Having read seven novels of Georgette Heyer, in my quest to gradually work through all of her novels, I already knew that her volumes sparkled with wit, not unlike Jane Austen’s.
However, this novel is the funniest I’ve experienced. It reminds me of those eighteenth century comic operas like Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio, which has a cast of bandits, strong female characters, and an abduction scene. In THE TALISMAN RING we have a band of smugglers, strong female characters, and a murder to be solved.
When Sylvester, Baron Lavenham lies dying at the great old age of eighty in 1793, he exacts a promise from his great-nephew Sir Tristram Shield to marry his granddaughter Eustacie de Vaubon.
Poor Eustacie is a scion of a French noble family and had looked forward to a splendid match with a French duke. Alas, the French Revolution interrupted her dreams, and she was obliged to leave France with her maternal grandfather Sylvester to live in the less exciting atmosphere of England.
Eustacie, being French, understands very well what a mariage de convenance means. There is to be no love within such a union. The couple will tolerate each other until the arrival of the heir and spare, and then they will go their separate ways, finding lovers amongst other married couples of the British aristocracy.
But Eustacie is a spirited 18-year-old who has read rather too many of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels (satirized in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey) to be content with such an emotionally arid arrangement. She wants to marry for love, and so instead of allowing her fiancé Sir Tristram to “carry her off” to Bath where she can play endless games of backgammon with his dear mama, she escapes one night and…falls in with a den of thieves.
But all is not as it seems. Although some of these men are rough, and one of them wants to strangle her, the leader of this little band turns out to be her “romantic” cousin Ludovic, the Lost Heir to the Lavenham estate.
Ludovic is not supposed to be lurking in the depths of the Sussex woods. He is not even supposed to be in England as there is a price on his head because most think he murdered someone. But Ludovic is one of those people we would now describe as “thrill seekers.” He is completely unfazed by the danger he faces, and like many a young man in his early twenties takes rather too many risks. It is only thanks to his strong-minded friends and relatives than he manages to avoid the gallows.
If you are intrigued, and want to read an early novel of Georgette Heyer’s that blends romantic comedy with thriller, you should definitely read THE TALISMAN RING. Five stars.
