Velda Johnston

• Born: 1911
• Birthplace: California
• Died: 1997

Types of Plot: Cozy; amateur sleuth

Contribution

For readers, particularly young women, Velda Johnston provides easy-to-read novels with interesting, carefully planned plots. The mystery in each novel is presented early, and progress toward the solution is logical and evenly paced. Beyond the sheer entertainment of her fiction, however, Johnston, who clearly enjoys the process of writing, seems to have a message for young readers. She provides examples in her novels of young women who seek happiness and fulfillment in a more assertive, independent manner than have the women of the previous generation. The mother or the aunt who reared the heroine has often been abandoned or widowed and left in financial straits by the man on whom she depended. Although often dismissed early in the story, the maternal character’s life stands in vivid contrast to that of the heroine. The motif of the independent young woman is consistent throughout Johnston’s work, and those who read two or more of her novels are unlikely to miss it. From the publication of her first novel in 1967 through the late 1980’s, Johnston produced one or two novels per year, presenting in each a mystery to test the heroine’s intelligence and eagerness to solve problems.

Biography

Velda Johnston was reared and educated in California. She obtained a degree in English at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Having sold her first story while still in high school, she anticipated immediate financial independence as a writer. “I looked forward to being able to support myself and my mother by dashing off a short story occasionally after school,” Johnston has said. “But I was in my third year at UCLA before I was able to sell my second story. It was really very rough getting started.” Eventually, she was able to publish not only romantic suspense novels but also nonfictional articles on subjects ranging from the artificial heart to migrant workers in New Jersey.

Even as a child, Johnston enjoyed reading mysteries. Inspiration for her own writing came from the English writer Mary Stewart, whose romantic suspense novels she admired very much. “I’ve always loved history, especially English history,” said Johnston. Johnston has explained that for her, mysteries are, in a way, easier to write than other types of fiction:

In a mystery, you don’t have to depend just on character. You can offer the reader a double pleasure—interesting characters and the puzzle as well. What I like to stress in my novels, which are often read by young women, are education, using one’s intelligence, and having courage—not just sitting around waiting for Mr. Right.

Analysis

Velda Johnston’s stories are almost always told in the first person by a young career woman who relies on her own resources in solving a mystery that in some way threatens her plans for marriage or brings a temporary halt to a romantic relationship. Often, the young woman was orphaned at an early age or became separated from one parent, usually the father. Reared with few if any siblings by adoptive parents, a single mother, or an aging female relative, the heroine is, by the age of twenty-seven or so, left without the emotional or financial support of family. Forced into an independent lifestyle, the heroine becomes involved in intrigue involving either her own unknown background or that of others. While sex is not prominent in the novels, there is always a man, very important to the heroine, who may or may not participate in solving the mystery. One romantic relationship is often terminated soon after the mystery presents itself, but by the novel’s end marriage is imminent between the heroine and a man who has proved himself worthy by protecting her from physical danger.

All the young women in Johnston’s novels are subject to real human emotions; they are not immune to feelings of doubt, fear, exhaustion, and the like. They are all women of character who serve as good examples for young women readers. In addition, these characters are engaged in a variety of professions. They travel, in many cases alone and always without hesitation, to any setting that might be required to solve the problem that faces them.

Johnston’s own extensive travels served her well in her writings. She used knowledge gained from her foreign travels in novels such as Deveron Hall (1976), which takes place in Scotland, and Masquerade in Venice (1973) and The Etruscan Smile (1977), both set in Italy. She did not limit her heroines to one locale in novels that take place in the United States. Although many heroines are based in the New York area, they may end up in Nevada or New Mexico. Johnston used settings in California, Maine, Cape Cod, and Florida, among others. History was important to Johnston. The siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War forms the backdrop for The House on the Left Bank (1975). This novel’s protagonist, Martha Hathaway, seeks to create for herself a life different from that of her mother, who is the mistress of a French aristocrat. Johnston effectively uses the mystery story to provide fictional role models for young women. Her heroines are women who, in spite of inner struggle, meet the intellectual challenges and the tests of character presented when their lives are interrupted by a personal crisis.

