This is not a mystery, really. Yes, there is a death, and it is mysterious, but it is really more of a take on a 1960s gothic -- a woman who is an outsider goes to the strange, empty house and is surrounded by family tensions she does not understand and menaced by forces which she is only vaguel...
When the wayward lady Imogen Swain summons journalist Jemima Shore to her home, Jemima once again finds herself in the thick of love affairs--old and new--intrigue, and betrayal. For the colorful Lady Imogen kept diaries documenting her passionate affair with a rising young politician who has sin...
Bestselling author Fraser combines her passion for history with her wickedly readable fiction in her most glittering Jemima Shore mystery yet. It seems a 17-century viscount has been stepping out of his portrait--just before the violent death of his 16th successor. While a bitter family feud ensu...
Structurally this was much better than the first two; Fraser has found her ground in the genre, here, writing an actual mystery in which her detective investigates, set in a London social milieu that she can write both comfortably and believably. It had a taste of the guilty pleasure, her combin...
Barely average as a murder mystery. Antonia Fraser might be a decent biographer, but she's clearly better at analysing historical characters and events than creating her own. Oxford Blood takes place, rather obviously, at an Oxford college, where there's mystery about the true parentage of an ari...
" 'We don't want to hurt her. We must remember that. All of us. She is after all innocent ... Well, isn't she?'"With these words the leader of the secret group tries to establish the ground rules of its conspiracy concerning the bride, HRH Princess Amy of Cumberland, a 22-year-old British Prin...
My second time to read an Antonia Fraser (born 1932) book. My first by her was a biography, Marie Antoinette: The Journey (4 stars). Lady Antonia Fraser is the widow of Harold Pinter (1930-2008), the 2005 Nobel for Literature winner. Although I liked this book, I thought that Lady Fraser was a be...