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The second in Walton's alternate history series about a Britain which made peace with Hitler and slid into fascism. I liked the first, Farthing, quite a bit; it was in the tradition and to a large extent the style of Agatha Christie, though with considerably better prose.
I liked this one even more. Though the setting is now more familiar, the fact that everything that was wrong in the first book is still wrong and getting worse gives the book a less shocking but possibly even more disturbing atmosphere. Plus, it involves a gender-reversed production of Hamlet which is cleverly paralleled with the story, and I always adore backstage drama.
Viola Lark (formerly Larkin) left her freakish wealthy family of negligent parents and five briliant, eccentric, and/or crazy sisters to become an actress. When she's cast as Hamlet in a production that will be attended by Hitler, one of her sisters, now a devoted Communist, drags her into an assassination plot. Like Hamlet, Viola vacillates over what she should do, and it doesn't help that she's kind of crazy; unlike Hamlet, she has the additional pressure of being involved in a phenomenally creepy Stockholm Syndrome romance with the bomb maker who will kill her if she tries to wriggle out of her place in the plot.
Meanwhile, Carmichael, the morally compromised gay police officer, investigates a bombing which we realize, though he does not, is related to the plot against Hitler. His lover really needed much more character development considering his importance in Carmichael's life and life choices; the other cops are given more character and page-time.
The conclusion, though shocking in its particulars, is horribly inevitable. Like Hamlet.
Don't begin this book late at night, or you, like me, will be up till the early hours of the morning. If the last one had the form of a cozy mystery, this one has the form and narrative drive of a thriller.
( Read more... )
I liked this one even more. Though the setting is now more familiar, the fact that everything that was wrong in the first book is still wrong and getting worse gives the book a less shocking but possibly even more disturbing atmosphere. Plus, it involves a gender-reversed production of Hamlet which is cleverly paralleled with the story, and I always adore backstage drama.
Viola Lark (formerly Larkin) left her freakish wealthy family of negligent parents and five briliant, eccentric, and/or crazy sisters to become an actress. When she's cast as Hamlet in a production that will be attended by Hitler, one of her sisters, now a devoted Communist, drags her into an assassination plot. Like Hamlet, Viola vacillates over what she should do, and it doesn't help that she's kind of crazy; unlike Hamlet, she has the additional pressure of being involved in a phenomenally creepy Stockholm Syndrome romance with the bomb maker who will kill her if she tries to wriggle out of her place in the plot.
Meanwhile, Carmichael, the morally compromised gay police officer, investigates a bombing which we realize, though he does not, is related to the plot against Hitler. His lover really needed much more character development considering his importance in Carmichael's life and life choices; the other cops are given more character and page-time.
The conclusion, though shocking in its particulars, is horribly inevitable. Like Hamlet.
Don't begin this book late at night, or you, like me, will be up till the early hours of the morning. If the last one had the form of a cozy mystery, this one has the form and narrative drive of a thriller.
( Read more... )