were popular. Already Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys had gone from novel to getting their own television series. Charlie's Angels had finished its first season. Harlequin Romance books were scattered around.

This book reminds me of all that. The plot is tight and linear. The gothic romantic is set up in a familiar way. It unfolds as it should. It is comforting with its limited menace.

[Judy Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

That's a guess on my rating, since I found my old book journal.

"These are the kind of books I read in high school. In fact, I picked this up at a yard sale or library sale, I forget which, for precisely that reason. The reading itself was fast, smooth, and light. Reading these "gothics" now, as a nearly middle-aged woman has been somewhat of a revelation for me. If you ask people about them, they'll talk about women running through the woods in their night-clothes etc. As I re-read or re-visit the genre as it existed in the 70's that stereotype is proving not to be true. These women tend to be strong, intelligent, inquisitive. If the man only shows up at the end to do the physical rescue, it's because he's been able to recognize the trail she was smart enough to leave. Obviously, there are exceptions, but most of them are like this book and that's find by me."

[mirawibel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book for free outside of a bookshop, and being intrigued by the promise of mystery in the Italian countryside (as well as an archaeologist love interest), I picked it up. I read it in one day, as the story flowed well, and kept my interest. Samantha is a compelling narrator, as are all the characters, including the tragic Althea. Over all, I’ve learned from this book not to look down upon the free book selection, as you never know what sorts of treasures you’ll find. I would recommend this to anyone wanting a easy to read suspense novel that will hold on to you until the last page.

[Eva · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spoilers ahead.



My first book written by Velda Johnston and most likely my last. Her writing style is decent, but the overall craftsmanship of this book left me feeling blah. Her character development was non existent. This led to plot twists that felt abrupt and a little far-fetched. Also, the dog died. Who wants to read about that?

[Martic · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars. This was a quick read but slow-moving. I didn't click with the main character, and some of what happened in the lives of other characters was a stretch for me. The ending was sad and sweet at the same time, the best part of the book.

[Mistina Christner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have really enjoyed Velda Johnson's book lately and I think that this one was very good! I was not sure what to expect from the start of this book. There is a sad part at the ending which I wish would have turned out differently, but I think that it still was a good ending. Great story!

[Denise Schlachtaub · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a fluff mystery, but the setting and characters were well delevoped, making it an enjoyable fast read.