Stitch in Snow by Anne McCaffrey

Again, this one is purely a romance - a chance encounter with a stranger, both stranded by an unseasonal blizzard. I have always considered this book a candidate for McCaffrey's personal fantasy. Dana Jane Lovell is fifty year old writer of YA fiction who moved to Ireland to avoid taxes. She also has silver hair with traces of its original red. I have not, however, found anything to indicate that McCaffrey was a knitter.

The description of Dan Lowell, the romantic interest is point by point the same as that of Michael Carradyne in The Lady, including the mustache. I suppose it is really the other way around - Michael Carradyne is Dan Lowell transposed to Ireland, since this one precedes The Lady by a year. The suspense element is an accusation of murder against Dan, which is dropped as soon as they locate Dana on her lecture/book tour and she provides him with an alibi.

The book is pleasant and enjoyable. One of my favorite things is her "memory" - the journal in which she keeps track of where and when she has been and makes notes of potential characters which she encounters. It is so "writerish." Of course, the journal proves to be invaluable in substantiating her defense of Dan.

This is my favorite of her romance novels - possibly because the heroine is fifty, possibly because she is a knitter. The discussions of knitting are very real, I must suspect that McCaffrey did knit. I do have questions about someone knitting a large men's Aran in less than two weeks. I know I'm not a particularly fast knitter, but really - two weeks?

To my utter amazement, the wiki refers to two of these romantic suspense or romance novels (Ring of Fear and The Mark of Merlin) as gothics. Really? I don't think so. I just checked to see what Amazon had to say - they call them romantic suspense. On the other hand, they list a volume entitled Three Gothic Novels by Anne McCaffrey. It includes those two plus another one which I have never read. One of these days I'll get around to them - I think I read the Merlin one (I did remember that Merlin is a dog), but the other I had never heard of. For now, I think I will get back to the other two or three books that I have started - or the textbook for the class I am taking next semester.