Gemini in Darkness

by Clarissa Ross, W.E.D. Ross (AKA)

The job on Beacon Street was intriguing, and Diana Lewis fit perfectly the one unusual she was born after midnight on a night in May -- under the same sign as the noted astrologer Madame Helene, whose supernatural powers she would be asked to publicize. Heedless of her fiance's warnings, Diana accepted the job and plunged into her work. But the mysteries of the old house soon demanded who was Madame Helene? Could she really be a century old, as Dr. Gill claimed? Did she really hold some strange power over the future?

Genres: Gothic, Fiction, Horror

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

William Edward Daniel Ross, W. E. Daniel "Dan" Ross (born 1912) is a bestselling Canadian novelist from Saint John, New Brunswick who wrote over 300 books in a variety of genres and under a variety of mostly female pseudonyms such as Laura Frances Brooks, Lydia Colby, Rose Dana, Jan Daniels, Ross Olin, Diane Randall, Clarissa Ross, Leslie Ames, Ruth Dorset, Ann Gilmer, Jane Rossiter, Dan Ross, Dana Ross, Marilyn Ross, Dan Roberts, and W.E.D. Ross. As Marilyn Ross he wrote popular Gothic fiction including a series of novels about the vampire Barnabas Collins based on the American TV series Dark Shadows (1966-71).

Reviews

[Sarah Mac · Rating 3 out of 5]

By the Dan Ross scale, this was a pretty decent read -- i.e., he put (some) effort into writing an actual story instead of dashing off a pile of unedited dreck & shoving it into the prepaid publisher envelope. It's clear he tried to craft a more believable blending of three favorite themes in this particular book: occult (in this case, astrology), Old Hollywood, & hippie-bashing.** It's not a great book, but compared to other installments in the Ross pantheon (Beloved Scoundrel...The Spectral Mist...Shorecliff...to name a few), you can tell he was trying.

Alas, the ending is beyond weak -- a let-down of lead balloon proportions -- otherwise I'd have awarded it a limp 4 stars for entertainment value. But even so, this is BY FAR the best of his contemp pulps that I've sampled.


**No, really. Dan's use of the demographic descriptor 'hippie' is akin to 'puppy-kickers' or 'lowlife louts.' To his credit, he does nail one zinger in terms of New Adult id'yits spouting off & wearing Social Commentary Badges(tm) without any real knowledge of what they're supporting or deriding -- a peeve we share, most def.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost all of Clarissa (aka Dan) Ross's favorite things are deployed here: a beyond-naive heroine, sentence fragments, referring to people by their full names every time they're mentioned, usually with an adjective in front of them ("the prim Miss Carlton;" "the hawk-faced Dr. Martin Gill"); and, of course, the soap opera method of moving action along and filling time by having characters endlessly recap a previous scene through dialogue with another character or with internal monologues they ask themselves in the form of questions. Journalist/editor Diana Lewis--in search of a new job and air-conditioning during a sweltering Boston summer--answers an ad to edit the astrology magazine of Madame Helene, a rival to Jeanne (spelled "Jean" here) Dixon. The job comes with a live-in, air conditioned apartment. It also comes with a household of mysterious characters. Soon, of course, Diana starts realizing there may be more to Madame Helene's astrological empire than meets the eye. The gullible heroine getting taken in by supposedly kind benefactors is a trope Ross also used in "Beware the Kindly Stranger." Ross also throws in a potentially supernatural twist, a la "Secret of the Pale Lover." And there is, of course, hippie-bashing, because that's just Ross's thing, as other reviewers have noted. What's fun about "Gemini in Darkness" is the astrological lingo the characters throw around; as well as the grotesquerie surrounding Madame Helene herself, a sort of Norma Desmond-like character. And then, unintentionally funny descriptions of poor Adam Purcell, Diana's off-again/on-again, sort of white knight boyfriend. All in all, "Gemini in Darkness" is one of Ross's better, albeit still clunky, early 70s Gothics.

[Heather Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a Clarissa Ross, this was actually fun and readable. It was a bit dated, but it WAS printed in 1970. That adds to its bizarre charm. Hippies, astrology, and murder.....a very light read but all in good fun.