Jane Feather, A Wicked Gentleman

A Wicked Gentleman

Jane Feather

Pocket, Apr 2007, $7.99

ISBN: 1416525513

To escape from the demands of her late husband's father, widow Cornelia "Nell" Dagenheim, accompanied by her children, heads to London to spend a month with her widowed sister-in-law Ellie and her children and their best friend Livia. The house the three country mice and their offspring plan to stay in belongs to Livia, who recently inherited the home.

To their shock, the house is in bad shape as if someone deliberately tore it apart in search of something. Just after her arrival she meets Harry Bonham who offers to buy the town house. Harry is a royal cryptographer, who fears that somewhere in the house is a code breaking device that the French want. As he courts the widow to gain access to where she is staying, someone abducts her oldest son, heir to an earldom. Whereas she assumes ransom money and he considers the French involvement, either way they work together to rescue her child even as they fall in love while doing so.

The lead couple supplemented by a horde of family and friends turn A WICKED GENTLEMAN into a superb Regency romantic investigative tale. The two prime subplots, the mystery and the romance blend together into a cohesive save the child thriller. Fans of the author already know she is no featherweight but instead a sub-genre super heavyweight as this team up of a frantic amateur sleuth mom and the spy she loves proves.

Harriet Klausner