Barnabas Collins and the Gypsy Witch

There's a different approach in this book in the series. It starts and ends with Maggie talking to Elizabeth about something that happened in the past of Collinwood.

In the past there was a woman, Roxanne Collins, who was sent to New York on advice of the family attorney. This proved to be a disaster as she encountered some very nasty people there and was even kidnapped.

She's able to escape and makes her way to Collinwood, meeting Barnabas along the way. As happens in some many of this series the leading lady ends up falling in love with him.

This is a time when Hare is Barnabas' servant. He also knows a woman in New York, Molly, who also has strong feelings for him.

At Collinwood she meets a half-sister, Ariel. A guy named Reid is in love with her but his feelings aren't reciprocated at the time. There's a group of gypsy wagons and people nearby and she's told about death in Collinwood and, sure enough, there's death. Barnabas (again) is suspected by the townspeople of being the murderer (especially since some young women have been attacked with marks left on their throats). It turns out things go much deeper than she suspected and it's a question of whether or not she will be next on the killer's list.

There's something that occurred to me while reading this book. It relates to the other books and to the television series, too. Barnabas' excuse for not being out in the daytime is that he's working on a history of the family (and maybe other things) so he's involved in that during the day.

Yet he never makes a trip to the Collinsport library (I'm assuming they have one), he never goes shopping at a used book store (again, I'm assuming they have one) and he never seems to order any books through the mail. If he did some of that the word would get out and the townspeople who at least somewhat believe he was actually working during the day.

One other thing and an excuse for his never being seen during the day. There is an actual disease called Xeroderma pigmentosum which means some people can't go out into the daylight without really major protection. So that could be used as an excuse by saying Barnabas suffers from that. Now, I'll admit, I don't know if the disease was actually known about ni the 1960's but if it were it'd make a perfect excuse for him to say inside and avoid all sunlight (apparently even some lightbulbs are a danger to people with this problem.)

Anyhow, I enjoyed the book quite a bit.