The Tenderness of Wolves, by Stef Penney. Book review

Quercus, 2007.  ISBN 978-1-84724-067-5. 450 pages.

The Tenderness of Wolves is set in Canada in 1867, against a background of farming, trapping and fur trading in an isolated frontier settlement. All the main characters are fictional.

When French trapper Laurent Jammet is found brutally murdered in his cabin in the isolated frontier settlement of Dove River on Georgian Bay, suspicion falls on seventeen-year-old Francis Ross, adopted son of a local farming couple, who disappeared on the same day. Anxious to find out the truth and to clear her son’s name, Mrs Ross (her first name is never given, but can be deduced) sets out to follow his tracks north into the wilderness.  She has the help of a stranger to the settlement, Parker, a trapper who was acquainted with Jammet and who has his own reasons for seeking the killer. Also on the trail are three investigators from the Hudson Bay Company, and a Toronto scholar searching for a mysterious bone tablet that was owned by Jammet and vanished at his death.  Soon the empty forest and tundra are criss-crossed by various search parties, seeking to find – or conceal – the truth about the murder. Not everyone will return.

The Tenderness of Wolves is part literary novel, part mystery, part (mild) adventure quest, and part understated and bitter-sweet love story. The novel has an unusual structure, with short chapters alternating between a first-person narrative by Mrs Ross and third-person narratives from the viewpoint of various other characters. This can be confusing, as everyone seems to have a similar narrative style, and I quite often found myself having to backtrack to remind myself of the narrator, especially if I had put the book aside for a while.  Provided you concentrate, though, the structure has the benefit of showing people and events from more than one perspective.  The novel is written throughout in present tense, a technique that I don’t generally care for. I think it may be intended to create an impression of immediacy, like a screenplay, but for me it always has the effect of distancing me from the characters and putting everything into slow motion.

Fortunately, the beauty of the landscape descriptions are worth lingering over, so the slow pace does not matter. This was the outstanding feature of the book for me. Forest and bog and bony upland, all under ever-deepening snow as winter tightens its grip, the bone-aching cold and the loneliness of an empty landscape where one settlement may be several days’ arduous travel from the next, are described in lyrical prose. The lovely scene in which Mrs Ross and Parker watch a wolf on the edge of their camp is especially memorable.

The vast landscape dwarfs the humans living in it, and many of the characters seem to be oppressed by it in different ways, perhaps feeling that it magnifies their sense of their own inadequacies. Early in the novel Mrs Ross, who came to Canada from the Scottish Highlands – itself a sparsely populated environment, especially after the Clearances had got going – tells us that when she first arrived she was so overwhelmed by the emptiness that she broke down in tears.  Donald Moody, a likeable and introspective young man who works for the Hudson Bay Company, is unsure of himself, doubting his ability to manage in such a place.  Another company man is apparently in the process of drowning his fears in laudanum.  By contrast, some of the Native American trappers such as Parker seem completely at home in the wilderness.

In a cleverly constructed plot, the murder mystery turns out to be connected to a web of theft, mutiny and trade monopolies, gradually revealed by the various searchers.  All the threads of the murder – who did it and why – are neatly drawn together and resolved at the end.  Many other threads are left hanging, though (I was especially disappointed about the bone tablet).  I suppose this reflects real life, which tends to be full of unresolved mysteries and unanswered questions.

There’s no map and no historical note, so readers interested in aspects of the background, such as the history of pioneer settlement in Canada, or the workings of the fur trade and the Hudson Bay Company, will have to research it on their own.

Beautifully written tale of a pioneer community in nineteenth-century Canada, part mystery and part bitter-sweet love story.

The House at Sunset, by Norah Lofts. Book review

First published 1963. Edition reviewed: The History Press, 2009. ISBN, 978-0-7524-4870-1. 287 pages.

The House at Sunset is the last in a trilogy of novels telling the story of a Suffolk house and its inhabitants from the fifteenth century to the twentieth. The trilogy began with Martin Reed and his children and grandchildren in the fifteenth century in The Town House (reviewed here earlier), and continued with further generations of Martin Reed’s descendants during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in The House at Old Vine (reviewed here earlier). The House at Sunset covers the period from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. All the main characters are fictional.

Like its predecessors, The House at Sunset is told in a series of independent but interlinked narratives, rather like a collection of short stories.  Each is recounted in first person by a different character, and the narratives are separated by interludes told in third person.  The characters come and go, appearing in the book when they arrive at the house and disappearing again when they are no longer connected with it.

