I have always heard of Lady Audley's Secret but never engaged with it. I found this by chance in a second had bookshop (upstairs in the Victoria Market) in great condition. I am a hog for the old penguins (cream borders and black fronts) and dislike the new ones which have inferior design and anyway, aren't the penguins of my youth.Anyway, this book has gripped me from the second I opened it. Rather than be a flimsy, sensationalist book as I had feared, it is well written, strong on plot but above all robust of character, particularly the excellently lazy and pacifistic Robert Audley who I could happily kill a weekend with. The plot seems pretty transparent at the moment but the journey is so very worth it. As proto-detective novel, a ripping yarn and a time capsule of the sensationalist 1860s it is a cracking read.
