Masquerade...

[fajrdrako]

The new audiobook for my walking sessions is the mystery novel Masquerade by William Satterthwaite. It was recommended on one of my mailing lists - Dunnett or Piffle, I forget which - and recommended in terms that made it sound like Just My Thing.

That can be deceptive. Look at Patrick O'Brien.

So I started listening to the tape yesterday, and it's wonderful. Utterly wonderful. Set in Paris in 1923, with two Pinkerton protagonists. The style is somewhere between Raymond Chandler and Dorothy L. Sayers, both writers I love. I liked the characters from the beginning, but knew I was doomed to love this book when one protagonist explained to a friend why a young man should study at Eton instead of an American school: among other things he would learn was "how to schedule into a busy day of study the occasional jolly bout of boyish sodomy."