The novel is beautifully written in deceptively simple prose.  The historical background feels very real, capturing changing social attitudes as well as the effects of new technologies, such as the impact of the railway arriving in Baildon.  Some things have surprisingly modern resonances, such as the anxiety of the Victorian shopkeepers when they think a large retail chain is planning to move into the town:

“They sell cheap muck, they give no credit, they’ll undersell for a year to ruin honest traders and then get a monopoly….”

which exactly parallels modern fears when a giant modern supermarket chain announces plans to open a superstore in a market town. 

One of the aspects of the Town House trilogy that I particularly like is its focus on day-to-day life, made compelling by the vivid characterisation.  The main characters are varied individuals, each with their own foibles, fears and hopes, each shaped by their circumstances and experiences, and each with their own dilemmas to face.  Many of the secondary characters are just as vivid, although drawn in less detail, such as the unhappily married Mike and Millie, keeping house (after a fashion) in two rooms and hating every minute of it; or Frances Benyon’s selfish husband; or the mercenary lawyer’s clerk who tries to deceive Felicity Hatton.  In The House at Sunset, the Old Vine starts to change hands by purchase rather than by inheritance, so most of the characters are no longer descended directly from Martin Reed.  Their circumstances vary as social and economic change alters the economy of Baildon and the uses made of the Old Vine. The arrival of the railway changes the street from a residential area to a commercial district and the Old Vine from a private house to a series of thriving shops; two world wars and the Depression reduce it to an overcrowded, overpriced, semi-derelict slum. Similarly, the characters associated with the Old Vine vary from minor gentry to prosperous local business owners – cattle dealers, shopkeepers, restauranteurs – to impoverished tenants and a conscientious environmental health officer.  It’s sad to see Martin Reed’s historic house suffer decline and neglect at the hands of an exploitative property company, though the book ends on a hopeful note with the prospect of a sympathetic owner who may care for the house again.

There is no Author’s Note, perhaps because all the people and events are fictional.

Beautifully written portrayal of the varied people associated with a medieval house in a fictional English market town from the mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth century.

The Death of Lyndon Wilder and the Consequences Thereof, by E.A. Dineley. Book review

Constable and Robinson, 2013. ISBN 978-1-78033-227-7. 584 pages. Review copy kindly supplied by publisher.

The Death of Lyndon Wilder is set in 1813-1814 among the country gentry of Wiltshire, England. All the main characters are fictional.

Lyndon Wilder, adored eldest son of Lord and Lady Charles Wilder, has been killed in Spain in the Napoleonic Wars. His death has left his parents, especially his mother, paralysed by grief. The once-prosperous estate is neglected, in debt and in danger of complete ruin. Into this unhappy household comes Anna Arbuthnot, the intelligent and well-educated daughter of a respectable clergyman, to work as governess to Lyndon Wilder’s orphaned daughter Lottie. Anna establishes a bond with her wayward young charge, but Lady Charles views her with snobbish suspicion. Soon after, Lyndon’s younger brother Major Thomas Wilder also arrives, summoned by his ineffectual father to set the estate to rights. Thomas is a successful artillery officer and has seen little of his parents for fifteen years. He is reluctant to exchange his active, satisfying profession for the stifling confines of his parents’ decaying estate, especially as his mother makes no secret of her extreme preference for Lyndon. The company of his little niece Lottie and the new governess Anna provide some compensation for Thomas, as does the challenge of restoring the neglected estate – until a shameful secret from the past threatens to destroy everything…

The title, and to some extent the jacket copy, ‘…Nothing is as it seems…’ initially made me think this was going to be a murder mystery.  It isn’t.  Instead it’s a sharply observed, well written and subtly characterised family drama, following the fortunes of a group of people as they interact with each other and their circumstances.

