Daughter of the Game - Hardcover

Tracy Grant

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747269505 ISBN 13: 9780747269502

Publisher: Headline Book Publishing, 2002

Synopsis

With Daughter of the Game, Tracy Grant makes a stunning debut with a tale of nonstop adventure, dark mystery, and passionate romance. This novel lays bare the world of Regency London and explores the nature of good and evil, truth and lies, loyalty and betrayal...

A London night in November 1819. Outside, a mist hovers over the cobblestones and yellow pools of lamplight glow with murky radiance. And inside the glittering mansions of society's finest families lushly dressed ladies dance the night away with coolly elegant gentlemen...and the latest gossip is exchanged with a tilt of a fan. Surely in a world of such supreme confidence, no evil could touch those charmed lives.

On this cloud-shrouded evening the unthinkable comes to pass: six-year-old Colin Fraser vanishes from the cocoon of his family's Berkeley Square home. His disappearance plunges his socially -- and politically -- prominent parents, Charles and Mélanie Fraser, into a maze of intrigue, one that stretches back to the Napoleonic Wars.

Charles is a former intelligence agent and the grandson of a duke who is now a member of Parliament. He possesses a cool intellect and a burning sense of justice. Driven by the devastation he saw during the war and by his own family, s sordid history, he is a man who will not rest until he discovers the truth. Mélanie is a war refugee who charms London's beau monde at routs and receptions, all the while writing pamphlets on child labor and women's education. In a world where marriage is a matter of convenience and love is a game, their union is a model of constancy.

As Colin's ransom, his captors demand a ring...not just any ring, but the legendary Carevalo Ring. Many people, it seems, are enticed by the gold and ruby ornament, but are they lured by its beauty or by the promise of power that surrounds it? And there are those, perhaps even elements in the British government, who would kill to possess it.

Charles and Mélanie's race against time to recover the ring and save their son becomes a dark and perilous game, where plot plays upon counterplot. Their hunt takes them to the Drury Lane Theatre and the debtors' prison in the Marshalsea, a London gaming hell and a Brighton racing stable, a gin-soaked brothel and a Thames-side villa. They uncover a chilling labyrinth of secrets, both personal and political, that binds them together in unexpected ways and threatens to destroy them.

As layers of deception are stripped away, Charles and Mélanie begin to question all that they believed in. In a world of spies, blackmail, and murder, no one is quite who they seem to be. Deception and betrayal -- of a country, an ideal, a lover, a spouse -- come far more easily than truth and fidelity....

About this title

About the Author:

Tracy Grant graduated from Stanford University where she majored in British history and received the Firestone Award for Excellence in Research for her honor thesis. She is on the board of the Merola Opera Program, a training program for professional opera singers, coaches, and stage directors. She lives in northern California.

From Publishers Weekly:

Brit history maven Grant's debut novel aspires to be a historical thriller, an incisive study of the "spy game" and a revisionist, feminist take on pre-Victorian England, all rolled into one breathlessly paced 500-page package. Unfortunately, Grant's skills as historian exceed her talents as writer, and her graceful intentions are shanghaied by a welter of stale characterizations, unsurprising plot twists and clunky prose. (It's never encouraging when a book opens with a sentence like "It was the sort of night that cloaks a multitude of sins.") Centering upon M‚lanie and Charles Fraser, an upper-crust 1810s London power couple he's a member of parliament and the grandson of a duke; she's a flawlessly coifed social diva the novel kicks into gear when their beloved son, Colin, is kidnapped by thugs in the employ of a sinister Spanish antiroyalist. As the Frasers frantically investigate Colin's disappearance, they discover that the kidnappers are after the Carevalo Ring, a legendary object with Tolkienesque symbolic power, which may be in the possession of Helen Trevennen, a sly, erstwhile actress. The Frasers pursue the elusive Trevennen amid a barrage of revelations, most notably the less-than-shocking admission that M‚lanie is actually a former French spy. For the rest of the novel, the reader is plunged into a morass of uninspired action set pieces and maddeningly repetitive dialogues on betrayal, dishonor and forgiveness. Despite its many flaws, Grant's tale is at least swift-moving and fairly involving, leaving room for hope that her next endeavor will be more satisfying. Agent, Nancy Yost.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Headline Book Publishing
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0747269505
• ISBN 13: 9780747269502
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384