Picking up directly after The Pale Assassin (2009), this French Revolution thriller includes intrigue, romance and plenty of blood but takes a while to pick up steam.
Displaced aristocrat Eugénie and friend Julien have fled Paris for Eugénie’s rebel-minded cousin Hetta’s house on the English coast. Eugénie can’t return to France because of a fraudulent but binding marriage engagement to Le Fantôme, a Phantom of the Opera/Javert figure with high government ranking and a vast spy network. Eugénie’s brother Armand languishes in Paris prisons awaiting the corrupt trial that will send him to the guillotine for being a royalist and aristo. Le Fantôme’s debonair, sociopathic thug, Guy, tracks Eugénie, Hetta and Julien with disconcerting expertise. However, despite the constant threat of rape, murder and kidnapping, momentum lags for the first 200 pages. Readers know every danger and secret all along; narrative perspective shifts from character to character too quickly to catch hold. When Eugénie and Hetta end up accidentally back in Paris, the plot quickens. The city seethes with bitter fury and revenge-based executions. Romantic connections get befuddled through naivete, and the main characters’ tricky final escapades, while not quite believable, are as exciting and gruesomely successful as befits the Revolutionary setting. Political passion and upheaval are mainly backdrop; if readers loyal to the four main players can stay the course, they’ll like the ending. (cast of historical and fictional characters, timeline, afterward) (Historical thriller. 14 & up)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2361-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
An enticing, turbulent, and satisfying final voyage.
Adrian, the youngest of the Montague siblings, sails into tumultuous waters in search of answers about himself, the sudden death of his mother, and her mysterious, cracked spyglass.
On the summer solstice less than a year ago, Caroline Montague fell off a cliff in Aberdeen into the sea. When the Scottish hostel where she was staying sends a box of her left-behind belongings to London, Adrian—an anxious, White nobleman on the cusp of joining Parliament—discovers one of his mother’s most treasured possessions, an antique spyglass. She acquired it when she was the sole survivor of a shipwreck many years earlier. His mother always carried that spyglass with her, but on the day of her death, she had left it behind in her room. Although he never knew its full significance, Adrian is haunted by new questions and is certain the spyglass will lead him to the truth. Once again, Lee crafts an absorbing adventure with dangerous stakes, dynamic character growth, sharp social and political commentary, and a storm of emotion. Inseparable from his external search for answers about his mother, Adrian seeks a solution for himself, an end to his struggle with mental illness—a journey handled with hopeful, gentle honesty that validates the experiences of both good and bad days. Characters from the first two books play significant secondary roles, and the resolution ties up their loose ends. Humorous antics provide a well-measured balance with the heavier themes.
An enticing, turbulent, and satisfying final voyage. (Historical fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-291601-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging
Audrey Rose Wadsworth, 17, would rather perform autopsies in her uncle’s dark laboratory than find a suitable husband, as is the socially acceptable rite of passage for a young, white British lady in the late 1800s.
The story immediately brings Audrey into a fractious pairing with her uncle’s young assistant, Thomas Cresswell. The two engage in predictable rounds of “I’m smarter than you are” banter, while Audrey’s older brother, Nathaniel, taunts her for being a girl out of her place. Horrific murders of prostitutes whose identities point to associations with the Wadsworth estate prompt Audrey to start her own investigation, with Thomas as her sidekick. Audrey’s narration is both ponderous and polemical, as she sees her pursuit of her goals and this investigation as part of a crusade for women. She declares that the slain aren’t merely prostitutes but “daughters and wives and mothers,” but she’s also made it a point to deny any alignment with the profiled victims: “I am not going as a prostitute. I am simply blending in.” Audrey also expresses a narrow view of her desired gender role, asserting that “I was determined to be both pretty and fierce,” as if to say that physical beauty and liking “girly” things are integral to feminism. The graphic descriptions of mutilated women don’t do much to speed the pace.
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging . (Historical thriller. 15-18)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-27349-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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