The characterisation was the best feature of the book, for me. All the main characters, and many of the minor ones, are fully rounded individuals with a mix of good and not-so-good qualities, their own history, and their own lives to lead, within the constraints imposed on them by social expectation and family duty. Tensions and conflicts are gradually revealed as the narrative progresses. Lord Charles is kind-hearted, but his inability to make decisions looks likely to inflict ruin on himself and all those who depend on him. Lady Charles is devastated by the loss of her favourite child Lyndon, whom she idolised as perfect in every way, and so self-centred that she imposes her misery on everyone around her, compounded by her obsession with maintaining her social standing. Thomas is honest and honourable, both of which conflict with his sense of family duty. And Lyndon, despite being dead, still influences his family’s lives from beyond the grave. It was his death that set events in motion, and his true character is slowly revealed as the narrative develops. Even the minor characters have lives of their own, from the enigmatic intelligence officer Captain Allington, who is on hand when his friend Thomas most needs him, to the housemaid who shrewdly manufactures an opportunity to get herself promoted to lady’s maid.

The plot itself is undramatic, more concerned with the subtly changing relationships between the characters than with action or adventure.

The book is beautifully written in an understated style that suits both the period and the subject matter.  It is narrated in third person with the viewpoint switching between the characters, so the reader gets to see people and their actions from their own and others’ point of view.  This is one reason why the family drama works so well.  It also produces some delightful moments on the small scale, such as the scene where one character is attempting to assess whether his family is at risk of blackmail, while the object of his attention, a charming but air-headed lady, is actually wondering if he admires the colour of her dress.

Beautifully written, subtly characterised family drama set among the English country gentry of the early nineteenth century.

The Spanish Bride, by Georgette Heyer. Book review

First published 1940. Edition reviewed: Arrow, 2005, ISBN 978-0-09-947445-6. 422 pages.

Set in 1812-1815 in Spain, Portugal, France, England and Belgium, The Spanish Bride tells the true story of Harry Smith, officer in the 95th Rifles, and his Spanish bride Juana de los Dolores de Leon. All the main characters are historical figures.

Harry Smith is an able and energetic young officer in the Rifles, serving with Wellington’s army in the war against Napoleon in Spain and Portugal and already a veteran at 25. After the horrors of the assault on the Spanish city of Badajos and the atrocities committed by British troops in the subsequent sack, a Spanish noblewoman comes to the British camp seeking protection for her young sister Juana. Impetuous as ever, Harry falls in love with Juana on the spot and marries her two days later. Juana refuses to be sent to Harry’s home in England or to travel with the baggage train. Instead, she insists on riding alongside the soldiers, sharing the hardships and dangers of campaigning as Wellington’s army hounds Napoleon’s troops all over the Iberian Peninsula to the final clash at Waterloo.

The Spanish Bride is mainly based on the autobiography of Harry Smith (available online here, and well worth a read). Many of the incidents and anecdotes, and even some of the lines of dialogue, are taken directly from the original. This produces a powerful sense of authenticity, almost as though the reader has stepped into an army camp and joined in the conversation. The book is full of memorable little episodes of the ‘stranger-than-fiction’ type, such as the soldier rescuing Juana’s pet dog from a battlefield and keeping it in his knapsack all day until he can return it to Juana in the evening, Wellington’s ingenious solution to the problem of using Spanish money in France, and the astonished delight of the French civilian population when they realise that this invading army actually pays for what it requisitions, in marked contrast to their own troops.

The romance in The Spanish Bride is unusual, as Harry and Juana fall in love and marry instantly, so there is almost none of the ‘will they get together in the end?’ suspense that classically drives a romance plot. Instead, the suspense comes more from the question ‘will they both survive?’ Harry is of course exposed to the dangers of battle, and his oft-repeated assurances to Juana that he is indestructible sit in uneasy contrast with the death or serious injury of one friend after another. Juana herself comes under fire on occasion, and there are all the hazards of travel in wild country, such as fording rivers in spate or climbing unstable mountain paths.

The progress of the war is at least as much a focus as the relationship between Harry and Juana. Troop movements, dispositions and major battles are described in meticulous detail, giving a clear overview of the last two years of the Peninsular War from Badajos to Napoleon’s first abdication in 1814. There is no map in the edition I read, so it is well worth having a modern atlas to hand in order to identify the places and follow the campaign. Although Harry is involved in many of the major battles, The Spanish Bride does not go in for lengthy blood-and-guts battle scenes. (For those, Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series of Peninsular War adventure novels are hard to beat). It’s perhaps best described as a vivid portrayal of domestic life for army officers on active service – bivouacs and billets, food shortages when the baggage train has taken the wrong road through the mountains, dealings with the local civilian population, the transient social life of regimental dinners and impromptu balls held in barns with half the roof missing, and of the frequent alarms and unexpected attacks that mean Juana can be quietly ironing her husband’s shirts one minute and fleeing for her life the next.

