The Pretender by Celeste Bradley
Oct. 21st, 2009 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreFleeing an odious (aren’t they all?) suitor, Agatha Cunnington has come to London looking for her brother, James, who has recently disappeared. Realizing that single young women of good breeding get frowned at a lot if they’re running loose alone, she creates a fictional husband, Mortimer Applequist, who was once an imaginary friend Agatha and James blamed their childhood mischief on.
Unknown to Agatha, James is Sekritly A Spy (aren’t they all?) and a member of the Liar’s Club, a group of spies composed mostly of former criminals, and right about the time he went missing, members of the club were attacked on missions that only he and his superior, Simon Rains, knew about. Rains, naturally, is highly suspicious when a woman claiming to be a Mrs. Applequist moves into James’s house and starts using money in James’s account. Money that was conveniently deposited shortly after James disappeared. Disguising himself as a chimneysweep, Simon goes to Agatha’s so that he can later break in, but instead ends up hired to impersonate Mortimer Applequist, as Agatha’s lies are catching up with her.
I read the sequel to this, The Spy first, so I went in knowing how the James subplot ended up, but I’m pretty sure it’s still a plausible (as such things go) spy story going in cold. And hey! Spies who aren’t all noblemen who I’m quite sure wouldn’t ever have been spies! Based on the whole 2 books of hers I’ve read, Bradley seems to like taking a lot of the typical betrayal/trick tropes of romance novels and sets them up so that either neither party can justifiably blame the other, or that the accusations of betrayal make sense under the circumstances.
But mostly, this book is just incredibly fun and often very funny, with the only really cringeworthy part being an earlier scene with the Designated Evil Other Woman (which was actually less cringeworthy for me having read The Spy, so I knew what was up with her). But both Agatha and Simon are a blast and the plot, while not particularly original, does have a fairly original take on common tropes.
Unknown to Agatha, James is Sekritly A Spy (aren’t they all?) and a member of the Liar’s Club, a group of spies composed mostly of former criminals, and right about the time he went missing, members of the club were attacked on missions that only he and his superior, Simon Rains, knew about. Rains, naturally, is highly suspicious when a woman claiming to be a Mrs. Applequist moves into James’s house and starts using money in James’s account. Money that was conveniently deposited shortly after James disappeared. Disguising himself as a chimneysweep, Simon goes to Agatha’s so that he can later break in, but instead ends up hired to impersonate Mortimer Applequist, as Agatha’s lies are catching up with her.
I read the sequel to this, The Spy first, so I went in knowing how the James subplot ended up, but I’m pretty sure it’s still a plausible (as such things go) spy story going in cold. And hey! Spies who aren’t all noblemen who I’m quite sure wouldn’t ever have been spies! Based on the whole 2 books of hers I’ve read, Bradley seems to like taking a lot of the typical betrayal/trick tropes of romance novels and sets them up so that either neither party can justifiably blame the other, or that the accusations of betrayal make sense under the circumstances.
But mostly, this book is just incredibly fun and often very funny, with the only really cringeworthy part being an earlier scene with the Designated Evil Other Woman (which was actually less cringeworthy for me having read The Spy, so I knew what was up with her). But both Agatha and Simon are a blast and the plot, while not particularly original, does have a fairly original take on common tropes.