September 29, 2014
The latest Spymaster historical romantic thriller reunites Thomas “Pax” Paxton with old friends Doyle (The Forbidden Rose) and Hawker (The Black Hawk). The British and French hold an uneasy truce, but the French Revolution rages on. Camille Leyland, one of the best code-breakers working for the British Service, has personal secrets as well as professional ones. She is actually Vérité, one of the child-spies the French trained and slipped into British families. Most of those children have grown up, renounced their pasts, and gone on to live quietly in England, but Pax, or Devoir, remains one of the stealthiest spies and assassins in the Service. Cami and Pax were best friends as children and they meet again when Cami goes to meet a blackmailer who knows about her past. Sinister plots are everywhere, as the blackmailer spins his elaborate schemes, Cami and Pax lay their traps, and their families and allies make their own plans. Bourne’s latest is less intense than previous installments, and she makes much of the comedy in the various characters’ futile attempts to keep secrets from their fellow master spies.