As well as Harry and Juana, many of the secondary characters are also based on real historical figures, particularly their friends among the other officers of Harry’s brigade. The friendships, antagonisms and rivalries among colleagues, and their opinions (by no means always favourable!) of their superiors, are well portrayed. The relationship between Harry and the apparently foppish Daniel Cadoux is particularly well drawn. Lord Wellington also makes an appearance, a consummate professional who has an irascible temper and no interest in being popular but commands immense respect from the top of the army to the bottom.

A useful author’s note at the beginning outlines the main sources for the story, in addition to Harry’s autobiography. Unfortunately there’s no map, which would have been useful, but the omission can be remedied by finding a modern atlas.

Part love story and part account of the Peninsular War from Badajos in 1812 to Bayonne in 1814, with a coda at Waterloo, this is a dramatised retelling of the story of Harry and Juana Smith based on Harry Smith’s autobiography.

Rebellion, by James McGee. Book review

Harper Collins, 2011. ISBN 978-0-00-732024-0. 529 pages. Uncorrected advance review copy supplied by publisher.

This historical thriller is set in London and Paris in the autumn of 1812, during Napoleon’s Russian campaign. The central character, Matthew Hawkwood, is fictional. Important secondary characters such as Eugene Vidocq (founder of the French Surete police force), Colquhoun Grant (British intelligence officer) and the main players in the attempted 1812 Paris coup are historical figures.

Ex-soldier and Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood is as tough as they come and no stranger to intrigue and danger. When he is seconded to a mysterious department of the Home Office and sent on a clandestine mission to France, Hawkwood knows it will probably take all his experience and nerve to survive, let alone carry out his mission (when he finally finds out what it is – the secrecy is such that even Hawkwood is not told before setting off). Shipwreck on the French coast is just the start of his troubles, as he is drawn into a deadly conspiracy. Success could bring down Napoleon and end the war – but failure risks taking Hawkwood and his colleagues to the guillotine….

Rebellion is Book 4 in the Hawkwood series. I haven’t read Books 1-3, so I have no idea how Rebellion compares. It seemed to me to work as a stand-alone, although there may be subtleties relating to the previous books that I missed. The central character, Matthew Hawkwood, is a sort of early eighteenth-century James Bond (in Bond’s more macho incarnations; think Sean Connery rather than Roger Moore). Part soldier, part secret policeman, part spy, he is a tough, violent man in a tough, violent world. Hawkwood also has brains as well as brawn, which is just as well as the central conspiracy – an attempted coup d’etat against Napoleon – is a lot heavier on political intrigue than on action.

The first part of Rebellion is suitably action-packed, with a chase sequence through the hills of Portugal and then a stormy Channel crossing. The shift between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 is something of a jolt, and on first reading I found it hard to make any sense of (it turns out to be a cunning piece of authorial sleight of hand, explained about 100 pages later). After this adventurous beginning, the middle third of the book was a startling change of pace, slowing right down to provide a lengthy history lesson in conversation form as various characters explain the intricate ins and outs of French civilian and military politics to each other. This background is interesting stuff in its own right, and essential to follow what’s going on when the action starts up again, but readers who like their thrillers to be full of thrills and spills every few pages may find this section rather slow going. The pace starts to pick up again from about page 350 on, as the conspiracy and its aftermath play out.

I found Rebellion to be distinctly un-gripping. This surprised me, given the subject matter. The stakes could hardly be higher, and although I knew the outcome of the coup in advance (as, I am sure, does every reader the moment they look at the date), the how and why, not to mention the fate of the fictional characters, should offer plenty of scope for suspense. Perhaps it was because Hawkwood seemed to walk in to a ready-made conspiracy without actually having to do very much. The plotters have already made their plans and decided on their actions, and events are already in motion by the time Hawkwood appears on the scene. He just lends a bit of moral support and a helping hand, rather than driving events. As a result, Hawkwood is something of an outsider to the central plot, and I think this contributes to the uninvolving feel of the narrative. On the plus side, it’s a fast and easy read.

