A Lady’s Guide to Scandal by Sophie Irwin

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I loved Sophie Irwin’s first novel, A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting, which I read last year and was looking forward to reading her new one. Despite the similar title, A Lady’s Guide to Scandal is not really a sequel as it features completely different characters, but both books are set in Regency England and I think if you enjoy one of them you’ll probably enjoy the other.

Eliza, Countess of Somerset, has just been widowed at the age of twenty-seven and has inherited her late husband’s fortune – on the condition that she avoids becoming the subject of any scandal. Eliza didn’t love her husband – the man she had really wanted to marry was his nephew, Oliver Courtenay, whom her parents dismissed as unsuitable ten years earlier – but she obediently dresses in black and prepares to observe the traditional period of mourning, living quietly in Bath with her cousin, Margaret. Of course, now that’s she financially independent for the first time in her life, the temptation to go out and enjoy herself is very strong…and grows even stronger with the arrival of the roguish poet Lord Melville and his equally unconventional sister.

As soon as the charismatic Melville appeared on the scene (a character who must surely be inspired by Lord Byron) I thought I knew how the rest of the novel would play out. However, it’s not long before Oliver Courtenay, who has now inherited his uncle’s title of Lord Somerset, also turns up in Bath. It’s clear that Eliza still has feelings for Oliver – maybe even still has hopes of the marriage that was denied them all those years earlier – so the story is not as predictable as it seemed to be at first. I knew which man I wanted Eliza to choose but there are enough twists and turns in the plot that I couldn’t be completely sure she would make the right choice.

Although I found Kitty Talbot in Fortune-Hunting more fun to read about, I did enjoy watching Eliza’s character develop throughout this book. When we first meet her at the reading of her husband’s will, she has spent her whole adult life trying to be a good wife and daughter and conforming to society’s expectations, but through her friendships with Melville and his sister Caroline, she begins to find the courage to make her own decisions and live her life the way she wants to live it. At the same time, her actions are still quite believable within the context of the Regency setting and she doesn’t feel too anachronistically modern. As well as the lively Melvilles, there are lots of strong and memorable secondary characters including Somerset’s awful relatives, who have their eye on Eliza’s fortune, and her cousin Margaret, who becomes involved in a secret romance of her own.

Like the first book, this is very reminiscent of Georgette Heyer’s novels and also has some similarities with the plot of Austen’s Persuasion. However, Irwin does have her own style and is not just imitating other authors. I’ll be looking out for her next book, whether it’s another Lady’s Guide or something else!

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 37/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Uncle Paul by Celia Fremlin

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I know they say never to judge a book by its cover, but I have to confess, the cover is what made me want to read this book before I even knew what it was about! Luckily, the story lived up to the cover and you can expect to see Uncle Paul on my books of the year list in December, without a doubt.

First published in 1959, this is a recent reissue by Faber. It’s Celia Fremlin’s second novel but the first I’ve read and I was delighted to find that she wrote fifteen more. If any of them are even half as good as this one then I have some great reading ahead of me!

Uncle Paul is written from the perspective of Meg, the youngest of three sisters but in many ways the most mature. She is leading her own independent life in London with a job, a flat and a new boyfriend, Freddy, a pianist who is both charming and secretive. The novel opens with Meg receiving a telegram from her older sister Isabel, who is spending the summer holidays in a caravan at the seaside with her family. Isabel is concerned about their half-sister Mildred, who is twenty years older and helped to bring them up as children. Mildred has left her husband and come to stay at a nearby cottage – the same cottage where she spent her honeymoon with her first husband, Paul, fifteen years earlier.

Meg and Isabel had been very young at the time of Mildred’s marriage to Paul – they knew him as ‘Uncle Paul’ – but they remember the scandal that occurred when it emerged that he was guilty of both bigamy and attempted murder. Paul was given a long prison sentence after Mildred went to the police, but she is convinced that he has now been released and is coming to take his revenge. Believing that her sisters are panicking about nothing, Meg sets off for the coast intending to tell them to stop being foolish, but when she finds herself spending the night at Mildred’s cottage listening to footsteps moving around in the dark she begins to wonder whether Uncle Paul really has come back after all.