The People from the Sea

In The People from the Sea (1979), Diana Garson, alone and with few prospects, very much wants marriage and a family. She becomes involved, platonically at first, with a neighbor in her Manhattan brownstone. When Diana, an editor of children’s books, suffers a mild nervous breakdown, the neighbor, David Corway, persuades her to rent a house in the Hamptons so that she can recuperate near the sea, away from the city’s hectic pace.

The house Diana rents was once owned and occupied by the wealthy Woodhull family, three members of which had died in a tragic boat accident some twenty-five years earlier. Diana cannot explain why she sees and speaks with the dead victims, whose photographs she has found in the attic of the house. The Woodhulls become Diana’s family, and her obsession with them drives a wedge between her and David. Diana is determined to solve the mystery surrounding the deaths of the Woodhulls—and thereby confirm her sanity—before she will consent to marry David. Her persistence and courage pay off, and the murderer of the Woodhull family is pressured into revealing herself.

The Other Karen

Catherine Mayhew, heroine of The Other Karen (1983), seeks to expose the murderers of a wealthy elderly woman whose closest relative and heir, her granddaughter Karen, left home as a young girl. Catherine, an aspiring New York actress, is hired by the woman’s greedy relatives to impersonate Karen, assuring her that by so doing she will be performing a worthy service: making the old woman’s final days happy. While succeeding in the deception, Catherine soon discovers, with the help of Karen’s former boyfriend, that the relatives have had other motives in hiring her. When the elderly woman dies, Catherine and Karen’s friend travel throughout the United States, following lead after lead, in search of the real Karen. Catherine exemplifies the intelligent, courageous young woman whose character will not allow her to retreat when a serious injustice has occurred.

The Stone Maiden

The Stone Maiden (1980) features Katherine Derwith, who, having been abandoned and then adopted as an infant, is determined to learn the identity of her natural parents. She feels compelled to do so before proceeding with her plans for marriage to a young man whose wealth and social position might be compromised by her true origin. Her quest soon brings an end to the relationship, but Katherine pursues all available possibilities, and in the end she finds love with a man whose father, like hers, played a role in a secret project involving Nazi officers during World War II. Katherine’s determination to solve the mystery, in spite of the physical danger and the potential termination of her marriage plans, is typical of the integrity exhibited by Johnston ’s heroines.

Voices in the Night

Carla Baron, in Voices in the Night (1984), is a young widow who lives in Manhattan, where she is an editor of children’s books. She is awakened in the night by telephone calls in which the voice of Neil, her dead husband, asks her to come back to him. Carla returns to the Arizona setting where she and her late husband and both their families had made their homes. On her own initiative and without assistance, she finds her husband alive and well in a village in Mexico, but because he knows nothing of the telephone calls that brought her there, she continues to search for the source of the calls and the motive behind them. For a while, she suspects her cousin Mahlon, just released from jail, may be the culprit, but that guess, so similar to those of other Johnston heroines who suspect the wrong person, proves false. Meanwhile, Mike Trent, to whom she is engaged, arrives from New York to help her. Without his knowledge she returns to the spot where her husband ostensibly drowned, but when she sees him, she concludes that he was responsible for the mysterious phone calls and flees in panic. She loses him in a subsequent car chase and goes to see her sister Jennifer. To her surprise, Jennifer confesses that she was jealous of Carla and had made the phone calls. She now plans to kill Carla at the site of Neil’s drowning and to stage it as a suicide. Before she can accomplish her design, Mike returns and, after forcing Carla’s car off the road, overpowers Jennifer, who runs away. After Jennifer commits suicide, Carla and Mike return to New York.

