Borrower of the Night: A Vicky Bliss Novel of Suspense

By Elizabeth Peters

Meet art historian Vicky Bliss, She is as beautiful as she is brainy--with unassailable courage, insatiable curiosity, and an expertise in lost museum treasures that often leads her into the most dangerous of situations.

A missing masterwork in wood, the last creation of a master carver who died in the violent tumult of the sixteenth century, may be hidden in a medieval German castle in the town of Rothenburg. The prize has called to Vicky Bliss, drawing her and an arrogant male colleague into the forbidding citadel and its dark secrets. But the treasure hunt soon turns deadly. Here, where the blood of the long forgotten damned stains ancient stones, Vicky must face two equally perilous possibilities. Either a powerful supernatural evil inhabits this place. . .or someone frighteningly real is willing to kill for what Vicky is determined to find.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061804700

Elizabeth Peters

Elizabeth Peters earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago’s famed Oriental Institute. During her fifty-year career, she wrote more than seventy novels and three nonfiction books on Egypt. She received numerous writing awards and, in 2012, was given the first Amelia Peabody Award, created in her honor. She died in 2013, leaving a partially completed manuscript of The Painted Queen.

Reviews for Borrower of the Night

[Jamie Johnson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you like history and a great mystery, this is your book. Vicky is strong and courageous but with a soft side that makes her so much fun. Great characters and a great adventure story make for an amazing book.

[kmartin802_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Vicky Bliss is a historian who also happens to be a tall, pretty and very smart person. She also has decided opinions. When she and her boyfriend Tony discover clues to a potential lost work of art, they both decided to try to find it - separately, and with a strong sense of competition.Their quest takes them to a German castle recently opened as a hotel and the various guests there. The innkeeper is the current owner of the castle, a lovely and delicate young woman named Irma. Her aunt and her aunt's companion are also resident in the castle. Among the other guests are a German doctor, an American adventurer, and a mysterious older man named Schmidt. The story was very atmospheric. There was a strong sense of history as Vicky tries to learn more about the missing masterwork and the people involved with its disappearance. There were dusty tombs, secret passages, wandering ghosts and an animated suit of armor to add Gothic detail.The story was first published in 1973 and, except for the potential value of the lost masterwork, didn't feel particularly dated. The number of smokers and lack of cell phones were the major clues that it wasn't a contemporary story. I like Vicky's feminism and competence and enjoyed this mystery.

[themulhern · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Utterly typical Elizabeth Peters novel. A history lesson thrown in, a nonsensical detective plot, a fake supernatural element, a fairly obvious villain, an exciting denouement, an escape from an underground trap, a "romance".

[leslie398 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

2.5*

Susan O'Malley did a good job with the narration but I found Vicky Bliss fairly annoying, especially in her manner of interacting with her colleague Tony (who was even more irritating!).

[pattylee-621744 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Perhaps a bit dated, but the mystery and suspense is decent and I am a sucker for the art history aspect of this series. Unlikely and sometimes annoyingly self-deprecating heroine- how likely is a blonde bombshell medievalist?

[empressreece · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.5 stars- I actually listened to the Audio Book and it started out very slow. It took me several tries listening to it to get into it. After the first disc though, i started enjoying it and ended up really liking it. Im going to try the second book and I hope it is a little more polished.

[maureene87 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Leila at Bookshelves of Doom was reading this one. Looked fun, so I picked it up. It was fun. It’s one of those that if I’m ever in the mood I’ll read another in the series but I don’t feel any particular compulsion to keep going. [Oct. 2008]]

Hah! Little did she know...

I actually ended up quite addicted to this series. And now rereading the reviews is making me want to reread the books. Scmiiiiidddddt.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I hope this isn't representative of Elizabeth Peters' work, 'cause I was looking forward to reading her stuff, but I felt kinda like I was reading a novelised Scooby Doo episode. I suppose it's not that far from Mary Stewart's work, in a way, but the narration just made it feel cartoonish, more than anything else. And I don't think Mary Stewart ever set anything in a gothic sort of castle with ~mysteriously moving~ suits of armour.Not to mention her protagonists are usually a lot more likeable and don't waffle on about how smart and beautiful they are so much. Some of the narration was fun -- her description of herself as a "bouncing Brunhild" was a pretty perfect way to say it -- but mostly... nah.So, yeah, I'm not going to read anything more about Vicky Bliss, even if I might try Amelia Peabody.

[snukes-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

So many things about this book bugged me. In fact, I'm struggling to think of what I DID like about this book. I guess the ambiance was nice. Set in an old castle in Germany, all the crawling about in the ruins and discussion of history. I liked that. But...

The characters were not engaging. Our heroine and narrator, Vicky, was a smart, independent woman of un-delicate proportions (her self-description as being a "bouncing Brunhilda" was pretty funny) and competitive spirit. She has declared that she will never marry, but seems to be in some kind of baffling relationship with a fellow professor named Tony. Tony is a total asshat who treats Vicky with disrespect and has an out-of-control ego. Vicky's attitude and actions never make a lot of sense to me. One minute she's cursing Tony and trying to one-up him, the next she is simpering and trying to soothe his ego. The other characters are kind of like white noise - there, but not contributing much.

The mystery was also odd. They were searching for a lost work of art which they happened to read about in a book. Apparently everyone else in the world incidentally read the same book the exact same week because everyone was looking for this thing independently. The art had been lost for 500 years, but this week everyone remembered to look for it.