Uncle Paul is an excellent psychological thriller, but I think what I actually loved most about it was the setting – the portrayal of a typical British seaside holiday in the 1950s. Fremlin does a great job of bringing to life Isabel’s rickety caravan, trips to the beach and walks along the pier, the challenges of keeping children amused on a wet day and the friendships that inevitably begin to form with the other guests – in this case, the gallant old Captain Cockerill and a mother with her son, Cedric, an irritating little boy who thinks he knows everything (and often does). The characters are all very well drawn, even the minor ones like these, but I found the three sisters particularly interesting, with their very different personalities: the sensible, level-headed Meg who, despite being the youngest, is the one the others rely on to take control of every situation; the rich, dramatic and often irrational Mildred (her decision to stay on her own in an isolated cottage where she could easily be found by Paul being one example of her illogical behaviour); and the nervous, anxious Isabel, the sort of person who worries about anything and everything.

The psychological elements of the story are very well done, so that we can never be quite sure whether the strange occurrences and the noises in the middle of the night are real or just a figment of our characters’ imaginations. Even when one alarming incident is proven to have an innocent explanation, the suspense begins to build all over again, convincing us that this time Meg and her sisters really are in danger! Similarly, Fremlin creates enough mystery around the characters of Isabel’s husband and Meg’s boyfriend that neither we nor Isabel and Meg themselves know whether they really are who they claim to be.

Having been kept guessing all the way through this wonderful novel, I found the ending both unexpected and clever. Definitely one of my favourite books of the year so far and I can’t wait to try another one by Celia Fremlin.

Spell the Month in Books: September – Books from my TBR list

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I don’t often take part in Spell the Month in Books (hosted every month by Reviews From the Stacks) but the theme for September appealed to me so I decided to join in. The rules are very simple – spell the current month using the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. This month’s theme is From your TBR List, which seems a good opportunity to highlight some of the books I have waiting to be read.

These are all older books, published at least ten years ago. Descriptions are from Goodreads.

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S – The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon by RF Delderfield (1963)

“It happened on the second day of the summer term. Was it caused by the smell of lilac, the droning of the bees, or the French incense which Lane-Perkins had set alight? Nobody knew, but that spring afternoon following a heated exchange with a pupil, Sebastian Sermon, a forty-nine-year-old schoolmaster, experiences a brainstorm. Dissatisfied with his life, he leaves his job, wife and children, and takes to the road. In the months that follow, Sebastian discovers that excitement and romance are not only for the young. He does things he has never done before and finds that he has talents which no one, least of all himself, had ever suspected…”

E – Eve Green by Susan Fletcher (2004)

“Pregnant with her first child, Eve Green recalls her mother’s death when she was eight years old and her struggle to make sense of her parents’ mysterious romantic past. Eve is sent to live with her grandparents in rural Wales, where she finds comfort in friendships with Daniel, a quiet farmhand, and Billy, a disabled, reclusive friend of her mother’s. When a ravishing local girl disappears, one of Eve’s friends comes under suspicion. Eve will do everything she can to protect him, but at the risk of complicity in a matter she barely understands.
This is a timeless and beautifully told story about family secrets and unresolved liaisons.”

P – The Prince and the Pilgrim by Mary Stewart (1995)

“Eager, burning, and young, Alexander has come of age to take vengeance on the treacherous King of Cornwall who murdered his father. He sets off toward Camelot to seek justice from King Arthur, only to be diverted by the beautiful and sensual Morgan le Fay, Arthur’s sister. Using her wiles and her enchantments, Morgan persuades the young prince to attempt a theft of the Holy Grail. He is unaware her motives are of the darkest nature…

Motherless daughter of a royal duke, Alice has lived a life of lively adventure, accompanying her father on his yearly pilgrimages. Now, on her father’s final visit to Jerusalem, she comes under the protection of a young prince whose brothers were murdered, a prince who is in possession of an enchanted silver cup believed to be the mysterious Holy Grail itself.”

