I do know the look of a ruby, in the same way that I know sable and ermine and mink. One always knows where one is going, even if one doesn't quite know how to get there. [loc. 2096]
Reread of a novel first read in the 1990s, which I don't think I've revisited since. Certainly I had forgotten all but a few details: melon balls, a corpse on a horse, boring brother.
Ibiza Surprise is set in the late Sixties. Sarah Cassells is twenty years old, the daughter of impecunious Lord Forsey, and (possibly) 'the swingiest chick this side of Chelsea'. She has trained as a cook, lives in London in a flatshare, and makes a living by catering extravagant dinner parties. Her primary aim in life is to find someone 'decent' (i.e. rich) to marry. When her father is found dead in Ibiza, Sarah's financial situation worsens. Then, at the funeral, she meets the father of her schoolfriend Janey Lloyd, who invites her to stay with the Lloyds in Ibiza.
Cue mayhem, an unexpected American widow, a famous portrait painter with his yacht and his bifocals (this is Johnson Johnson, the star-at-one-remove of Dunnett's seven-book 'Dolly' series) and Easter in a small Spanish town.
Several things struck me about this novel. Firstly, how recent the war was: less than 25 years since VE Day. It's unremarkable for Johnson (who's in his forties) to explain his facility with firearms by claiming to have done Special Branch work in the war. Twenty-five years! It's longer than that since I first read this novel. And it makes me think anew about my parents and how recent it was for them.
Second, Sarah is frivolous and flirtatious and quite casual about the risk of one of her beaus assaulting her ('he could swim, too, but you can't rape anyone in deep water, or at least if you can you ought to get a certificate' [1306]). She is determined to marry well -- she thinks it's her only hope of a comfortable life -- but is also not averse to 'courtesy snogging' with a man she's just met. And though she sometimes comes across as vacuous, she is brave and intelligent, and surprisingly competent.
And third: this is Ibiza before the nightclubs and mass tourism. I loved the glimpses of local culture, the medieval town and the religious processions, the gilded statues draped with real jewellery.
Murder mystery quite twisty; Johnson quite peripheral and impenetrable; not enough sailing. I think I'd like to reread more of these, in the spirit in which Dunnett wrote them: a holiday (though not, as in her case, a tax-deductible Business Expense).
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