A slave to the used bookshelves, I was only able to find the third book in Celeste Bradley’s Liar’s Club series, The Spy.
Released in 2004, it carries on the story of the Liar’s Club introduced in the Royal Four series.
Here is the plot: “An operative for the Liar’s Club, rakish James Cunnington is given the task of finding the daughter of a missing code breaker, a man suspected of turning traitor to serve Napoleon, unaware that the desperate Philippa Atwater currently resides in his own home, masquerading as a scholarly young male.”
Georgette Heyer masquerading is one of my favorite plot devices as devoted readers will know, so I entered the world of the Liar’s Club with excitement.
Celeste Bradley is one of my newer favorite authors because her books are action packed and entertaining. If the characters aren’t perfectly tailored, then they are at least likable. If the plot isn’t light hearted, then at least it is spiced up with moments of humor.
Like so many of her books, the villian is a real character rather than emotion which makes for more cut and dry suspense. What is great about The Spy is that as the reader we don’t truly know who the villian is until the climatic end scene. Although I was less interested in villiany and spying then I was in some good old fashioned romance, I did enjoy the cast of characters that surrounded the main characters.
Reading books out of order in a series is always a bit difficult, but I found it easy to pick up on the threads of subplot and follow alone as if it were a standalone book.
All in all, Celeste Bradley is a great hist-ro author and offers enough deviation for the norm to spice up any regency devotee’s retinue of romance.
