Blood of the Knights (The Gracchus & Vanderville Mysteries, 3)
It’s June 1798 when French Lieutenant Vanderville perilously and secretly enters Valletta, the fortified capital of the island of Malta. General Bonaparte, on his way to Egypt, is bent on freeing Malta from the oppressive rule of the Knights Hospitaller – and, even more, on securing the island as a base. Hence Vanderville’s mission, to prepare for the arrival of the French fleet with the help of a mysterious local sympathiser, possibly one of the knights. But things quickly go downhill when, at the appointed meeting place, our hero stumbles onto a corpse. Only the help of an elegant and well-connected “public woman”, Donna Eva, saves Vanderville from arrest as a murderer, and lands him instead among the Knights of the Orders’s Anglo-Bavarian as a half-guest and half-prisoner. And if you think his plight is complicated, wait until another old acquaintance turns up in Valletta – the very peculiar ex-magistrate, Felix Gracchus!
To be perfectly frank, I wasn’t convinced by Gracchus’s own mission, and much less by the street children, with their sophisticated literary speech, and eight-year-old leader. That said, I liked the twisty plot, and Howard’s descriptions and atmospheres are always lovely. The sun-drenched Valletta, with its unrest, mistrust, and petty power struggles within and around the much-decayed Order, springs to life around the bewildered but always game Vanderville. As a rule I’m not fond of open endings, but this time I’m very glad that the door is left open for more of Vanderville’s adventures in Malta.
