March 28, 2016
Rosalind Thorne, the protagonist of this impressive first in a new Regency series from Wilde (Lord of the Rakes), lost everything when she and her mother were abandoned by her profligate father. Yet the resourceful Rosalind has managed to maintain a place on the fringes of society, becoming a “useful woman” to the fashionable ladies of London by helping manage their love affairs. When libertine Jasper Aimesworth is found dead on the floor of Almack’s Assembly Rooms, Rosalind is approached by Adam Harkness, a Bow Street runner, to help him look into the matter. Rosalind discovers suspicious entanglements between Jasper and people she cares for, including a former beau of hers, Devon Winterborne, Duke of Casselmaine. Wilde brings the haute monde of early 19th-century London to vivid life, and the characters she peoples it with are complex individuals whose basic decency, or lack of it, is carefully hidden behind a facade of manners and propriety. Agent: Shawna McCarthy, McCarthy Literary.