Date Started: 1/6/15
Date Finished: 1/9/15
This was a library pick. A quick library pick - as I was being hurried by my husband. I thought it sounded intriguing and liked that it was sent during the Revolutionary War, so why not.
Reader beware:
This is a very slow book. That's not a knock against it, just something to know as you get into the plot. You are going to wait quite a while for things to really pick up, and even then, it's not until the concluding chapters of the book that you really get anywhere. Oh, you can guess about what's going on and sure, there are spies involved, but you won't really be able to "solve" the mystery because there isn't enough information to allow you to do so. Again, that's not necessarily a disappointment, just something to be aware of.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Of course Mr. Townley and Mr. Noak are spies. This is pretty easily discovered. And I actually thought it was pretty obvious that the mulatto child that dies was Arabella's. Now what I wasn't going to figure out was that Juvenal was the father of said child and that he was alive the entire time and was the man otherwise referred to as "Scarface" (oh and that he's Miriam's brother). None of that is really discoverable other than through the author telling us at the end.
The author did a great job of describing what New York City would have been like at the time - and as a former resident of NYC I enjoyed the references to places I knew. It was certainly a grittier time and the author brings all of that out.
That said, I thought the book could have been shortened a bit. I found myself weary of so many short chapters and wanted more to happen at a quicker pace (although: maybe the slowness is meant to echo the bureaucracy of the time thus lending the reader a truer sense of Mr. Savill's situation?).
I haven't read a book like this in quite a while so it was a nice departure in that sense.
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