The Elgin Conspiracy (Regency Secrets)
1812: Napoleon’s piecemeal plundering of a sybaritic array of European treasures had brought art conservation to its zenith in Britain. Diplomat Lord Elgin eagerly oversaw his final shipment of ancient marbles from the Parthenon, convinced he had dealt equitably with Greek officials as self-appointed custodian and Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Controversy ensued, Lord Byron’s injured sensibilities hotly insinuating cultural vandalism of the highest order in scathing published indictments.
Enter Julia Golding’s warmly human fictional protagonists: gentle-mannered retired army surgeon (and former laudanum addict) Dr Jacob Sandys and his raison d’être, shrewd, lightning-witted, earthy and humbly born actress Ms Dora Fitz-Pennington. Add their joint risky, ruse-filled undercover efforts to investigate a plausible death threat to Lord Elgin, an ostensibly motiveless murder or two, an archaic clandestine dawn initiation ceremony, a French librarian with a penchant for rare manuscripts and gentlemen’s fashion but a fluid identity and strangely ill-fitting past. Mix in copious gunpowder, a book of salacious prints, a dead-end here, a red herring there, a sprinkling of irked one-upmanship from Bow Street Runners utterly bemused by unexpected competition…et voilà: a rip-roaring, helter-skelter adventure careening breathlessly through Regency society from silk-bedecked aristocracy to the secret parallel networks of servants’ underground gossip, dramshop desperados and stage-door sirens, not forgetting Byron’s eclectic, eccentric entourage.
The deliciously audacious writing style perfectly illuminates the quicksilver plot, beguiling the reader with the equally mercurial interaction of the likeable sleuths in love. Together they create as many fireworks as their brilliantly farcical last-ditch battle-cry for justice…Will Jacob persuade his pistol-toting, lock-picking, wild-haired leading lady that life with him would knock a return to treading the boards into a cocked hat? Whatever the outcome, the two find plenty of stolen moments to celebrate survival of their iconoclastic life on the edge with a passion. An uproarious delight.
