The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen (The Doomsday Books, 1)
Two men have an anonymous sexual encounter in London and do not expect to meet again. But when Gareth Inglis unexpectedly inherits a baronetcy and a house on Romney Marsh, he discovers that his recent lover is actually Joss Doomsday, boss of the local smuggling gang. What began as sexual attraction blossoms into love amid the wilds of the marsh and its secretive inhabitants, inhibited by Revenue officers, rival smugglers, and Gareth’s own relatives with secrets of their own.
Funny and serious by turns, and with a nail-biting climax, The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen has everything that a historical romance should have: Gareth and Joss are engaging, distinctive characters, and the secondary cast shines, from the formidable Ma Doomsday and Joss’s Granda, to Gareth’s dead father whose self-absorption and disregard for anyone but himself have set most of their troubles in motion.
K. J. Charles has a fine sense of the manners and customs of 1810, and of the marsh itself, a setting so distinctive and well-realized that it becomes a character in its own right, drawing a well-defined line between the Marshmen and “outmarsh.” The dialog is pitch perfect, never stilted and with a fine ear for the differing speech of London, the marsh gentry, and the Doomsday clan. The author has achieved that most difficult of tricks, meticulous research embedded in a narrative that never develops expository lumps of period information. It is just there, skillfully woven throughout, from the effects that the blockade of French goods during a war had on trade and ordinary people’s income, to the ways in which men who loved men found ways to meet in a repressive society. Highly recommended.