T – The Thread by Victoria Hislop (2011)

“Thessaloniki, 1917. As Dimitri Komninos is born, a devastating fire sweeps through the thriving Greek city where Christians, Jews and Muslims live side by side. Five years later, Katerina Sarafoglou’s home in Asia Minor is destroyed by the Turkish army. Losing her mother in the chaos, she flees across the sea to an unknown destination in Greece. Soon her life will become entwined with Dimitri’s, and with the story of the city itself, as war, fear and persecution begin to divide its people.

Thessaloniki, 2007. A young Anglo-Greek hears his grandparents’ life story for the first time and realises he has a decision to make. For many decades, they have looked after the memories and treasures of the people who were forced to leave. Should he become their next custodian and make this city his home?”

E – Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson (2000)

“On a weather-beaten island off the coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother, Nora, take refuge in the large, mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear–like who her real father was. Effie tells various versions of her life at college, where in fact she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom Klingons are as real as Spaniards and Germans.

But as mother and daughter spin their tales, strange things are happening around them. Is Effie being followed? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog? In a brilliant comic narrative which explores the nonsensical power of language and meaning, Kate Atkinson has created another magical masterpiece.”

M – Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell (1848)

“Elizabeth Gaskell’s first novel depicts nothing less than the great clashes between capital and labour, which arose from rapid industrialisation and problems of trade in the mid-nineteenth century. But these clashes are dramatized through personal struggles.

John Barton has to reconcile his personal conscience with his socialist duty, risking his life and liberty in the process. His daughter Mary is caught between two lovers, from opposing classes – worker and manufacturer. And at the heart of the narrative lies a murder which implicates them all.”

B – The Blue Sapphire by D.E. Stevenson (1963)

“On a beautiful spring day Julia Harburn sat on a seat in Kensington Gardens enjoying the sunshine. She was wearing a white frock and a large straw hat with a sapphire-blue ribbon which exactly matched her eyes—a strange coincidence, as it turned out, for the blue sapphire was to have a far-reaching influence upon her life.

So far, her life had been somewhat dull and circumscribed; but quite suddenly her horizons were enlarged; she began to make new friends—and enemies—and she began to discover new strength and purpose in her own nature. The development of her character led her into strange adventures, some amusing, others full of sorrow and distress…”

E – Eleanor the Queen by Norah Lofts (1995)

“Eleanor is young, high-spirited, supremely intelligent, heiress to the vast Duchy of Aquitaine – at a time when a woman’s value was measured in terms of wealth. Her vivid leadership inspired and dazzled those about her. And yet, born to rule, she was continually repressed and threatened by the men who overshadowed her life.

This is the story of a brilliant, medieval figure – of a princess who led her own knights to the Crusades, who was bride to two kings and mother of Richard the Lion Heart. It is the rich, incredible story of Eleanor of Aquitaine.”

R – The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (1993)

“Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride is inspired by ‘The Robber Bridegroom,’ a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them, one by one. But in her version, Atwood brilliantly recasts the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her loose in the lives of three friends, Tony, Charis and Roz. All three have lost men, spirit, money, and time to their old college acquaintance, Zenia. At various times, and in various emotional disguises, Zenia has insinuated her way into their lives and practically demolished them. In love and war, illusion and deceit, Zenia’s subterranean malevolence takes us deep into her enemies’ pasts.”

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Have you read any of these books? If so, what did you think of them?

Six Degrees of Separation: From Wifedom to The So Blue Marble

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It’s the first Saturday of the month, which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we’re starting with Wifedom by Anna Funder. I haven’t read this book, but here’s what it’s about:

Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own…

When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it’s a revelation. Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s literary brilliance shaped Orwell’s work and her practical nous saved his life. But why – and how – was she written out of the story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells’ marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WWII in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell’s private life, she is led to question what it takes to be a writer – and what it is to be a wife.

