The Rival Queens: A Novel of Artifice, Gunpowder and Murder in Eighteenth-Century London
Books / Hardcover
ISBN: 0688176844 / Publisher: William Morrow, September 2002
Scavenging Restoration London for scandals that can keep them afloat, the impoverished Countess Ashby and her faithful maidservant, Alpiew, stumble across a murder at a philosophy lecture hall and discover an abundance of suspects.
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<p>Restoration London, 1700. Those intrepid and destitute heroines the Countess Ashby de la Zouche and her maidservant Alpiew -- whose most recent caper involved trying to uncover an adulterer and accidentally unearthing a plot involving corruption, alchemy, transvestitism, treason and murder -- are once more scavenging for scandal to entertain the readers of that scurrilous rag the <em>London Trumpet.</em> With the tireless bailiffs hot on their skirt tails, the Countess and Alpiew are reduced to seeking refuge in a philosophical lecture at the York Buildings concert hall. But their expectations of a dull evening are confounded when one of the players staggers onto the stage, her hands dripping with blood. A doyenne has been decapitated under their very noses!</p><p>In the resulting chaos the unlikely sleuths find themselves with an abundance of suspects: players, phanatiques, punks, ruffians in pink ribbons, a Punch-and-Judy man -- not to mention a painter with a silver proboscis. Determined to leave no stone unturned, they relentlessly pursue their suspect from the Tower of London to Bedlam, with a brief detour to the wilds of Wapping. Along the way they uncover -- with a little help from Samuel Pepys -- a vast web of intrigue and corruption that extends into the highest echelons of both society and the judiciary.</p><p>Building upon her beguiling first novel, <em>Unnatural Fire,</em> Fidelis Morgan once again weaves a fabulous romp through London's darker and seamier side, with a charged historical mystery that is as darkly funny as it is gripping and entertaining. An unforgettable story of murder and mayhem, <em>The Rival Queens</em> is a wonderfully complex and revealing portrait of London at the dawn of the eighteenth century.</p>
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