From Publishers Weekly
In this witty comedy of manners, the reader is conspiratorially invited into a circle of British aristocrats who relentlessly pursue the pound with wry smiles on their faces and knives behind their backs. The author ensures reader complicity, in fact, by dispensing privileged information as she kills off a major character, Chloe Post, on the first page, and then tells the majority of the story in flashback. Handsome, well-bred bachelor Morgan Steer, in need of funds, courts Chloe, heiress to the old-money Post fortune. But Morgan still feels an undying attachment to his first love, Caroline Barstow, who begins to question her own, lackluster marriage when Morgan and Chloe announce their engagement. Meanwhile, the Steer family's consensus is that the immense profitability of Morgan's impending match is offset by the union's lack of passion. The only enthusiastic supporter of the engagement is 90-year-old Leonora Steer, the irascible and domineering family matriarch. When the betrothed couple visits the Steer family home in Northumberland, their arrival catalyzes change among Leonora's three daughters, who have long bristled under their mother's tyranny. The havoc that ensues yields an archly funny examination of the subtle wiles of the rich. Palmer's third novel (after Scarlet Angel) is an acerbic tour de force.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
"Did she fall or was she pushed?" This tantalizing first line plunges the reader into the action of Palmer's (Scarlet Angel, LJ 9/15/93) latest witty English comedy of manners. Morgan Steer, a handsome bachelor who is seeking a wealthy bride, decides to marry Chloe Post, the heiress to an enormous fortune. Morgan brings Chloe for a visit to the family home in Northumberland, where she meets Grandmother Leonora, a 90-year-old dowager who controls the family's purse strings. Morgan's mother, his two aunts, and his former love, Caroline Barstow, become involved in old jealousies when they meet Chloe. Over the course of one year, passions run high and motives surface to explain Chloe's mysterious death. Solutions are at times a little too pat, but the spoof on high society, money, family, and power remains a great deal of fun. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
Stephanie B. Furtsch, New Rochelle P.L., Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
