Clarges
Street is full of fashionable houses that people are
eager to occupy for the season, but not number 67. Following
a suicide and other mishaps it is considered unlucky,
and certainly the servants who have to live there think
so. But surely all this bad luck is at an
end, for a Mr Roderick Sinclair and his beautiful daughter
are taking it, and it will be a normal house again? Not
quite, as nothing is what it seems…
If
you have read everything by Georgette Heyer and are
tired of bodice rippers you need to discover M C Beaton. She
has a different take on the traditional Regency with
plenty of humor, romance (of course), lively adventures
and a sound underpinning of knowledge about the era. Her
books are short but so packed with incidents that at
the end you could be fooled into thinking you had read
something much longer, and very possibly learned something
about the period to boot. In this first part
of another six-parter (originally published back in
1986) we get to meet some unconventional staff including
delightful butler Rainbird, more than one possible new
series villain and laugh at the Sinclairs’’
misadventures. I am so glad that this author
wrote so many books, and that at long last UK readers
are getting a chance to enjoy them as well.
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