And the archaeologist in me sobbed at all of their techniques. Trained historians should know better. They're just snatching and grabbing and smashing antiquities right and left. Europeans obviously find the medieval period of little value (the Americans and volunteers were always assigned to the medieval levels on my digs in the Netherlands) but... gah!

And when the heck was this story set, anyway? Telegraphs and kerosene lamps suggest early in the century, but Vicky's wearing pants and working as a professor, so that seems less likely. Germany has zero apparent concern about war, either, which leaves me absolutely lost.

I guess I'll go back to Amelia Peabody.

[aelianna-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The story was slow to start, but it got better. Still, I'm glad I started the series with book number two. Would have been nice to have read this before no. 4, since Tony shows up there, but it's not importent for the plot.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the first of the Vicky Bliss series - great narration by Barbara Rosenblat - witty, suspenseful, and a good mix of history. Definitly a good series to recommend.

[condorena · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I don't think I can add anything to the other reviews of this book. Everything has been said. I am glad to hear that the next in the series are better. I had a bit or trouble that a couple of brash Americans feel they can walk into a castle which is someone's home and feel they have a right to search it from stem to stern. Aside from the fact they were using clues published in a book. For Pete's sake it sounded like a wild goose chase for most of the story.

[jenj5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Listened to the Recorded Books cassette edition narrated by Barbara Rosenblatt. Great fun! Although the story took awhile to get rolling, by the end I didn't want to turn it off. I'm not sure the mystery and its resolution would hold together upon close inspection, but I was involved enough that this didn't bother me. I definitely found the comments on sexual politics and feminism interesting, but they clearly showed the 1970's publication date.

[bsquaredinoz · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I've enjoyed Peters' Amelia Peabody series but this one, featuring art historian Vicky Bliss, didn't engage me at all. The characters weren't particularly well rounded,the story was a bit ho hum and there wasn't the humour that I enjoy in the other series. I didn't finish this one.

[susanamper · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The first Vicky Bliss mystery written in 1973. Schmidt's character is not fully outline, but Vicky's pretty much is. She and another academic, Tony, are off to Germany to find the last creation of master wood carver. The story only kept my interest because I like Bliss from other novels.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Vicky Bliss and several others head to a German castle to try to locate a missing piece of art dating to the Renaissance. There are all the things you would expect in a castle such as suits of armor, secret passages, and ghosts. It wasn't the most captivating mystery. This book could have used a glossary for the German words in the text that were unexplained. I refused to go track down my German dictionary so I hope I was able to figure out what most of them meant by their context. I have a low tolerance for Occultic themes in books, and there was too much of a presence in this one for me.

[riverwillow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm a great fan of the Amelia Peabody series, so I though I'd check out this more modern offering from Peters. Like Amelia, Vicky is bright, independent, and, considering that this was first published in the 1970s, a woman slightly ahead of her time. The mystery was interesting, although it took a while to get going.

[elwyne_3 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Okay I didn't REALLY read it. I got a chapter or so in and was so annoyed by the narrator - and bored by the lack of story - I just put it aside. I really don't enjoy stories where none of the characters are remotely likable. And also nothing happens.

[francescadefreitas · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

II really enjoy Elizabeth Peters, so I was keen to try this series by the same author under a different name. But I didn't take to it, it felt dated - a seventies picture of men and women competing intellectually. The mystery was fun, and the German setting interesting, but the characters left me cold.

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Vicki is great! She's strong and independent but has a soft side that occasionally peeks out. There's quite a bit of comic relief in the midst of the drama of the mystery and as other reviewers have noted, Ms. Peters does a good job of spoofing the genre while still writing a good mystery.

[annbury_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Elizabeth Peters is best known for her Amelia Peabody series of Egyptological thrillers, but the Vicky Bliss novels are well worth reading. This one embroils our art-historian heroine with the search for a missing medieval masterpiece, and some very nasty characters indeed. Nice use of art-historical detail, and a humorous tone, make these a pleasure to read.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Elizabeth Peters gives the Gothic novel a modern spin as Professor Vicky Bliss races against her academic colleague/rival/hopeful suitor, Tony, and a handful of suspicious characters, to find a lost Renaissance shrine. All of the characters are thrown together in a medieval German castle, complete with suits of armor, a resident ghost, a crypt, the ruins of a tower, and secret passages. It's a lot like the old Scooby-Doo cartoons I watched on Saturday mornings as a kid. Art and history lovers looking for some purely escapist reading will find it here.

[nextian_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Talk about a dated book (and not necessarily in a good way). Still, I will read the next one because there are elements for a good series here. And Elizabeth Peters at her worst is still better than most other mystery writers.

[heptonj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A rather far-fetched adventure but clever. Vicky Bliss is the unlikely heroine of a medieval mystery with a light touch of sexuality without the oh so boring romance. I gave this three and a half stars as although it was well-written, not hard to read and interesting it seemed to lack a certain quality which I can only define as oomph! I am certainly going to try the other two novels in the series as I think it will get better as it goes along.

[aharey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The first Vicky Bliss novel, this story introduces us to the large blonde academic who is interested in the legend of a lost Riemenschneider sculpture. She engages in a bet with a fellow academic, Tony, who bets that if he can find it before she can, she has to marry him.Peters writes with ascerbic wit and wonderful characters. Vicky Bliss is an independent thinker, capable of making intriguing decisions without any help.This is a great series- I recommend it to any mystery lover!