The Spymaster’s Lady

The Spymaster’s Lady

Joanna Bourne

Historical – Regency

Publication Info.: Berkley Sensation, 2008, ISBN: 9780425219607

 

I’m going to tell you a little story about this book, but first I have to tell you about my mother-in-law.  She’s a reader, and not a snobby one.  She likes a fun novel.  She’s also the wife of a Methodist minister.  She’s pretty down to earth, though, so for her birthday, I gave her a copy of LaVyrle Spencer’s Then Came Heaven.  It’s a romance, but not graphic enough to embarrass either of us, and it has a pretty tame cover that doesn’t scream “There’s sex in this book!”  I felt comfortable giving it to her, and she enjoyed reading it.

Fast forward a few months.  My in-laws were visiting when a friend dropped by to return a sack of books I’d leant her (one point in favor of print books over e-books).  My mother-in-law intercepts the bag at the door declaring, “Oh, are these more of your books?”  I tried to discretely remove them, but she insisted–she would just borrow whatever was in the bag; after all, she’s not picky.  So my minister’s-wife mother-in-law randomly grabs a book and pulls out THIS one.  “Oh, my!” she says.  My thoughts exactly.  There we stand, two thirty-something women in the front hallway of my own home feeling like teenagers caught sneaking out with boys.

My mother-in-law?  She puts the book back in the bag and insists on taking them all.  The next time they visited?  She wanted to know if I had more Bourne novels.  Yes.  Yes, I do!  She’s been combing my shelves ever since.

Now, my mother-in-law’s liking this book isn’t my endorsement.  It’s just my way to say, whatever this cover says to you, the book itself is fantastic.  In fact, I should warn you that it’s likely to ruin you for other books for a while.  It’s amazingly well-written, superbly well-plotted, and consuming Bourne’s characters is like eating Thanksgiving dinner–you’re going to be satisfied, and maybe a little over-stuffed.  The next few books you read are probably going to be grave disappointments.  I promise you.  If not, I can only deduce you have a rocky, fallow soul.

Okay, so Annique Villiers is a spy, the elusive Fox Cub, and also French, and Robert Guy is the British spymaster the title promises.  Obviously, they’re enemies.  Unlike the other Bourne spy novels with which we’re so familiar, these spies are not forever killing people with benign household objects.  These are not 007 spies; they’re John Le Carre spies, which ratchets up the emotional intensity and complexity of the novel.

Bourne also manages to give Annique a French accent when she’s speaking English without employing strangle spellings, or switching “y’s” with “z’s.”  Her accent is in the awkwardly chosen adjective or unusual word order.  And when she’s speaking French?  You can tell without being told–her language suddenly becomes fluid like a native speaker.  It’s brilliant.

If you can’t get past the cover, there’s a new one, but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the book since Annique is either crawling through a French or British prison cell, or the French or British countryside.  She’s never strolling in a misty pastoral garden scene, but there you have it.  You could always buy the digital version and avoid the issue all together (a point in favor of e-books over print).

And if you read it and like it, tell me if you figured out the surprise beforehand, or if you were grinning like an idiot somwhere about 70 pages in like I was.