This essay examines the narrative structure and literary form of Sidney Sheldon's mystery thriller Bloodline. It explores how Sheldon builds suspense through multiple character perspectives, chapter titling by location and date, and strategic use of third-person omniscient narration. The essay traces the power struggle among the Roffe family cousins following Elizabeth Roffe's inheritance of a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical company, analyzing how the novel's shifting sympathies, tonal distance, and dramatic irony work together to keep readers engaged while concealing the identity of the killer. The essay also considers the role of gender, money, and betrayal as thematic drivers of the plot.
Bloodline by mystery and suspense novelist Sidney Sheldon is a nail-biting thriller told from the multiple perspectives of a cast of characters, all with slightly shady pasts and all with a reason to want the young, beautiful, determined — but slightly naive — victim dead. At the beginning of the novel, twenty-four-year-old Elizabeth Roffe — "tragically" born a girl, in her father's eyes — is left the heiress of a multibillion-dollar drug company, Roffe and Sons, following her father's suspicious death (Sheldon 101).
Although Elizabeth stands at the helm of the company, four of her cousins remain co-owners. All of them want to make money quickly, and they pressure her to take the company public. Elizabeth, however, wants to retain control over the fortune and power she has just inherited, even if this decision makes the company's financial backers uncomfortable. After all, a woman has never stood at the helm of Roffe and Sons. Refusing to bend to their pressure, Elizabeth instead relies upon the guidance of her trusted advisor Rhys Williams.
The cousins vying for power within the company all have different backgrounds, and all have good reasons for disliking Elizabeth — although some of them, such as Alec, were kind to her when she was a child. As well as detailing the various brushes with death Elizabeth experiences before she is apparently murdered, the story includes flashbacks into the bizarre lives of the likely suspects. This creates a sustained sense of suspense, because the reader is never certain whether he or she is identifying with a possible killer or psychopath as the story unfolds. It is clear early on that the stakes are high and that Elizabeth's life is in danger because of the power she has assumed — but from whom?
The reader alternately feels sympathy and repulsion for all of the Roffe cousins as the perspective shifts among them: the British, womanizing Alec; Parisian Helene and her husband Charles, who "married her for her name and her money"; the German Anna from Berlin, who is married to a man thirteen years her junior; and the Italian Ivo (Sheldon 70; 282).
Sheldon attempts to make the occasionally complex plot, backstory, and large cast of characters more navigable by titling chapters according to location and the precise moment at which events are taking place — for example, "Istanbul, Saturday, September 5th Ten p.m." (Sheldon 1). This technique also creates a sense of excitement, as events seem to evolve on a moment-by-moment basis at certain points, while at other times taking leisurely detours into the past.
When scenes are more extended, they tend to increase in weight and importance. A prime example is the scene in which Elizabeth learns that she has been left the majority of her father's stock in the company. Thriller fiction of this kind relies heavily on such structural contrasts between rapid-fire pacing and slower, revelatory scenes — and Sheldon deploys this balance with clear intent throughout the novel.
"Third-person omniscient narration and authorial confidence"
"Reader suspicion contrasted with Elizabeth's blind trust"
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