Susan Squires, The Companion

Susan Squires, The Companion - In 1818, English gentleman Ian Rufford is sailing when pirates attack his ship. He is taken to Africa as a prisoner and eventually sold to beautifully cruel Asharti, who abuses him in every sense of the word, turning him into a feral animal. He eventually escapes.

Elizabeth Rochewell has enjoyed working and living with her father as he leads archeological digs across Africa. However, when an over four millennium old pillar crumbled, crushed, and killed her beloved father, Elizabeth's life died too. She returns to England as a single white woman who cannot survive alone in Africa. When Ian and Beth meet on the vessel from Africa heading to England they find a commonality in Africa and a need to return as they find the aristocracy boring and suffocating with prohibitions on acceptable behavior. As they fall in love, they realize they must battle an evil that may possess Ian and threatens humanity.

THE COMPANION is a fantastic, Regency, paranormal, romantic suspense that grips the audience from the moment that Ian is kidnapped and never slows down in Africa or England until the final confrontation with a malevolent, vampiric villain. The storyline is action-packed but the audience will feel deep empathy for Ian's plight, even after he frees himself from bondage, as he still has not liberated his mind, and for Elizabeth who was used to total freedom assisting her dad, but now feels choked by the unfathomable rules. Susan Squires provides a terrific, historical thriller with a supernatural turn that avoids an overbite when she twists the plot into the paranormal.

St. Martin's, May 2005, $6.99, 384 pp.

ISBN: 0312998538

Harriet Klausner