Publisher's Weekly Review
"Cunning" is an apt word for the plot of Stockley's (The Edge of Pleasure) intriguing historical novel, set in 18th-century England; "devilishly clever" would be even more appropriate. The truth about any character or event is never what one expects, despite arch foreshadowing, and the reader is unprepared for the shocking denouement, which carries echoes of Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the Grand Guignol. A beautiful 29-year-old Parisian aristocrat arrives in London in 1784, fleeing a scandal and the pursuit of a vengeful victim. On the surface, the penniless woman, who adopts the name Mrs. Fox, makes admirable efforts to establish herself in English society. Sharp-tongued and arrogant, she doesn't hide the fact that during a sojourn in Holland, she was the madam of a whorehouse, or that she is coolly manipulative, or that she is voracious for money. She meets her match in the mysterious Earl Much, a man who oozes malevolence and power. Their battle to the death involves a large cast of Dickensian characters, each one of whom hides his or her true identity. Narrated with wit and sexually provocative detail, the novel portrays London as a pit of licentiousness, amorality, greed and deceit. It's entertaining and suspenseful, and the most monstrous characters are those who wear the facade of moneyed respectability. Agent, David Miller at Rogers, Coleridge, and White (U.K.). (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A Dutch philosopher nursing a grudge sends a marquise with a scandalous past to London to work the downfall of an even more depraved earl. Further debauchery ensues--in a guiltily pleasurable slice of fashionable Georgian life. Stockley stirred a hellish brew of good writing and repellent characters in The Edge of Pleasure (2004). She applies the same technique in this richly intricate revenge tale that uses journal entries and correspondence to document the murders, incest, forgeries, and other criminal activities engendered and plied by "Mrs. Fox," the missile lobbed by Hubert Van Essel from Amsterdam across the North Sea to Salamander Row, the address of the Earl Much, collector of art and ruiner of women. Van Essel has chosen his weapon of mass destruction with loving care. "Mrs. Fox," who found it necessary to flee Paris following the stabbing death of her lover and the destruction of two virtuous ladies, enjoyed great success as a madam in Holland thanks to financial assistance from Van Essel, a neighbor who became enamored of her cynical intelligence. But faced with exposure of her capital crimes when a figure from the Parisian past pops up in her bordello, the marquise and her long-suffering but most capable servant Victoire take it on the lam to London with money and a charge from Van Essel to ruin his former friend the earl. Mrs. Fox's machinations drag in the silly country daughters of a shady clergyman, the heir to a thread fortune, an apparently stupid peer, a moody American painter, and a pretty young dressmaker-prostitute who becomes Galatea to Mrs. Fox's Pygmalion. Everything comes to a head in a sort of tableau vivant in a cathouse where an innocent virgin is lowered ex macchina before a crowd of rowdies and bidding is opened on her virtue. Corpses begin to drop, secrets begin to be revealed, and justice, after a fashion, is done. Polished, clever, and really quite shocking. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Life may have been nasty, brutish, and short in eighteenth-century London, but it was also salacious, passionate, and vengeful. An enigmatic French noblewoman escapes France with her loyal maid. Dubbing themselves Mrs. Fox and Victoire, the women lodge in a seedy boardinghouse and plot to reign over the London ton as its newest high-society madams. This pursuit will take Mrs. Fox to the country estate of oafish Fred Danceacre and the sumptuous mansion of epicurean degenerate Urban Fine. Intrigues abound--an American painter falls fiercely in love with the newest chick in Mrs. Fox's henhouse but hasn't the funds to buy her virtue or freedom, a pretty slattern masquerades as an airheaded heiress, and a wronged Frenchman swears revenge on Mrs. Fox for social crimes committed a lifetime and country ago. Readers will eagerly turn the pages of this epistolary novel, chortling at the dalliances and gasping at the machinations, anticipating the delicious moment when Mrs. Fox's house of cards collapses. Give to book groups and Regency romance readers looking for depth. --Kaite Mediatore Copyright 2005 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Running from scandal, the shadowy Mrs. Fox squares off against the equally shadowy Earl March in 1800s England. From the deputy editor of London's Evening Standard. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.