Author Crusie Smith, Jennifer Publication year 1998 Collection Mystery and Suspense Writers: The Literature of Crime, Detection, and Espionage, Volume 2 Pages 1183-1197 Link https://archive.org/details/mysterysuspensew02wink Topic romantic suspense genre definitions settings Older and/or precursor texts (may not be "romance" as now defined) gothic romance Horace Walpole Ann Radcliffe Jane Austen Emily Brontë Charlotte Brontë Wilkie Collins death Mary Roberts Rinehart Mabel Seeley Dorothy MacCardle Georgette Heyer Vera Caspary Daphne du Maurier Mary Stewart Barbara Michaels a.k.a. Elizabeth Peters a.k.a. Barbara Mertz Victoria Holt/Jean Plaidy/Eleanor Burford Hibbert Mary Higgins Clark family Eileen Dreyer/Kathleen Korbel