Karen Robards: Scandalous

Pocket Books (Paperback), ISBN: 0-7434-1059-9

I rarely read books set in the Regency Period, but I enjoyed this one despite a very thin mystery plot that supplied the foundation for the romance. That said, I found the heroine, Gabriella Banning, delightful, completely realized and absolutely likable. And since Scandalous marks the first book in the three book series depicting the three Banning sisters, I look forward to meeting Gabby again. She personifies feistiness and dedication to family. Her two younger sisters, Claire and Elizabeth, should prove admirable heroines as well.

Set in 1810, when primogeniture ruled the land, the Bannings’ brother, the Earl of Wickham, falls prey to an assassin’s bullet, leaving the girls without means of support (their father died without leaving them a legacy). But since the girls’ brother lived in Ceylon, the news of his death hasn’t reached London — leaving the resourceful Gabby room to maneuver. Determined to see Claire, the family beauty, suitably wed before their father’s heir throws them out on the street and leaves them penniless, Gabby takes her sisters to London. Her plans meet an obstacle when she arrives at the family town house.

She finds a man there, posing as the Earl of Wickham. So Gabby does the only reasonable thing — she shoots him with his own weapon. Of course she doesn’t kill him, which means she must deal with the devil or else her own plan to save her sisters from poverty will fail.

The readers knows (if Gabby doesn’t) that the impostor intends to find the man behind the murder of the real earl and bring him to justice. The reader doesn’t know, until very late in the book, the why of it. And I must say that the author tied all the knots and undid all the villains with élan — at a ball, no less.

Patricia Lucas White

Patricia Lucas White’s latest historical novel, To Last a Lifetime, was an Eppie finalist for 2003. To Last a Lifetime and two of her fantasy romances, the Sapphire Award-winning A Wizard Scorned and The Godmother Sanction, can be ordered through Hard Shell Word Factory. Her recent contemporary, PS, I’ve Taken a Lover, is available from Lionhearted Books.