The Wheel Spins is the novel upon which the many versions of the movie The Lady Vanishes are based. Although I am familiar with the story in all its incarnations, I still found the book exciting.
Iris Carr is on holiday with a group of her friends in a Balkan country, possibly Romania. Rich and spoiled, the friends have been cheerfully disrupting their small hotel, leading the other English guests to dislike them. The last day, she finds she is tired of them herself, so she decides to stay a day longer than the others. When she does leave, she has a touch of sunstroke and has to be helped. The train is crowded, so the porter crams her into a compartment for six as the seventh person.
In the compartment are a commanding woman in black who turns out to be a baroness, a family of three, a cold blonde lady, and a nondescript middle-aged woman in tweeds. Iris isn’t feeling well because of her sunstroke, but the nondescript woman turns out to be English, Miss Froy, and takes her to the dining car for lunch. There she prattles about returning to England to her elderly parents and dog, her job as governess for the baroness, and her next job for the baron’s political opponent.
Back in the train compartment, Iris falls asleep. When she wakes up, Miss Froy is gone. When she doesn’t appear, Iris searches the train for her, but she doesn’t seem to be on it. In growing alarm, she finds her compartment companions denying that Miss Froy ever was there. On her way to the dining room, Miss Froy met some of the English people from the hotel, but when Iris speaks to them, some have not seen her and others lie for their own reasons. So, even though a young man named Hare and the professor with him try to help her, Hare believes she has hallucinated because of her sun stroke, and the professor thinks she is hysterical.
As the train nears Trieste, Iris begins to fear Miss Froy is in danger, but what can she do about it? This all makes an thrilling novel.
Missing from the movie adaptations are passages that visit Miss Froy’s elderly parents and dog as they await her coming. In a way, they are unnecessary, but they make the ending much more touching, especially the dog.
I received this novel from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.
What? Me Read? 