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THE CAVALIER CASE by Antonia Fraser Kirkus Star

THE CAVALIER CASE

By

Pub Date: Jan. 15th, 1990
Publisher: Bantam

The best-selling author of The Warrior Queens (1989), as well as six previous Jemima Shore/telly-investigator mysteries, sleekly weaves all her passions together here by presenting Jemima with a portrait of Cavalier poet Decimus Meredith, 1st Viscount Lackland (d. 1645), and having her besotted with him and eager to meet him--she learns his ghost stalks Lackland Court, where the 17th Viscount has recently died and where the 18th, ""Handsome Dan,"" has his hands full: an ex-wife, a current wife, a few mild flirtations, children (including the sulky young Nell) from various women, plus plans to turn his stately home into a trendy private tennis club. In the midst of all the hubbub, Jemina arrives to plan a TV special on ghosts. Then the butler falls from the battlements; Nell is concussed off the Great Hall; the 1st Viscount's bones are accidentally, and surprisingly, disinterred; and the 17th Viscount may have had a bit of help in dying. Meanwhile, Jemima, shrugging off a dalliance with Handsome Dan, catches a fake ghost and glimpses a real one, while the Lackland fete is rained out. Witty, droll, and a delightful blend of sex, history, scholarship, and detection.