Orphaned Veronica Speedwell has just buried the last of the two spinster aunts who raised her. She is looking forward to making her own way in the world now, exploring the world while catching butterflies, and possibly allowing herself a dalliance or two with a dashing foreign gentleman. She is shocked to discover an intruder in her home and is shortly thereafter approached by a distraught German baron who insists he has information about her past, and the she is in terrible danger. While Veronica […]
Ladies and Phalluses and Killers and Artists
Ellepkay won a A Perilous Undertaking as a set of CDs, but discovered that she already had a copy. She offered the CDs, and I gladly took her up on her offer. The audio version was about 12 1/2 hours, and I listened to it over two days. It was an entertaining listen. The narrator, Angele Masters, did a good job of portraying the energy of the book. If it’s set in Victorian London, there must be a salacious sex subplot. We assume, don’t we, […]
You are the Most Dangerous Person in the British Empire
A few weeks ago in the Facebook group (Cannonball Read Book Chat), Ellepkay offered an audio copy of Deanna Raybourn’s A Perilous Undertaking. I said, “yes, please.” A Perilous Undertaking is the second of Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell Mysteries. Naturally, I had to read the first book first. A curious Beginning is only $2.99 on Amazon Kindle. I highly recommend it. I spent the first third of this book alternately delighted and annoyed by Miss Veronica Speedwell. Eventually I settled into delight. I was initially annoyed that Veronica […]
“One may be elegant or enthusiastic, but seldom both.”
I had somehow forgotten how much I love Deanna Raybourn’s prose. I will not forget again. I think I highlighted more passages in this book than I have for any other before. I will try not to bog down this review with all of them, and to leave you some tidbits of joy to discover for yourself should you chose to read it. In 1887 Veronica Speedwell is a young woman (mid 20s) who was raised by her ‘aunts’, two women who adopted her as […]