The Inheritance (signed & dated)

Happy to inherit a fortune and grand home on the East Coast, Holly Smith heads off to live the life of her dreams, but as she enters her new home, she senses a chill and discovers that it is only a matter of time before the rightful heirs come to seek their revenge. 30,000 first printing. Lit Guild Alt.

Savage has garnered plenty of praise for plotting and taut prose of previous thrillers, including Valentine (1996). He takes a different, less successful turn in this unabashedly old-fashioned gothic mystery?weighted with cliches, contrivance and coincidence?about a young woman who learns that she's the heiress to a fabulous, haunted fortune. Fullsome lines like "That snowy twentieth of December, the day of the next death" (offered as a sentence) may attempt to parody the gothic novel but in effect interrupt the flow of the complicated narrative. A dying old woman, Alicia Randall Wainwright, instructs a lawyer to track down the baby girl who was born in prison and given up for adoption after her actress mother shot and killed her husband, Alicia's nephew, James Randall. That's how Holly Smith of Indio, Calif., learns that she is really Holly Randall, owner of a vast estate in Connecticut and assorted extras adding up to a $600 million fortune. There are, to be sure, a few small drawbacks: an uncle and aunt who want Holly dead badly enough to hire a Mafia hit man; an eccentric, chess-playing relative who hides in the attic; a young woman who roams the estate at night, burying and digging up a doll. Holly is perky and beautiful, so she seems equal to the task of being a Randall?especially as she has a few sly tricks up her own sleeve. Savage exhibits skillful craftsmanship here but doesn't seem to have his heart in it.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It purports to be a gothic novel, but any self-respecting gothic ought to generate a chill or two. This one doesn't. When we first meet incredibly beautiful Holly Smitha figure firmly rooted in romance fictionshe's just discovered that she's not Holly Smith at all. She's Holly Randall. For reasons too complex to detail here, she was given away as a newborn to this nice California couple who raised her to be a proper middle-class girl with modest middle-class aspirations. Now, suddenly, she finds herself an heir to a great estate. Among a whole passel of worldly goods that she stands to inherit is the Randall manse, which, from a distance, looks ``perfectly innocent.'' But ``appearances are deceiving,'' we're told. Consider Catherine and John Randallon the surface splendid, at the core obligatorily rotten. These are the Randalls whom Holly is usurping. It will surprise no one that they hate her. They decide in an eyeblink that a hit man is their sole sensible recourse, then set about hiring one. Actually, the general population of Randall House loves to hate, and loves to act mysteriously. Who, for instance, is that cowled person prowling the premises at night? Who is the strange young woman obsessively burying a totemic baby? Around these and other enigmatic figures the plot twists, tirelessly. But where there's no spark of life, there's nothing to raise a goosebump. Pedestrian prose, stilted dialogue, wooden and/or overfamiliar characters. In his third time out (Valentine, 1994; Precipice, 1995, etc.), Savage takes a step back. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.