A Desperate Gamble

Bow Street's Best #3

by Janice Bennett

Taking a job as a maid in a notorious London gambling hell to confront the rake who had seduced her sister, Annie Gooden finds herself the prime suspect when her quarry turns up dead and joins forces with dashing Benjamin Frake to prove her innocence. Original.

Genres: Regency

320 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1992

About the author

Janice Bennett never intended to be a writer, but with B.A. degrees in anthropology and classical civilizations and an M.A. in folklore and mythology, what choice did she have? Her first jobs included the usual abc's—archaeologist, bookkeeper and college craft instructor. Then, on a whim, she submitted her first novel, a Regency, and life took on a fascinating new twist.
Several books later, she began presenting work-shops, teaching novel writing at a community college, serving as a writing panel member at WorldCons...then became an editor. So far, she has written twenty-six novels and more than twenty novellas and received a number of awards, including two Lifetime Achievement awards from Romantic Times/Rave Reviews.
In her spare time, she spins wool (and pet hair), knits, crochets, weaves, and quilts. She lives in a rural town with her husband, never enough cats, a huge dog, an organic garden—and a computer she swears runs on chocolate chips, not silicon ones, which explains a lot about her.
www.janicebennettbooks.com

Reviews

[Kathy * Bookworm Nation · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a charming little mystery. It was a little different from most regencies since the main characters were commoners. Annie is a maid at a gambling house who happens upon a murder. The handsome Benjamin Frake, a Bow Street Runner, is called in to investigate. The mystery reminded me of those murder mystery games you play where everyone chooses an identity and you go about trying to figure out “who done it”. It’s narrowed down to a few people, but you’re kept guessing throughout the story. As for the romance, it was sweet. I admit it’s a little hard to believe they would be talking marriage in such a short amount of time, but I guess back then people probably moved things along quicker than they do now. I liked Annie, she was feisty and loyal. Frake was also likable. Even though Annie was a suspect he never really believed she was involved and set out to figure out who was responsible, all the while falling in love with the feisty maid. Overall, it was enjoyable, but not a favorite.

Content: Clean.

[Nightwitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interested in this because of its leads - a Bow Street Runner and a housemaid (in a gambling parlor). It's rare to find regency romance that focuses on non-aristocracy. Unfortunately, other than the leads, it was a very typical regency romance of the 1990s; the carriage terminology is correct but people's interactions owe more to the manners of the 1990s than the 1810s, the numbers don't make sense (a low-level servant inherits 500 pounds and no one deems it worthy of comment? that's more than a judge or barrister was likely to make in a year, and more than ten times a laborer's annual income), and the author has a very bad idea of what poverty actually entailed in the regency (somehow our housemaid heroine has obtained a full-time wetnurse for her unemployed, sick sister and her sister's sickly illegitimate baby, and our not-wealthy hero lives in an entire suite of rooms into which he is able to bring two adult women and a baby without anyone lifting an eyebrow) or how much authority the Bow Street Runners had. The mystery is... okay. The romance is... okay. Overall, if you like 1990s regencies you may find this a breath of fresh air, but if you're not glomming up every Edith Layton you can get your hands on already, this isn't going to do anything for you.

[Sylvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Regency