For me, the most appealing aspect of Rebellion was the presence of the historical figures Colquhoun Grant and Eugene Vidocq. Like Admiral Cochrane, these two men led lives more extraordinary than anything a novelist would dare to make up. Grant was one of Wellington’s Exploring Officers in the Peninsular War, riding reconnaissance missions deep behind enemy lines. Captured in Portugal, he escaped from custody and then promptly bluffed his way to Paris, where he established himself in the disguise of an American officer and proceeded to spy for British intelligence. Vidocq started out as a thug in the French criminal underworld, before going on to found the French Surete Nationale and then a private detective agency – a case of setting a thief to catch a thief if ever there was one. Beside these two colourful characters, everyone else in the novel rather fades into the background.

The attempted coup of 1812 really did happen, and many of its leading figures appear in Rebellion (Google if you want a potted history). Like Grant and Vidocq, the coup looks like a case of truth being stranger than fiction. Whether it contributed as much to undermining Napoleon as claimed in the novel, it can hardly have helped the Emperor’s cause, and it was fascinating to see the political side of the Napoleonic Wars as a change from the naval and military settings familiar in many historical novels. There is no Author’s Note in the advance review copy, and I hope there is one in the finished version. It would be most interesting to see how much of the conspiracy is fact and how much fiction (I suspect all the most unlikely elements are factual).

Political intrigue in Paris, as disaffected military officers attempt a coup d’etat against Napoleon in 1812.

The Duke’s Agent, by Rebecca Jenkins. Book review

Quercus, 2009. ISBN 978-1-84724-788-9. 296 pages. Review copy kindly supplied by publisher.

The Duke’s Agent is a historical mystery set in Northumberland in 1811. All the major characters are fictional.

Captain Frederick Raif Jarrett, on medical leave from the British Army, takes on the role of land agent to his relative, the Duke of Penrith. Sent to the Northumberland town of Woolbridge to conduct an audit of the Duke’s properties in the area after the unexpected death of the previous agent, Jarrett soon finds evidence of widespread embezzlement and corruption. Events take a sinister turn when a local beauty is found dead in mysterious circumstances and Jarrett becomes the prime suspect for her murder. It seems his investigations have earned him a powerful enemy – but who, and why?

The Duke’s Agent has at least two sub-plots, cleverly intertwined. The first, with which the narrative opens, centres on the strange circumstances surrounding the death of the Duke’s previous agent. Who cut the throat of the dead man’s dog? Who ransacked his study, and what were they looking for? The second appears about a third of the way into the book, and centres on the death of Sally Grundy, “Black-Eyed Sal”, a beautiful local laundry maid who was recently jilted by a local boy and was apparently being courted by a mysterious gentleman friend. How did Sal come by her death? Who moved her body afterwards and why? Who is the unknown gentleman friend and what was his business with Sal? And why are the locals – or some of them, at least – so keen to finger Jarrett for her murder? Both mysteries are gradually unravelled as the plot unfolds, revealing layers of subtle connections and local rivalries. I spotted the villain early on, but that was on the basis of character and role in the narrative, not by solving the mysteries.

The pace is leisurely, even slow, to start with, as the local countryside and the town of Woolbridge are described and the cast introduced. Jarrett is new to the area and a talented painter, so the reader sees both landscape and people through his keen artist’s eye. After Sal’s death the pace steps up a gear, with an effective courtroom scene and a greater urgency to Jarrett’s investigations. The leisurely pace allows time to develop not only a varied cast of characters – from poacher and innkeeper to the local gentry – but also the relationships and rivalries between them, all told in stylish prose.

Although the immediate mystery is wrapped up at the end – partly through the villain’s desire to demonstrate his own cleverness by filling in the details that the hero has not quite worked out for himself – there is a larger intrigue still to be resolved, which clearly offers scope for a sequel (or several). Similarly, Jarrett’s tentative relationship with Miss Henrietta Lonsdale, a young lady of impeccable manners, calm good sense, formidable reserve and remarkably attractive grey eyes, looks as if it has scope for further development.

Stylish historical mystery with well-defined characters and a clear sense of time and place, set in Northumberland in the early nineteenth century.

The Tide of War, by Seth Hunter. Book review

Headline 2010, ISBN 978-0-7553-5761-1. 427 pages. Review copy supplied by publisher.

The Tide of War is the sequel to the first Nathan Peake adventure, The Time of Terror. It is set in 1794/1795, mainly in the Caribbean and the Mississippi Delta, against the political turmoil of the French Revolution and its effects on the New World colonies. The central character, naval officer Nathan Peake, is fictional, as are most of his colleagues. Baron Carondelet, Spanish governor of Louisiana, and Gilbert Imlay, American agent and adventurer, are historical figures and important secondary characters, particularly Imlay.

