A pleasant entertainment though not a significant novel, Moncrieff offers the strange combination of a realistic domestic novel and a Gothic thriller. (p. 306)

This linking of the realistic and Gothic traditions is generally successful. As a Gothic novel Moncrieff offers chills and suspense, especially since it focuses much of the mystery on the old house of Antonia and her twelve-year-old son. It is carefully plotted, too, as a suspense novel requires. As a domestic novel Moncrieff tells about her failed marriage, about bringing up a bright son without his father, and about the motives of Antonia, her former husband, and the novelist. There are some problems, though, in combining the two sub-genres. The Gothic thriller suffers from needing the factual explanations demanded by realism; the realism suffers from overplotting and from having Dauntry, Antonia's former husband, act the Gothic villain from motives of pure self-interest and near-malignity.

Moncrieff...