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MUTE WITNESS by Charles
O'Brien Reviewed by Rachel
Hyde, MyShelf.Com Paris, 1786 and the Eve of the Revolution. Thoroughly modern Anne Cartier works as an actress in London until she hears of the death of her father and his mistress in a supposed murder-suicide and so she hastens to find out whodunit and why. With her is the aristocratic Colonel Paul de Saint-Martin who works for the Royal Highway Patrol who knew Anne as a child when she and her father performed at their chateau. The case will take them to the most decadent areas of society and into a web of secrets and corruption where the only key to the mystery seems to be a deaf mute seamstress. Anne will need to use her new skills as a teacher of the deaf as well as all her wits in order to crack this case. This is one fun book
with much of the sparkle of an old swashbuckling adventure story although
the multi-talented Anne seems to have too many skills and too much swash
and buckle to seem very real; the book's one major fault. She is
an actress, high-wire artist, dancer, singer, teacher of the deaf, good
shot with a gun, beautiful and gallops about on horseback wearing breeches.
Pick any two of these - three at a pinch - and you will have a fine heroine.
Pick them all and you have some sort of unrealistic superbeing.
This is a pity and the story is so entertaining that it is carried along
regardless as O'Brien obviously excels at describing French 18th century
social conditions from palaces to slums and here he has plenty of material
to work with and the result is a highly suspenseful tale; well plotted
and full of surprises and highly detailed descriptions that made it |
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