Scarred physically by his interrogation as a spy in Revolutionary France, and emotionally by the loss of his lover Sara whom he believes died on the guillotine (events recounted in The Time of Terror), Nathan Peake has temporarily retired from the war to recover at the family estate in Sussex. However, his father’s potentially embarrassing marriage plans prompt Nathan to seek an immediate return to sea, and on reminding the Admiralty of his existence he is promoted to Post Captain and given command of a handsome new frigate, the Unicorn. There is just one snag – the Unicorn’s previous captain was washed up near New Orleans with his throat cut, and the Unicorn herself has vanished somewhere in the Caribbean. Nathan’s mission is to find the Unicorn – if she still exists – and use her to fight the more powerful French frigate Virginie, which is at large in the Caribbean destroying British shipping and arming rebels against Britain’s Spanish allies. On top of this, Nathan finds himself drawn into a slave rebellion in Cuba, a shady plot to conquer Spanish Louisiana, and an encounter with a seductive ex-slave queen who may also be a voodoo sorceress.

The novel is slow to start, with two or three chapters of background before Nathan sets off to the Caribbean, but once it gets going the action rarely pauses in this cross between a spy thriller and a naval adventure – think of the ‘frigate captain’ genre of seafaring stories with a dash of James Bond thrown in. Nathan has to deal with murder, mutiny, hurricanes, shipwreck, pirates, espionage, voodoo, intrigue, rebellions, ship-to-ship naval duels, a land attack on a fort, and still have the energy to do justice to the attentions of the beautiful ex-slave queen La Princesa Negra.

The Caribbean and the Mississippi Delta make for an exotic backdrop, with romantically named places such as The Sea of Sirens and The Mouth of the Serpent. An intricate web of political intrigue extends from the revolution and war in Europe to the European colonies in the Caribbean and North America, further complicated by the nearby presence of the burgeoning United States, officially neutral but possibly not averse to fishing profitably in troubled waters. I was unfamiliar with the history, so the political background was a particularly appealing feature.

Nathan’s social background is hardly less diverse or exotic. His father is of solid English gentry stock with suitably conventional views, while his mother Lady Kitty is from a very wealthy American family of French descent and entertains dangerously radical modern ideas, such as the rights of women (she is a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of The Rights of Woman, who appeared in The Time of Terror) and the abolition of slavery. This background provides a plausible mechanism for equipping Nathan with views on slavery and feminism that wouldn’t be out of place today, which probably helps to make him a sympathetic figure for modern readers. I found him a likeable character, a decent individual plagued by self-doubt and still grieving for the woman he loved, though he does tend to get overshadowed by some of the more colourful secondary characters.

Chief among whom is the outrageous Gilbert Imlay, explorer, smuggler, dodgy businessman, spy and all-round adventurer, a historical figure whose real career extended from a sort of proto-CIA agent in the fledgling USA to Revolutionary France, who had an affair with Mary Wollstonecraft and then promptly abandoned her and their infant daughter, and who, according to the historical note, really did hatch a nefarious plot involving the conquest of Louisiana. I wouldn’t call Imlay a hero, at least not as he appears in the novel, but he steals the show. I wonder if he will make a further appearance in the sequel?

For the most part, the novel is written in straightforward modern prose, with only occasional uses of modern expletives such as f-- (in situations where expletives are surely understandable, such as narrowly escaping being eaten by an alligator. I told you this was an all-action yarn). Occasionally the style veers into the prolix, most notably in the climactic shipboard fight scene, e.g.

“Nathan moved to abandon his sedentary position with some alacrity and drew one of his own pistols with the intention of shooting his assailant in the head, but this excellent plan was betrayed by a singular circumstance.”

and

"The force of this blow was so great, in fact, it caused the sword to lodge in the hatch cover and Nathan was able to draw his own sword and prepare a more adequate defence than he had previously been allowed."

Lines like these are flanked by page-long discourses on Nathan’s memories of his boyhood fencing master and the design and construction of pistols, all in the middle of a brutal hand-to-hand fight. Perhaps the language is aiming for an eighteenth-century flavour, and it certainly makes for a curious contrast with the concomitant blood-and-guts violence, though for me it also had the effect of slowing and distancing the action.

