The Round Dozen

by Elizabeth Cadell

Wealthy London bachelor William Helder takes his task of tracking down a priceless family heirloom more seriously when the trail leads to the beautiful Hazel Paget.

Genres: Romance, Fiction

262 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Violet Elizabeth Vandyke was born on 10 November 1903 in Calcutta, British Raj, daughter of British parents, Elizabeth Lynch and Frederick Reginald Vandyke, a colonial officer. During the Great War she studied music in London, but refused a musical career and returned to India where she married in 1928 Henry Dunlop Raymond Mallock Cadell, and they had a son and daughter. After she was widowed ten years later, she returned to England.

Elizabeth wrote her first book 'My Dear Aunt Flora' during the Second World War in 1946, there after producing another 51 light-hearted, humourous and romantic books which won her a faithful readership in England and America. In addition to England and India, many of her books are set in Spain, France, and Portugal. She finally settled in Portugal, where her married daughter still lived.

She died on 9 October 1989, aged eighty-five.

Reviews

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's something about an old Elizabeth Cadell book. No excitement, no sex, no dramatic moments, just a nice, enjoyable book about nice, likeable people in a quieter, easier-going setting. Relaxing to read something like this.

[Katt Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly thought I wasn't going to like this book at all, and then, somehow I did.

The chapters are long. The details feel somewhat like a whole lot of random information...in fact there isn't even very much plot. But then everything starts weaving together. The characters start feeling...real. The quirks, the odd behaviors. Suddenly you feel like you're part of this village, this story as you look for the lost flagon and get to know not just Hazel and William, but everyone else. Sweet romance that is more character driven than most, and was enjoyable to read. I'm kind of sorry that this style of writing has gone out of fashion.

[Wendi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Elizabeth Cadell wrote and published a steady stream of pretty little romances, mysteries, and sometimes a combination of the two. This is one of them, mostly romance, small bit of mystery. Pleasant, light reading that goes down smooth and easy and leaves few traces. Sometimes, that is just what one looks for in a book.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

A laid-back approach to both the search for the missing flagon and to romance. I generally prefer a more aggressive approach but the book is easy and fun to read, so you can't go far wrong with that.

[Abigail Bok · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elizabeth Cadell wrote light, inoffensive romantic comedies in the bridge period between the end of World War II and the dawn of the modern romance. This is one of her later books, published in 1978 but in style looking backward to a more innocent age. There are contemporary flourishes—a little off-page cohabitation among secondary characters, more mixing of classes than would be thinkable in the 1930s—but for the most part this book could have been written somewhere around midcentury. Just how I like it.

William Helder is a young businessman running the family trading firm in London since his father’s death. He has a pleasant relationship with his stepmother, who takes the maternal role lightly but surfaces from time to time to remind him that he has not yet married and has not yet done his duty by his family heritage. Specifically, he has not yet taken up the hunt for a family heirloom that went missing in the early eighteenth century—a silver vessel given to an ancestor by William of Orange, one of a set of twelve. To please his stepmother, he follows up on a clue left behind by his father when he died suddenly of a heart attack fourteen months earlier.

William’s journey into Cambridgeshire after the missing artifact, naturally, leads to far more than he bargained for, specifically to a distracted (and engaged) young woman for whom he falls hard, on sight. Critics of instalove need not apply here! When she is stand-offish William pursues acquaintance with her family and friends, slowly including himself in their lives. He is a likable and easygoing soul, so this is not too difficult. Eventually she thaws enough to help him in his quest for the lost heirloom, an act of cooperation that leads to the dissolution of her engagement.

This is a classic Cadell setup, with a set of colorful and individual characters who don’t know one another well but take one another at face value quite quickly, providing a safe if eccentric space for the primary couple to warm to each other. It’s one of the pleasures of her novels for me, that the primary couple exist in a social context and are not constantly tête-à-tête. That said, in this case I don’t quite see the sense in these two people coming together, especially so quickly, and my feeling that they would exasperate each other after a couple of years dimmed my enthusiasm a bit. Still, it was a pleasant journey and I enjoyed the escape.

[MB (What she read) · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Boring characters who remain boring as well as excessively unromantic to the end. Not to mention the endemic sexism, joking at future infidelity, and with a mystery that I guessed early on in the book. This has not aged well. Not a favorite.

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice solid 3 stars, or 3.5. Sweet.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of "talk"

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once there were twelve flagons. Then, there were seven. Over the course of many years, the Helders managed to find eleven. A letter arrives, a trip ensues, death comes calling, and a survivor takes up the quest. In the process of searching, more treasure is found. So much treasure that the flagon runneth over!

[Patrizia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non all'altezza di altri della stessa autrice, come ad esempio 'The Corner Shop'. La storia scorre via senza troppi soprassalti, e non si può dire che ti tenga con il fiato sospeso.
Solo qualche lampo di bizzarria, qua e là, ci ricorda che siamo pur sempre nella patria di Dickens.

[ladydusk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was fun.

I will say that Cadell's "immediate falls" sometimes bother me. But there's always some work to make the relationship real, solid, and lasting. That was the case here.

A mystery to solve and love to be kindled.

[Bookworman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasant, more of a 3.5 for me.

[Eva B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun little romance in the midst of all my other reading

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A recent buy at work yielded several hardback D. E. Stevenson and Elizabeth Cadells. I had despaired of ever finding any in buys. They were accompanied by about 15 paperbacks as well. So I will be curating my collections here in the next few weeks. Some are not in great shape, but they are NOT ex-lib, as some of my current hardbacks are.

That said, The Round Dozen is a perfectly wonderful Elizabeth Cadell, with just a touch of mystery, rich men who don't know they need sensible, attractive wives. Sensible, attractive young ladies who have no time for clueless rich attractive young men - and of course, it all works out in the end.