Book Review: Unholy Loves

Reviewed By: Catherine Thompson - RAM

Unholy Loves     Amazon US TPB Amazon Canada TPB
Lisa Appignanesi
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Historical
McArthur & Co., $10.99 mass market, 454 pages

January, 1900: A new year. A new century. Yet Marguerite, Comtesse de Landois, feels as though she’s travelled back in time as her train rolls through the Loire Valley. Her husband Olivier has summoned her back to La Rochambert from Paris, but has not explained why. Her quiet journey is derailed when a dead body is discovered on the tracks. And Marguerite’s young secretary Martine seems doubly shaken by the dead man’s appearance.

But the greatest shock for Marguerite comes when she arrives at the chateau and Olivier presents her with a child, a baby boy he claims to have rescued from the icy waters of the river and wishes to adopt. Marguerite doesn’t know what to make of this, knowing her husband’s proclivities better than anyone, but she starts searching for the baby’s mother. At the same time, she inquires for the whereabouts of Martine’s sister Yvette, for Martine has not heard from her sister in months. When it becomes clear that Yvette has disappeared, Marguerite calls upon Chief Inspector Emile Durand. Together they try to unravel the secrets that face them.

Appignanesi does a fine job of recreating turn-of-the-last-century rural France. The reader gets a real sense of what it must have been like to live in a small town in that place and time, and especially what it was to be a woman then.

Unholy Loves is a tightly written, well plotted mystery. It is also an examination of passion, in its many forms: romantic love, religious fervour, greed. Marguerite is a fine character, a woman who cherishes her independence in a time and a culture that force women into one of two roles: saint or sinner.

Catherine Thompson - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Catherine Thompson - RAM