Old Bestseller Review: Reluctant Millionaire, by Maysie Greig

Old Bestseller Review: Reluctant Millionaire, by Maysie Greig

by Rich Horton

This wasn't a true bestseller, but its author was a very prolific successful writer of romance novels and thriller. Maysie Coucher Greig (1901-1971) was born in Sydney, Australia. Her father's name is confusingly given in Wikipedia as Robert Greig Smith -- I don't know if that's a mistake or if Greig later adopted her father's middle name as her last name. She began writing for newspapers in Australia at the age of 18, and soon moved to England, continuing that profession. She moved again in 1923, to the US, and began writing novels. In addition to "Maysie Greig", she published as by Ann Barclay, Mary Douglas Warren, and Jennifer Ames. She moved back to England in the early '30s, staying until 1948, after which she returned to Australia. She returned to London in 1966. She married four times -- twice to American, once to an Australian, and last to an Hungarian. She had one son, by Maxwell Murray, the Australian. The book at hand, Reluctant Millionaire, was published in 1945, and copyrighted under her married name at that time, Maysie Greig Murray.

My edition is the first American edition. It's a wartime printing, so has a smaller profile and thinner pages than usual, to conserve paper. The publisher was Triangle Books. based in Philadelphia. The novel has a stamp from the "American Lending Library", and must have been sold used after its primary lending period, as it's also inscribed "Ruth Baggett, 1948". The novel was reprinted many times, including a Dell paperback in 1945, a Romance Book Club edition in 1956 in the UK as by Greig's pseudonym "Jennifer Ames", and in further paperback editions in both countries at least into the 1970s -- a pretty good run.

This novel essentially concerns four people in London, who end up in a sort of love triangle. The time seems to be pretty much the time of writing, during the war. Simon Bruce is a research chemist, apparently quite good but not at all well off. He lives in a shabby boarding house. Another resident is Prudence Hollywell. She works in a wartime factory, and she is terribly in love with Simon, who hardly notices her. Then Simon inherits a fortune from his American godfather. But he is really just bothered by the money -- it interferes with his  simple life.

Roenna Ashton is a stunningly beautiful young woman living with her American father Welsley. Welsley is separated from Roenna's mother, due to her disapproval of his means of making money -- he's a gambler who spends his life on ocean liners, swindling the rich travelers. Roenna has no idea of this, and since her early teens she has lived with him, in relative luxury, on ships and at resorts, assuming that her father's money is just the natural way of things. But the war has ruined him -- there is no ocean travel, and his money is all but gone. He and Roenna live in a really shabby place, and are about to be kicked out. But Welsley sees a story about Simon, who has told the newspapers he'd just as soon give his fortune to a relative. Welsley sees an opportunity, and tells Roenna that he actually was related to Simon's godfather. Roenna is sent to tell this story to Simon -- her father correctly assumes that messenger as beautiful as his daughter might help the story go down better.

And so things go even better than Mr. Ashton might have hoped. Simon falls head over heels for Roenna. Of course when Prue Hollywell finds out, she is suspicious, and quickly guesses that the Ashtons are up to no good. (She assumes, naturally, that Roenna is in on the whole scheme.) Also involved is Rafe, an American aviator whose father was Welsley's partner. Rafe is also in love with Roenna, but out of loyalty tries to help her by keeping Simon from learning the truth. Meanwhile the Ashtons convince Simon to move to a far nicer place, with enough rooms to accommodate them as well. All the while Prue is dueling with Rafe, as she learns more and more about Welsley's past, while Rafe tries to dissuade her from interfering.

There is a twist or two on the way, but of course we know all will come right in the end. But Greig keeps us guessing just how it will come out. It's really a decently executed novel. The plot hums along nicely. The characters are thin, but pleasant enough. The prose is smooth, with some nice turns of phrase, and some effective comic set pieces. The depiction of wartime England seems pretty well done. It's not an enduring classic, but it's easy to see why Greig was popular -- and I'd say she would plausibly stand as one of the more accomplished popular writers of her time -- not the writer that say, Georgette Heyer was, but a decent one.