A Lit Up Review
I have to confess straight up. I am a huge fan of David Neilson and his seventeenth century heroine, Sophie Rathenau. What can I say? I’m a sucker for intelligent, courage-to-the-verge-of-recklessness, striking-and-memorable-rather-than-fashionably-beautiful women in literature and Neilson broke the mould with Sophie from his first book, The Prussian Dispatch.
Neilson has written three captivating novels and a short story in this series about a woman earning a living away from her family by investigating the matters private and not-so-private of those who hire her. The world she lives in is the Habsburg Empire, a time of dramatic and unrelenting contrast between wealth and poverty, power and helplessness, religion and the muscling of ruling families across Europe and into Asia Minor. Against this background, which Neilson paints with a master’s knowledge and love, minor breezes often announce the coming of great storms.
The latest in the series, Serene sees Sophie commanded to accompany a Princess Royal to Venice, Italy. There’s a small problem. Sophie is forbidden to enter Venice after an encounter with a powerful criminal in the city became personal. Playing hide and seek while trying to protect the headstrong and spoiled princess is hard enough. When the princess convinces herself she’s in love, with a penniless musician…
