Summary: England, 1904. Two years ago, Captain Archie Curtis lost his friends, fingers, and future to a terrible military accident. Alone, purposeless and angry, Curtis is determined to discover if he and his comrades were the victims of fate, or of sabotage.
Curtis’s search takes him to an isolated, ultra-modern country house, where he meets and instantly clashes with fellow guest Daniel da Silva. Effete, decadent, foreign, and all-too-obviously queer, the sophisticated poet is everything the straightforward British officer fears and distrusts.
As events unfold, Curtis realizes that Daniel has his own secret intentions. And there’s something else they share—a mounting sexual tension that leaves Curtis reeling.
As the house party’s elegant facade cracks to reveal treachery, blackmail and murder, Curtis finds himself needing clever, dark-eyed Daniel as he has never needed a man before…
Well, I read the sequel to this first (Proper English, about Fen and Pat who are in this as well) and was like ‘well I’d certainly like to see more!’ so I picked this up! Even though both involve a good deal of death and blackmail, the mysteries had very different tones to them. Especially since partway through, this one turns into a spy caper.
I have a confession: I have gone the whole book without looking up what a ‘dago’ is and I’m pretty sure it’s nothing nice.
Man. The moment where the POV stops calling the love interest by the surname and by his first, that’s A+ right there.
It had an amazingly gory end. A ‘I really really was not expecting that’ level of gory.
Overall I think Proper English was more my speed, but I definitely enjoyed reading this one and was disappointed to find out there was no further ones in the series. I’ll just have to try her other books.