Slam the door in death’s face
THE LAST HOURS by Minette Walters
(Allen & Unwin £20) BY 1348, the terrifying Black Death is killing off people in their thousands. In Dorset, the boorish Sir Richard of Develish is away from home negotiating the marriage of his daughter.
While he is away, the plague creeps closer and his clever and capable wife, Lady Anne, orders the domain and its inhabitants to be sealed off from the world.
Division among the serfs and servants is rife, and her daughter is mutinous. Even with the support of Thaddeus, a trusted bastard slave, Anne has no idea if this last-ditch gamble will succeed.
Walters’s skill and subtlety in portraying the suffering and disarray of a feudal society in which disease rampages and God has seemingly gone mad is masterly.
And, as with her bestselling suspense novels, the psychological drama is gripping.
FALSE LIGHTS by K.J. Whittaker
(Head of Zeus £14.99) THE ‘what if’ historical novel can be a risk — but not if you are a writer as talented as K. J. Whittaker. In 1817, having defeated England, Napoleon has imprisoned Wellington on the Scilly Isles and put his ex-wife Josephine in charge of the country.
For the defeated British, life is grim and dangerous.
In Cornwall, however, resistance is growing, and Lord Crow, Wellington’s former intelligence officer, his brother Kitto and Hester, the black daughter of one of Nelson’s captains, are enmeshed in a plot to free the Iron Duke.
The quality of the story in itself is sufficient to carry this novel, but excellent writing and characterisation pushes it up several notches — with special mention for Hester: a fizzing-with-life, believable and resourceful heroine if ever there was one.
THE BETRAYAL by Kate Furnivall
(Simon & Schuster £7.99) TWIN sisters Romaine and Florence are haunted by a violent and shocking childhood event to which they have both reacted differently.
It is 1938 and, in Paris, the hard-drinking, poker-playing Romaine is an aviatrix who goes out of her way to court risk. Meanwhile, beautiful Florence lives the life of a privileged It-Girl of the time. War is coming, and no one is in any doubt that political loyalties and family ties will be tested.
Even so, why does Florence beg Romaine to socialise with an important German — and is he connected to their past?
Toxic memories, family trauma and the drama of war are shaken into a colourful cocktail. At times, the writing veers towards the overblown, but pre-war Paris is vividly conveyed and the flying detail is excellent.