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In this follow-up to Sweet Poison, the first in the series featuring Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne, Verity and Edward are brought together in Spain. It is 1936, more than midway through Auden's "low dishonest decade," the Spanish Republic is about to disintegrate into civil war and Old Etonians are dying under mysterious circumstances in Spain and at home. David Griffith-Jones, Verity's lover and a a ferocious Stalinist, is in a Madrid jail, about to be executed for the murder of one of them and Verity has convinced Edward that he must come and save Griffith-Jones's life. Despite his admittedly mixed feelings, Edward obliges and finds himself thrust into a heady mix of politics, revolution, literature, and sex. The action moves back and forth between Spain and England, as Edward digs deeper into a series of murders and assaults that seems to have its roots in a long-buried scandal at Edward's own public school. The 1930s was a decade of compromise and dishonesty. It was as well a decade of commitment and passion. Roberts captures the confusions of the period extremely well, especially in the figure of Lord Edward, who loathes the Stalinist functionaries but responds to the innocent idealism of the young revolutionaries and who is deeply aware that whatever he may think of their politics, the Communists are right about one thing at least--his world, the world of his class and its privileges, is in its last days and, while he may not enthusiastically embrace the changes that are coming, he cannot altogether reject them. Considered purely as a mystery, Bones of the Buried is not wholly satisfying. Like the historical period in which it is set, there are no real resolutions, only degrees of compromise. Still, Roberts has a good eye for historical detail and provides some devastating portraits of recognizable figures, especially in the character of Belasco, a Hemingway stand-in with whom Verity has a fling. I look forward to the next in the series.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, March 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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