A Dangerous Affair by Caro Peacock

A murdered ballet dancer and further adventures of Nineteenth Century sleuth Liberty Land – 3 Stars ***

By Gabrielle Pantera

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 2/2/2009 – “Ordinary people walked a lot in the nineteenth century,” says A Dangerous Affair author Caro Peacock. “If Liberty walks from Mayfair to Covent Garden, I need to know how long it would take her and what she’d pass on the way. I was in the middle of Leicester Square in London, trying unsuccessfully to visualize what it would have looked like 170 years ago, when I accidentally stepped into the path of one of those quiet, electric-powered, sweeper trucks.”

Fortunately, the driver stopped. Peacock says he asked her, with remarkably good temper, “Looking for something, love?” Peacock answered, “Yes, I’ve lost 1838!” The driver grinned and drove on. “They’re used to nuts in Leicester Square,” says Peacock. It took Peacock about six months for research and six month writing to complete the A Dangerous Affair.

Caro Peacock keeps you guessing who the killer is. Liberty Lane gets her second murder case to solve. Disraeli calls upon Liberty Lane. She’s out riding her horse when he asks her to find find out what she can about Columbine, a ballet dancer. Before Liberty can find out much, Columbine is murdered.

“I nearly broke my neck in a trampoline accident. “So, I wrote quite a lot of A Dangerous Affair with my head tilted sideways. Better now, and upright.”

“A Dangerous Affair grew directly from the first Liberty Lane novel: A Foreign Affair,” says Peacock. “I’d left her homeless and with no money, on her way to London with a couple of friends and a thoroughbred mare. I had to see where she went from there.”

“Liberty Lane’s 22 years old in this book, with both parents dead and only one close relative,” says Peacock. “A younger brother is serving with the East India Company, so he’s too far away to help or disapprove. She’s had a good, though unconventional, education and speaks several foreign languages. Her parents were radically inclined and approved of the French revolution, which makes her a bit of an outsider socially and politically.”

“Her manners are ladylike, unless seriously provoked,” says Peacock. “She’d like to have more to spend on clothes, but with an unpredictable income, most of what she wears is stylish second-hand. She’s at her happiest when riding at a gallop in London’s Hyde Park on her horse, Rancie.”

Who’s the killer? There are many possibilities. The writing is old fashioned in the depth of details, but it doesn’t get too bogged down. Enjoy the ride to find out who the killer is.

Caro Pecock grew up in Yorkshire, in the Dales, with miles of rolling hill country where they train fine horses and there are more sheep than people. She’s related to the Peacocks who trained English Derby winner Dante.Corretly. Peacock lives in Herefordshire, on the English side of the Welsh border.

A Dangerous Affair by Caro Peacock
TradePaperback, 320 pages, $13.99
Publisher: Avon A
Release Date: January 27, 2009
ISBN: 9780061447488