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It's 1814, and Lieutenant-Colonel Hastings Adair has just had his life ruined.
After briefly stopping by England to drop off some dispatches to Lord Wellington, Adair attended a ball and agreed to escort Alice Prior, a young lady of Quality, home. He woke up two days later with her in bed at a hotel, the both of them drugged and naked. Charged with deserting in a time of war and with ruining Miss Prior, it's only through the influence of those higher up in the military hierarchy and his previously sterling reputation that Adair avoids the hangman's noose.
Instead, he is dishonorably discharged, and the scandal of the incident has thoroughly tarnished his reputation, as well as that of Adair's family. Only a few of his friends and relatives believe in his innocence, and the others want to disown him. (The proposed plan is that Adair accept a lump sum of money, move to America, change his name, and never mention being related to them ever again.) And as a publicly known figure of scandal, Adair is subject to insults and assaults from others.
Hoping that Alice Prior knows something that might help to prove his innocence, Adair tracks down her home, only to discover that Alice Prior has gone missing- and that Adair is considered the top suspect for her kidnapping. And so Adair must find the missing Miss Prior, while sorting out a generous helping of conspiracies and coincidences and staying one step ahead of the law.
Of course, complicating matters is that while he's at the Prior residence, Adair runs into Alice Prior's cousin and best friend, Cecily Hall, and despite the circumstances, the two of them find themselves quickly falling in love.
The book is considered a Regency Romance, though I think the mystery got a lot more focus in the end than the relationship developing between Cecily and Adair. That said, the mystery itself was interesting enough to keep me reading until the end.
Though I feel like it relied a little too heavily on coincidences? I may not have been reading it in enough detail, but stuff like Adair coincidentally stumbles across a nunnery, which coincidentally turns out to be plot relevant. Mind you, England's a tiny country, so I suppose it's not too implausible that sooner or later you'd run into a convenient nunnery...
- - -
On another note, I finally gave up on reading A Left-handed History of the World by Ed Wright. I'm sorry, but there are only too many times I can read variations upon "This famous person's ingenuity and success can entirely be chalked up to them being left-handed, having to work around in a world that ~doesn't fit them~" before I lose interest.
Well, that on top of the fact that Ed Wright brings up the Extreme Male Brain Theory to explain lefthandedness (something I've only ever seen theorized about autism, and think is bunk either way).
And also this:
"Perhaps his most difficult relationship was with his fellow lefty Leonardo, whose genius Michelangelo felt he had to surmount in order to consolidate the recognition of his own. In many ways, he defined himself in opposition to Leonardo, a classic case of what the critic Harold Bloom has called the anxiety of influence, a kind of Oedipus complex of artistic inheritance."
...so I have a general feeling Ed Wright is not someone who knows of what he speaks.
After briefly stopping by England to drop off some dispatches to Lord Wellington, Adair attended a ball and agreed to escort Alice Prior, a young lady of Quality, home. He woke up two days later with her in bed at a hotel, the both of them drugged and naked. Charged with deserting in a time of war and with ruining Miss Prior, it's only through the influence of those higher up in the military hierarchy and his previously sterling reputation that Adair avoids the hangman's noose.
Instead, he is dishonorably discharged, and the scandal of the incident has thoroughly tarnished his reputation, as well as that of Adair's family. Only a few of his friends and relatives believe in his innocence, and the others want to disown him. (The proposed plan is that Adair accept a lump sum of money, move to America, change his name, and never mention being related to them ever again.) And as a publicly known figure of scandal, Adair is subject to insults and assaults from others.
Hoping that Alice Prior knows something that might help to prove his innocence, Adair tracks down her home, only to discover that Alice Prior has gone missing- and that Adair is considered the top suspect for her kidnapping. And so Adair must find the missing Miss Prior, while sorting out a generous helping of conspiracies and coincidences and staying one step ahead of the law.
Of course, complicating matters is that while he's at the Prior residence, Adair runs into Alice Prior's cousin and best friend, Cecily Hall, and despite the circumstances, the two of them find themselves quickly falling in love.
The book is considered a Regency Romance, though I think the mystery got a lot more focus in the end than the relationship developing between Cecily and Adair. That said, the mystery itself was interesting enough to keep me reading until the end.
Though I feel like it relied a little too heavily on coincidences? I may not have been reading it in enough detail, but stuff like Adair coincidentally stumbles across a nunnery, which coincidentally turns out to be plot relevant. Mind you, England's a tiny country, so I suppose it's not too implausible that sooner or later you'd run into a convenient nunnery...
- - -
On another note, I finally gave up on reading A Left-handed History of the World by Ed Wright. I'm sorry, but there are only too many times I can read variations upon "This famous person's ingenuity and success can entirely be chalked up to them being left-handed, having to work around in a world that ~doesn't fit them~" before I lose interest.
Well, that on top of the fact that Ed Wright brings up the Extreme Male Brain Theory to explain lefthandedness (something I've only ever seen theorized about autism, and think is bunk either way).
And also this:
"Perhaps his most difficult relationship was with his fellow lefty Leonardo, whose genius Michelangelo felt he had to surmount in order to consolidate the recognition of his own. In many ways, he defined himself in opposition to Leonardo, a classic case of what the critic Harold Bloom has called the anxiety of influence, a kind of Oedipus complex of artistic inheritance."
...so I have a general feeling Ed Wright is not someone who knows of what he speaks.