Two useful maps at the beginning of the book show the geography of the Mississippi Delta and the Caribbean, and are invaluable for following the naval and military action. A helpful ‘History’ note at the end sets out the history on which the novel is based, very useful for readers (like me) who are not especially familiar with the period. (As is so often the case, the most unlikely-sounding aspects of the plot turn out to be true). The novel doesn’t so much end as pause to catch its breath, deliberately untying at least one loose end in the plot which is presumably going to make a major contribution to the next instalment.

All-action yarn of espionage and naval warfare set against the exotic backdrop of the Caribbean and North American colonies in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Bellfield Hall, by Anna Dean. Book review

St Martin’s, 2010, ISBN 978-0-312-56294-6, 300 pages. Review copy kindly supplied by publisher. Published in the UK under the title A Moment of Silence.

Bellfield Hall is a historical mystery set among the country gentry of southern England in 1805. All the characters and events are fictional.

Miss Dido Kent is an unmarried lady of modest means, and thus a convenient source of on-tap unpaid domestic help to her assorted brothers and their families. When her niece Catherine begs her to come to Bellfield Hall, where her fiance has mysteriously released her from their engagement and disappeared, Dido obliges at once. She soon realises that there is something much deeper going on than Catherine’s broken engagement, for on the very day of Dido’s arrival an unknown young woman is found lying murdered in the shrubbery. Is the murder connected with the abrupt departure of Catherine’s fiance? Who is the young woman and how did she come by her death? Is there a murderer among the family, guests and servants at Bellfield Hall? Dido has to solve the mystery if her dear niece is to have any chance of marriage and happiness – but little does she know that her own heart may be imperilled in the process.

I have a great regard for Jane Austen’s novels, and a corresponding wariness of the assorted spin-offs, sequels and – heaven forfend – zombie mash-ups that have appeared since it became universally acknowledged that her work was not only popular but also easily marketable and long out of copyright. So I thought more than twice about reviewing Bellfield Hall, and only decided to give it a try after finding an excerpt on the publisher’s website and concluding that the writing looked promising. I’m glad I did, as Bellfield Hall turned out to be a very pleasant read.

Dido Kent is by far the most strongly developed character. Shrewd, clever, compassionate and observant, Dido is accustomed to conjuring new dresses and roast dinners out of a small income and applies the same resourcefulness to mystery solving. She has a gift for winning confidences from the servants and for putting a lot of apparently inconsequential details together to make a whole. If the customs of her society permitted her to set up as a Ladies’ Detective Agency – which of course they don’t – she would undoubtedly have been an immediate success.

One of the features I admire in historical fiction is a story that is anchored in its particular time and place and can’t easily be shifted to another setting just by changing the props. Bellfield Hall achieves this admirably. The mystery and Dido’s solving of it depend on little details of contemporary society, such as mealtimes, correct forms of address, the quality of cloth and the precise details of women’s fashions. Dido misses very little about the people and the world around her, and has a fund of common sense and a broad understanding of human foibles to allow her to draw conclusions from what she sees. Not that she understands everything, though – a modern reader will have no difficulty in working out the aspects of Colonel Walborough’s behaviour that leave Dido completely mystified.

The tone and style of language and dialogue has the right sort of feel for the period, and there are one or two nice turns of phrases, e.g. “All the gentlemen were gone to the inquest and the ladies were left with nothing to do but settle the verdict among themselves without the inconvenience of considering any evidence.”

The mystery plot is neatly constructed with a suitably large collection of suspects, all of whom have their own secrets to hide, and plenty of red herrings to draw the reader away on false trails. Clues are cleverly laid in the text for the reader to find, but so subtly that I only picked up many of them on a second reading. Furthermore, Dido solves the mystery without stepping outside the bounds of behaviour acceptable for a nice respectable lady spinster among the gentry of Regency England. Maybe Dido is perhaps a little too lucky at always happening to be in the right place at the right time to talk to someone who can give her the next piece of the puzzle, and I have to admit I was a little baffled by the sub-plot involving the Misses Harris, which seemed a shade too ingenious to be effective, but it all ties up nicely in the end.

The ending provides a clear lead-in to a sequel, so I expect we shall meet Miss Dido Kent again. I for one will be happy to do so.

Charming light Regency mystery with authentic-feeling period detail and a resourceful and likeable heroine.