Strangers at Collins House

Yet another paperback in the early part of the series that has Barnabas on the cover when he has not even yet made his appearance in the book series.

Victoria is obsessed with finding out who her real parents were. She still thinks she's a Collins, and when a very ill and very old Henry Collins comes to basically die, and befriends her, she thinks she might be his grandaughter. A gift of a valuable necklace just builds her belief she's related to him.

Carolyn is off working and living with a girl friend, and David is at a boy's camp, so that conveniently gets those two characters out of the way. Roger drinks as much as ever and he's as rude to people as ever.

Roger hates Uncle Henry. Benjamin is an old companion to Uncle Henry. Benjamin has a rather poorly behaved son who is there with him.

Uncle Henry lives in a specific room which ties him to a specific woman in his past. She died at Collinwood. Victoria looks just like her.

There's the usual Victoria-has-someone-trying-to-kill-her plot and she still has not learned never to go down into the wine cellar alone.

The books are basically repeating themselves at this point. Someone moves in to Collinwood. For some reason they, or their underlings, trying to kill/at least injure Victoria. Burke Devlin helps her look into the matter. The evil doers are found out. Victoria screams a lot and does all the wrong things, putting into constant danger.

There's some kind of major change needed in the series.