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First, I’m linking to another book about the ‘forgotten’ wife of a famous person. Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea (1) is a fictional portrayal of Lizzie Burns, the lover and eventual wife of the German philosopher Friedrich Engels. There’s not a lot of information available on the real Lizzie, but we know that she was probably illiterate, which makes it all the more important that books like this are written to give a voice to people who were unable to tell their own story. The novel describes Lizzie’s early life in 19th century Manchester where she worked at a cotton mill, before moving on to her relationships with Engels and his friend, Karl Marx.

The setting provides the link to my next book. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (2) is also set in a mill town in the north of England – the fictional Milton, thought to be based on Manchester. It’s the story of Margaret Hale, who moves from the south of England to the north after her father leaves his job as parson to take up a new position as a tutor in Milton. Here Margaret is exposed to new people and new ideas. This isn’t a favourite classic of mine, but I did find it interesting and have since gone on to read more of Gaskell’s books.

North and south are directions of the compass and so are east and west. The next book in my chain is The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey (3), a mystery set in a small English village in 1491. The novel is narrated by a priest, John Reve, who listens to the confessions of his parishioners and tries to piece together the truth about the disappearance of the wealthy Thomas Newman, who has been swept away by the river. Was it murder, suicide or a terrible accident? This is an unusual book, structured so that the story moves back in time rather than forwards, but it’s not one that I particularly liked due to feeling a lack of connection with the characters.

Another author who shares a surname with Samantha is W.F. Harvey, author of The Mysterious Mr Badman (4). This is a book from the excellent British Library Crime Classics series and one that I really enjoyed. Published in 1934, it’s described as a ‘bibliomystery’ and begins with Athelstan Digby helping out in his nephew’s village bookshop when three different people arrive one after the other, all asking for a copy of the same rare book. Although I found it more of a thriller than a traditional mystery, it’s very entertaining and a lot of fun to read.

Digby is not a common name, but it also appears in Beau Geste by P.C. Wren (5). Digby Geste, his twin brother Michael (nicknamed Beau) and their younger brother John are orphans living with a rich aunt when her valuable sapphire, the ‘Blue Water’, disappears. Each of them, for various reasons, decides to confess to the theft before running away to join the French Foreign Legion. Part adventure novel set in North Africa and part whodunnit with two separate mysteries to solve, I loved this book and still need to finish the trilogy.

With two of the Geste brothers being twins, I started to think about other books featuring twins. There are a few I could have chosen, but I decided on a novel I read earlier this year, The So Blue Marble by Dorothy B. Hughes (6). Although this isn’t the strongest of the Hughes novels I’ve read so far, it’s still very enjoyable. The twin characters, Danny and David Montefierrow, are a sinister pair who are searching for a mysterious blue marble and will stop at nothing to find it!

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And that’s my chain for September! My links have included: Forgotten wives, Manchester cotton mills, compass points, authors with the name Harvey, fictional Digbys and books featuring twins.

In October we’ll be starting with I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith – finally, a book I’ve actually read!

My Commonplace Book: August 2023

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A selection of quotes and pictures to represent August’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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‘But we are not allowed to get evidence,’ Temeraire said. ‘And also I am not allowed to kill him, and we are supposed to be polite to him, and all of it for the sake of the Government. I am very tired of this Government, which I have never seen, and which is always insisting that I must do disagreeable things, and does no good to anybody.’

Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik (2006)

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Juliet smiled. ‘None of us can really choose our fate. We only pretend we can. You are wiser than most, Rosaline, for men or women who think they can control Fortune as if she’s a housewife are the fools. She’ll spin and spin whatever we do.’

Fair Rosaline by Natasha Solomons (2023)

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View of the Dalt Vila of Eivissa (Ibiza)

‘Your flight back to New York will be arranged and paid for by me tomorrow, and the rest of your belongings sent after. As you would say perhaps, Coco,’ she ended with eloquence, ‘poetry is life, but life is not all poetry.’

