Read This Review & More Like It On My Blog! But we don’t see India as a madam here so that may explain the tamer aspect. I think this was little tamer book than the first one and less snarky but not too much. There was some hints but I hope we will learn more at some point. I also want to know more about their past. I’m curious to see how this will turn out but I hope we get to see them together at some point. We see more flirting between India and French which started in the previous book. The old marchioness was so much fun! I loved the interaction between India and the marchioness. It was fun seeing India trying play the servant part. India will play the part of housemaid to an old marchioness who spends most of her waking hours snuffing anything possible.įinally I got to read the second book! And it didn’t disappoint me! Can’t believe it took me so long. He enlists the help of India and French to prevent that from happening. When Queen Victoria suddenly decides to spend her Christmas in Scotland, the prime minister gets worried that nationalists try to assassinate the queen. I'll be reading some of Alan Gordon's Fools' Guild series. Really, can't authors come up with something other than putting the heroine in apparent mortal danger and having happen Just In Time? It's right up there with the bomb that always has the red LCD counter ticking down, you know, the bomb that has been defused 187,443 times but not once ever with more than two seconds left on the timer.īah. There are several parts that feel like padding.Īnd the ending. Perhaps she too had family involved in the Clearances.įinally, I suspect Carr sketched out her story and found she was quite a few thousand words short of what her contract required. Carr is trying to cast him as a sardonic but charming and capable agent, but he just comes across as a lazy jerk, and not a very smart one at that.Īlso, as others have noted, Carr seems to have had a real hate on for Victoria. Nothing much has happened (and remember, in the first book we had a corpse right off the bat!) Everyone but India has figured out that two of the major characters are not what they seem (well, three if you count India).įrench has to go. Speaking of halfway, the first 170 pages or so were downright boring. This Berkley Prime Crime edition was badly in need of a copy editor when I got to 16 major corrections I stopped counting, and I wasn't halfway. She seems less intelligent, shallower, and much more judgmental. Book 1 showed us a clever character who can run a business, deal with people, and face danger.īook 2 gives us a snobbish ditherer who spends half the book admiring muscular calves.

India Black by Carol K. Carr