|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
A very peculiar quandary confronts the reviewer here - and there seems no satisfactory solution. I fall back first on that old reliable, a plot description. It is 1837 and Liberty Lane, our 22 year old first-person narrator and heroine, has run away from her aunt's house to meet her father, Thomas Jacques Lane, in Dover to where he is returning from Paris : instead she receives a note informing her that he was killed in a duel at Calais. Liberty speedily boards a boat and crosses the Channel; she knows that this information must be false as her father was fanatically anti-duelling, but she soon finds out that it is all too true that he is dead from a bullet wound. Liberty, left alone in the world (her mother is dead and her younger brother in India), determines to track down the killer, and at her father's hastily arranged funeral is confronted by a mysterious man in black, then abducted by an upper-class thug and a malevolent fat man. Escaping, she is contacted again by the man in black who suggests that he will reveal the mystery if she agrees to take a place as a governess at the house of reactionary aristocrat Sir Herbert Mandeville; she is to act as a spy for him and report on the goings-on at Mandeville's country mansion. Liberty has little choice but to agree and, having successfully obtained the position, goes undercover. Let me make an attempt at evaluating DEATH AT DAWN as a first book by a new author. The style is good, the pacing excellent, the narrative reasonably gripping, the social and political background effectively, if fairly lightly sketched in, Liberty herself an engaging enough heroine. The highpoint would be the cameo appearance of Disraeli, where the book really comes alive. On the downside there is a certain simplification which makes the book feel, at times, almost as if it were written for teenagers; this is not helped by the appalling innovation of a short section called 'Reading Group Notes' which appears at the back of the books and includes some awful 'suggested reading group questions' - really! my experience of a reading group is that we are quite adult, intelligent and informed enough to come up with our own questions and criticisms thank you! We do not need to be patronised and treated as schoolchildren. A very bad idea! But the simplification to which I refer permeates the book and is reflected in the writing about sexuality, politics, even the plot (which is basically very simple). It might be argued that to some extent this is reflective of Liberty's own age and innocence. But this is a woman who has read Shelley, Wollstonecraft, Godwin (and that's just some namechecks) so I find it a little hard to believe (except perhaps in the area of sexuality). OK now I own up and question myself. I know that Caro Peacock is Gillian Linscott who was the author of the Nell Bray series. And the Nell Bray series is, in my view, about as good as historical mysteries get. For those who have never read any, Nell is a committed suffragette and pacifist and the books are set between the early 1900s and 1919. The series is distinguished by deep political and social knowledge, a burning sense of injustice, excellent plotting, humour, mature and brilliant reflections on sexuality and gender - hell! they had the lot. And on top of that Linscott had the rare ability to alter the tone of her books within a series so that some are more plot centred, some lighter, some very dark. And! in Nell Bray she created a truly wonderful protagonist - if I had to select a fictional mystery character for my own five dream dinner party guests she would head the list. So two questions arise. First am I being hard on Caro Peacock, and in particular criticising the lack of depth, because I am comparing her to Gillian Linscott? Yes, probably. I can't keep the knowledge out of my head. I think that I would still have said that DEATH AT DAWN felt a little light-weight, a little too much of a romp (and I would certainly have excoriated those wretched Reading Group Notes) but I probably wouldn't have been so harsh. Second why did Linscott do it? Well that's simple apparently - the Nell Bray books didn't sell well enough. Although this is speculation as I know of no interview with Linscott. But a note at the end of DEATH AT DAWN explains (in the Caro Peacock persona) that she got the idea for the book while working as a National Trust guide as writing wasn't "paying for groceries and cat food." I find it very sad that we are denied more Nell Bray when so many lesser writers seem able to keep publishing. But I guess it is our fault for not buying enough. Well I really hope that Caro Peacock works out for Linscott. I hope that as the Liberty Lane series continues it attains more depth and substance because there is absolutely no question that the potential is there. And DEATH AT DAWN is very far from being bad; indeed it is a highly enjoyable read which I recommend. But it is no match for any of the Nell Bray books.
Reviewed by Nick Hay, March 2008
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
|