Ibiza Surprise by Dorothy Dunnett (1970)

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“Well, people are like that too. They create a false door – to deceive. If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority – and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves. They think, and everybody thinks, that they are like that. But behind that door, Renisenb, is bare rock…And so when reality comes and touches them with the feather of truth – their true self reasserts itself.”

Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie (1944)

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“Once we accept this life is all we have, we can make better use of it.”

The House with the Golden Door by Elodie Harper (2022)

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But love and hate, he thought now, good and evil, lived side by side in the human heart, and not merely in differing proportions in one man and the next, but all good and all evil. One had merely to look for a little of either to find it all, one had merely to scratch the surface. All things had opposites close by, every decision a reason against it, every animal an animal that destroys it, the male the female, the positive the negative.

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith (1950)

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Rainbow plaque outside Holy Trinity Church, York, dedicated to Anne Lister and Ann Walker

Time and thinking tame the strongest grief, I was taught, but many a proverb’s promise proves false. I’ve found that thinking only wears away at grief, grinds it deeper, and time only preserves it, encases it in glass for the ages.

Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue (2023)

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The revelation came slowly and yet instantaneously. As when one searches for a word that stands out of reach of the mind for days – but then, when hearing it, one knows immediately that it is the correct one.

A Lady’s Guide to Scandal by Sophie Irwin (2023)

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‘Not being able to see, I think,’ she said.

‘Being blind, you mean?’

‘No, not that. That would be terribly hard but Homer managed it and our blind piano tuner is one of the serenest people I know. I mean…not seeing because you’re obsessed by something that blots out the world. Some sort of mania or belief. Or passion. That awful kind of love that makes leaves and birds and cherry blossom invisible because it’s not the face of some man.’

A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson (1997)

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Favourite books read in August:

A Lady’s Guide to Scandal and The House with the Golden Door

Authors read for the first time in August:

Patricia Highsmith

Places visited in my August reading:

Egypt, Italy, England, US, China, Spain (Ibiza), Austria

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Reading notes: After several slow months of reading, this was a much better month for me and I made a lot of progress with my 20 Books of Summer, but sadly not enough to complete the list! I’m still happy with my result this year – I have read seventeen books, reviewed fifteen of them and am in the middle of reading another two, so I wasn’t too far away from finishing the list. I’ll try again in 2024!

Looking ahead to September, I would normally be putting together a pile of potential reads for the RIP challenge, which I’ve taken part in every year since 2010. However, this challenge now seems to take place almost exclusively on Instagram, which I don’t really use, so I won’t be officially joining in this year. I still have plenty of atmospheric, autumnal books on the TBR, though, and I’m sure I’ll be reading some of them over the next few months!

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How was your August? Do you have any plans for your September reading?

A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson

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Before summer draws to an end (not that it’s been much of a summer here anyway – I started writing this during a thunderstorm), I decided to read the appropriately titled A Song for Summer, Eva Ibbotson’s last adult novel, first published in 1997. It has more recently been reissued and remarketed for a YA audience but, like Ibbotson’s The Secret Countess and The Morning Gift, I think it’s a book that could be equally enjoyed by both adults and young adults.

Ellen Carr is the daughter of a suffragette and a solicitor who was killed during World War I. Raised by her mother and two aunts, also former suffragettes, Ellen is expected to go to university and then pursue a suitably impressive career – a politician, perhaps, or the first female President of the Royal Academy. However, it quickly becomes obvious that Ellen’s talents and ambitions lie in another direction. What she really wants to do is cook and clean, so she heads for Austria to take up a position as housekeeper at the experimental Schloss Hallendorf School.

As Ellen tries to settle into her new job and home in the beautiful Austrian countryside, she discovers that the school is not the idyllic place she had hoped it would be. There are lots of eccentric misfits among the staff, as well as several troubled children with difficult family lives whose parents have either sent them to boarding school because they don’t have time for them or because they’re not able to care for them. With her warm, maternal nature, Ellen sets out to solve everyone’s problems and bring some happiness to Schloss Hallendorf.

