Sir Philips Folly

The Poor Relations series is truly a reader's treat. Not only are the plots intricate and well done, the characters are fascinating and the atmosphere of London in the Regency is real enough to touch--or so it seems. The action centers around the fashionable hotel founded and run by a small group of people who have fallen from grace (i.e., funds), so to speak. One of the owners, Sir Philip, has brought his doxy to live amongst them, a grossly fat and lazy woman who does nothing but eat and bed the aging Sir Philip. As an aside, a very similar character appears in Lochdubh and is murdered in Ms. Beaton's Hamish Macbeth series. A second plot involves a nineteen-year old girl who is in wont of a husband, preferably the handsome earl who comes to reside at the hotel. The girl's widowed mother dresses her daughter like a school girl because the mother is in search of a new husband. But somehow the plots, while interesting, are slightly overshadowed by London itself, along with the strange mores and ethos of England at the beginning of the 19th century. In this book the reader is introduced to the oddities of the theater, for example, and an actress who conspires with her husband to weasle money from smitten gentlemen. The book is classified as a Regency Romance, a fact that will turn off many readers, especially men. But the books are far more that treacly love stories. They are social commentaries and examples of very good writing.