The Water Nymph
Set in Elizabethan London, The Water Nymph is a romantic romp full of espionage and intrigue. Sophie Champion matches wits with Crispin Foscari, Earl of Sandal, to solve the murders of her godfather and the Queen’s printer, who may have been blackmailing him. Crispin works as a secret agent for the Queen, but has fallen out of favor. Accused of treason, he has fourteen days to exonerate himself or face execution.
Sophie is attractive and an enterprising businesswoman. She and Crispin feel both magnetized and repelled when he finds her at the murder scene. The printer, who was instrumental in an extortion scheme to sell subscriptions to people with a secret in their past, has a bill of credit with her name on it clutched in his dead fingers.
Written in floating omniscient, the prose is third person, past tense. The author has an amusing turn of wit in the lovers’ repartee and uninhibited sex. She introduces elements of bedroom farce in a misunderstanding, using metaphor and understatement in a ping-pong of double entendres. Her other strength is in creating characters like Crispin’s two aunts, who amuse with their starchy originality. Sophie is a fresh image for her hidebound age.