Although this book was published in 1997, Ellen is not really what you could describe as a ‘modern’ heroine. She rejects a university education and the chance to be a pioneer for women’s rights like her mother and aunts because she prefers to bake and sew and clean. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, as long as it’s a woman’s own choice rather than something she feels is her duty, but not many of today’s historical fiction authors would choose to write about a woman like Ellen and this book does at times feel more like one written in the 1930s, when it is set, than in the 1990s.

There’s a love interest for Ellen, in the form of the Czech gardener and fencing teacher, Marek Tarnowsky. As we discover early in the novel, there’s a lot more to Marek than meets the eye; not only is he a talented composer and conductor, he is also working undercover to help Jews flee the Nazi regime. The story of Ellen’s domestic life at Hallendorf is interspersed with accounts of some of Marek’s missions, including a daring attempt to rescue his best friend, a Jewish violinist, and eventually Ellen also becomes involved in helping him. However, although I’m sure we are all supposed to love Marek as much as Ellen does, I never really warmed to him and this took away some of the emotional impact of the story.

Although I liked this book, mainly for its portrayal of Austria on the brink of war, I found it the weakest of the four Ibbotson novels I’ve read so far (my favourite is probably Madensky Square). I’ll continue to read her books and hope that I’ll enjoy the next one I read more than this one.

This is book 15/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2023

This is book 36/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Ibiza Surprise by Dorothy Dunnett

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Today (25th August) marks the centenary of one of my favourite authors, Dorothy Dunnett, and to celebrate I decided to read her 1970 mystery novel Ibiza Surprise, which has recently been released in a new edition by Farrago Books. Although Dunnett is better known for her historical novels (The Lymond Chronicles, the House of Niccolò series and King Hereafter, all of which I highly recommend), she also wrote seven of these contemporary mysteries featuring the portrait painter Johnson Johnson and his yacht, Dolly. The original title of this one was Dolly and the Cookie Bird and in the US, Murder in the Round.

Each book in the series is set in a different part of the world and narrated by a different young female protagonist. The narrator this time is Sarah Cassells, the twenty-year-old daughter of Lord Forsey of Pinner, who has been training as a cook since leaving school. Despite her father’s title, he is not a rich man and Sarah is earning a living by providing catering for private parties. When she hears that Lord Forsey has been found dead in an Ibiza boatyard, apparently having committed suicide, she refuses to accept that her father has killed himself. Suspecting murder, she sets off for Ibiza, where she hopes to uncover the truth.

Staying with the wealthy family of a school friend, Sarah finds herself doing the catering while also investigating her father’s death – and at the same time, looking out for a potential future husband. This last task could be easier than expected, as within hours of landing she becomes surrounded by eligible men. However, it appears that at least one of these men may not be all he seems – but which of them can and cannot be trusted?

From a mystery perspective I enjoyed this book more than the previous two – Tropical Issue and Rum Affair – because I found the plot easier to follow. I didn’t solve it all myself, though, and had to wait until the end for everything to be revealed. Sarah is not a character I could particularly like or identify with, but Dunnett perfectly captures her personality through her narrative style: an intelligent but frivolous young woman interested in men, parties, clothes and having a good time. Ibiza, of course, is an ideal place for Sarah to indulge her interest in those things, although I expect it was not quite the same there in 1970 as it is today! Away from the social whirl, there are also some lovely descriptions of the scenery, as well as some insights into the cultural side of life on the island.

We still don’t know a lot about the curiously named Johnson Johnson, apart from the fact that he’s a secret agent of some sort. He is on the peripherals of this particular mystery, although there’s obviously a lot going on behind the scenes that we don’t see. In this series, Dunnett employs the same literary device as in her other books, allowing us to see her heroes only (or mainly) through the eyes of other characters, which leaves a lot open to misinterpretation.

I will get to the other four Johnson mysteries eventually, beginning with the next one, Operation Nassau, which has also just been reissued. Meanwhile, if you think Dunnett’s historical novels could be more to your taste, here’s a post I put together for my Historical Musings series a few years ago on Reading Dorothy Dunnett – and just for fun on what would have been her 100th birthday, some Lines from Lymond!