The Frost Fair

De: Edward Marston

Narrado por: Glen McCready

December 1669. During one of the coldest winters in living memory, the Thames freezes over, and a frost fair is held on the thick ice. Architect Christopher Redmayne and puritanical constable Jonathan Bale are both visiting the fair when one of Bale's sons gets into trouble on the ice. They rescue the boy but in the process make a grim discovery - a frozen corpse....

©2003 Edward Marston (P)2004 W. F. Howes Ltd

too many one-dimensional characters

England in the 16th and 17th centuries fascinates me, so I looked forward to this book. But even more than the Nick Bracewell series, the characters are too predictable and seem to have one, usually negative, charcater flaw that defines most of their actions. After one encounter with most of the charcters, I found that I could predict each's behavior when next introduced to a scene. I don't expect every character to be psychologically complex, but too many were defined by their prejudices (anti foreigners, afraid of taint to the family name - while behaving like cads, ...). There were excellent touches to the book such as having Christopher Redmayne be an architect in a London that was rebuilding from the Great Fire and starting the book off with the frost fair. But the spy subplot had holes. Who was the spy working for? And making all his contacts dupes for his supposed charm.
Not a series that I will return to,