Thursday 13 March 2014

Review of Taming a Gentleman Spy - Book 2 of The Spies of Mayfair Series


Taming A Gentleman Spy

 

Book 2 of The Spies of Mayfair Setries

 

By

 

Maggi Anderson

 

“If ever beauty I did see
Which I desired, and got, ‘twas but a dream of thee.”

The Good Morrow. John Donne.

 Taming A Gentleman Spy is an enthralling historical novel set in The Regency era after Napoleon has been defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and then exiled. At that time the Government feared the effect of The French Revolution and its supporters at home and abroad whose aim was to overturn law and order.

 John Haldane, 4th Earl of Strathairn, a gentleman spy, returned to England after fighting the French in the Peninsula Wars and at the Battle of Waterloo. His experiences gathering information have marked him, and no one is more aware of this than Sibella, sister of the Marquess of Brandreth.

 Brandreth, who has heard rumours about Strathairn’s link with the war office and the spymaster, warns Strathairn not to pay particular attention to Sibella, “…who loves home and hearth. She looks for a husband who will sit by the fire with her at night.” Brandreth doubts Strathairn could make Sibella happy.

 Sibella is curious as to why Strathairn does not intend to marry in the foreseeable future. She thinks they are well-suited and his kiss thrilled her.

 Strathairn will not marry Sibella because he could be killed like his partner, Nesbit, whose widow is pregnant.

On the ground, next to Nesbit’s lifeless body, lay a cravat pin in the shape of an eagle like the one favoured by Count Fornay, a dangerous revolutionary who fermented rebellion in England, and is presumed dead. “And why,” Strathairn asked himself, does Passion, a lady’s perfume linger in the air at the scene of the murder.

 Urged on by her mother and brother, Sibella agrees to marry Lord Coombe in the hope that she will learn to love him. However, she is determined to discover the truth about his first wife’s death.

 Maggi Anderson does not overwhelm the reader with historical facts but she does impart ‘the flavour’ of the times