A Factory of Cunning
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
First published in 2005, this story tells how in the years before the French Revolution, London is an unsettled, dangerous place: the scene of an exquisite, thrilling tale of revelation and revenge.
One freezing May morning, two veiled women step off the boat from Holland. A French lady, calling her Mrs Fox, and her maid: they are on the run. Fearing for her life, Mrs Fox must make her way in a strange new city . . . but both her past and present crackle with danger.
Immoral and beautiful, Mrs Fox has always used men to support and amuse her. Trusting on her wits to keep ahead of the hangman, she manipulates others to survive: gullible Lord Danceacre; sweet Violet Denyss; and degenerate predator, Earl Much.
Yet in the Earl, Mrs Fox has met an adversary whose sadistic viciousness is a match for her own attempts to destroy him. Games are played with ever higher stakes, until someone must pay the penalty - but will it be the innocent or the damned? Through a dark, quick world of liars and lechers, where infidelity and intellect cross swords with desire or death, Mrs Fox hurtles towards a horrible climax.
Here is London, 1784 . . . Welcome to a factory of cunning.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"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.
