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The Romeo Flag
Carolyn Hougan
#UB6582
Paperback, 511 pages; 2005 (1989)
$14.95
 Members' Price: $12.71
Bas Bleu is proud to offer fourteen novels published by Felony & Mayhem, specialists in saving classic, plot-driven mysteries from extinction! Publisher Maggie Topkis has selected these titles especially for Bas Bleu's readers. She's written most of the reviews on these four pages. Look for her initials (MT) to see why she likes what she likes!
More than any other book, The Romeo Flag was responsible for my launching Felony & Mayhem. Very simply, it's the best espionage novel I've ever read, and I couldn't stand the notion that Carolyn Hougan's work was just going to…disappear. What makes it so good? Like many of my favorite espionage novels, it has great geographical and historical scope, ranging from Shanghai on the eve of World War II, to revolution-era Russia, to a remote Maine fishing cabin in the 1980s. And Hougan does full justice to her characters, endowing each of them—from the protagonist, Nicola Ward, a divorced schoolteacher with an anorexic daughter, to the odd thug who might show up for a page or two—with realism and absolute individuality. The characters are just a few of the pleasures of this book that truly has something for everyone, including fascinating history, back-room conniving, a nifty romance, and a long-lost diary that appears to name Nicola as the heir to the Romanov throne.
(MT)
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