Rose chats with her dead father as well, besides the Queen, and if you compare the actual novel to the advertising copy from Penguin Random House, you'd be thinking a mistake was made somewhere. A MOST EXTRAORDINARY PURSUIT is not an historical mystery but a very silly book.
I'm at a disadvantage with this one, being a university graduate and burdened with an education that makes this sort of reading impossible. I think there was a story in there, plodding along, but the writing was so over the top in an attempt at levity that I felt as if I was sitting in a music hall watching talentless actors mug across the stage. Rose is supposed to be on the hunt for the heir of her late employer (to whom she does not speak, more's the pity) but I really did not care if she ever found him or not.
The mystery lies in the heir's location, as he has disappeared from some archaeological dig somewhere that requires Rose to take a steamship to reach. There was a rather long stretch about seassickness in there that I skimmed over because it was boring and did not move the narrative. That was about all I could take, despite my best efforts to finish so I could write a proper review.
Perhaps the recently past-teenage female set would find this one amusing, but not being one of those I can't say for certain. If you hunger for a good historical mystery, this novel will leave you famished. It's all empty prose calories that I gave up on after 116 pages.
Thanks, I think, to Penguin Random House for the free copy in exchange for a review. Thanks for saving me the expense of buying a book I'd regret wasting the money on.
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