Shadow Behind the Curtain

In Shadow Behind the Curtain (1985), Deborah Channing’s life changes after the deaths of her wealthy stepfather and, only a short time later, her mother. She discovers that she has very little money and also finds that her father, of whom she has only faint memories, has been in prison for more than twenty years, having been convicted of the murder of a child. After she tells her fiancé about her father, he breaks their engagement. She then travels to New Mexico, and after one interview with her father, she is convinced of his innocence and proceeds to attempt to find the real murderer. When the townspeople she interviews, including the sheriff, reveal their belief in her father’s innocence, she pushes her investigation further. There are, of course, some suspects who might be a murderer, and she even visits Beersheba, a religious colony, but the real murderer is someone who seemed above suspicion. Lawrence Gainsworth, a wealthy man in the town, has been sending Deborah’s father books and being supportive, but his friendship and generosity turn out to be motivated by guilt. His daughter, Rachel, is a disturbed young woman whose paintings reveal a dual personality, and when Deborah visits her, Rachel attacks her. Ben Farrel, the sheriff, arrives just in time to save Deborah. In true romance fashion, he promises to look her up in New York. Once again, the intrepid heroine is rescued by a man.

The House on Bostwick Square

In The House on Bostwick Square (1987), Laura Parrington, the destitute widow of Richard Parrington, exiled by his family to America, travels to London with her daughter Lily to stay with her husband’s family. Her aim to is discover why Richard was sent to America and supported there. There are several formidable obstacles in her past, among them the entire Parrington family, who are unwilling to even discuss him. At one point Clive, Richard’s older stepbrother, even offers her fifty thousand pounds to return to the United States. His offer is partly motivated by the fact that he has fallen in love with her, but a marriage would bring too much pain to the family. Cornelia Slate, Lady Parrington’s companion, is also an adversary because she is in love with Clive and wants to see a potential rival out of the way. After Laura is injured while in the family park, she is treated by the handsome Dr. Malverne, who introduces her to charity work with destitute women who desire to learn sewing, one of Laura’s talents. Through her work, Laura meets Belle Mulroney, a singer with whom Richard had an affair and a daughter. Unfortunately, Belle is unable to answer Laura’s questions about Richard’s exile.

Aggie Thompson, whom Laura had seen at the family park, knows the truth about Richard but wants money. Before Laura can get the money to her, Lily becomes sick, and the women in the household move to the family estate at Walmsley, where the answer is disclosed. After giving Laura poison, Lady Parrington, who had become very fond of Lily, tells Laura that Lily’s sickness was caused by poison meant for her. She further reveals that Richard, who had inherited psychological problems from his father, who was hanged for killing a woman, had killed Aggie Thompson’s daughter. Clive and a pharmacist fortunately arrive in time to save Laura, and Lady Parrington is hospitalized.

Laura’s role in the denouement may seem passive, but she is also intrepid, teaching sewing classes at night in a dangerous part of town, and her determination to work, foreign to the aristocratic notions of the Parringtons, marks her as an individual. She is also politically active, supporting women’s issues and “the New Women,” as Sir Joseph Parrington describes them. This historical romance has a decidedly political bent as Johnston details the problems women have with occupational hazards such as “phossy-jaw,” a common debilitating ailment caused by poor working conditions.

Bibliography

The Armchair Detective. Review of The Crystal Cat, by Velda Johnston. 19 (Fall, 1986): 360. Summary of the plot plus comments on the relationship between Johnston and other writers in the genre.

Dunn, Kathryn. Review of Fatal Affair, by Velda Johnston. School Library Journal 33 (November, 1986): 113. Reviewer feels that Guy, the male lead, is presented ambiguously, suggesting he may be the villain. That ambiguity is a staple in Johnston’s work.

Henderson, Leslie. Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers. 2d ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. Stresses the middle-class backgrounds of the Johnston heroines and notes that they often have recently experienced tragedy or mishaps that initiate the action.

Levine, Susan. Review of The Shadow Behind the Curtain, by Velda Johnston. School Library Journal 31 (May, 1985): 114. Sympathetic summary of the novel with some reservations about Deborah’s “mousiness,” ignoring Deborah’s visiting hostile territory, getting shot at, and staying alone in a house and experiencing a break-in.

Smothers, Joyce. Review of Never Call It Love, by Veronica Jason. Library Journal, 103 (December 1, 1978): 245. Positive review of the work, which calls it a “sweet savage swashbuckler” that is “slightly sadomasochistic.”

Wilson Library Bulletin. Review of Shadow Behind the Curtain, by Velda Johnston. 59 (May, 1985): 613. Reviewer believes the theme of the book has been done better by P. D. James and finds very little “detecting” in the novel, which is described as possessing “passable romantic suspense.”