Death at Dartmoor (Robin Paige Victorian 8)

Book Description

"Robin Paige's detectives do for turn-of-the-century technology and detection what Elizabeth Peters' Peabody and Emerson have done for Victorian Egyptology." (Gothic Journal)

Lord Charles Sheridan and his American wife, Kate, have come to Britain's most notorious prison so that Kate can research her new Gothic novel-and Charles can meet with one of the inmates. But when the inmate escapes-and a body turns up on the moor-the Sheridans join forces with Arthur Conan Doyle to determine if the missing convict is connected to this murderous new case.

Customer Reviews:

ok as an airplane book.......2005-10-18

I much prefer other authors for mysteries. It's well written but more along the lines of a romance than a mystery

Elementary My Dear Sheridan.......2005-07-06

The husband and wife sleuthing team of Lord Charles and Lady Kathryn Sheridan have found their way to Dartmoor just in time for a fine adventure. Charles is going to the famous prison at Dartmoor to set up a fingerprinting operation and Kate is looking around the fog-shrouded moors in search of material for a new book. Also, Charles has a particular interest in one prisoner whom he believes has been falsely imprisoned and he thinks that he can prove this by the use of fingerprints.

Shortly after Charles visits the prison and also this particular prisoner, there is a prison break and one of the three escapees is none other than the prisoner that Charles thinks is innocent. To cloudy the waters even more, a local Lord is found murdered shortly after the escape and the locals immediately conclude that the escapee did it. The other two escapees are caught in short order by the way, but the one who hold's Charles' interest is nowhere to be found. After some sniffing around, Charles is able to say conclusively that the prisoner in question was not guilty of the crime for which he had been sent to Dartmoor. After proving this man's innocence of the first crime, Charles and Kate set out to find out who really murdered the local Lord, which of course they do.

As is normally the case with this series, actual historical characters are to be found in this book, the most notable of which is Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, who is not yet a Sir. Doyle is in Dartmoor trying to get a feel for the moors as he prepares to write "The Hound of the Baskervilles." Doyle plays a rather large part in this story but I must say that I thought that the authors were a little bit hard on him. Could it be that the Albert's are a little jealous of the Grand Master of mystery novels?

The plot in this book is a little weaker than in previous entries in this series and the mystery is a little too easy to solve. I prefer that the mystery be too easy to solve however, rather than have clues withheld so that the reader can't solve the mystery at all. As usual, the authors do a wonderful job of transporting the reader to turn of the century England and they provide such intricate details of the food the characters are eating that reading these books always makes me hungry. This is not a series to take up if you are on a diet. This may not be the best book in this series but it is still a very fun and entertaining read.

A Treasure for Arthur Conan Doyle Fans.......2004-01-13

Having presented a review of the book, "The Hound of the Baskervilles," I was totally fasinated by the way the Alberts wove his life and beliefs into the Dartmoor mystery. A lot of fun to read and an entertaining way to learn more about the history and mores of the time.

Enjoyable.......2003-11-13

I really enjoy this series because I like the two main characters. I find the characters to be intelligent but fun at the same time. I also like the way that Bill & Susan Albert (Robin Paige) weave real-life people into the plots. I realize that the people may not have acted the way that they are written, but it is fun to imagine that they would.
I did find this mystery a little too easy to solve and that usually makes me rate a book only 3 stars rather than 4, but I found the locale descriptions and the mystery itself to be well-written enough to deserve the 4th star.
In this episode, Charles & Kate are in Dartmoor - Charles to begin the process of fingerprinting prisoners at the local prison, Kate to get background information for a new book. While there, the local lord is killed and an escaped prisoner is initially blamed. Charles & Kate think that that is not the case and set out to find the real murderer(s). Their main help comes from another fictional character from a previous entry in this series, Patsy Marsden, and from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
An interesting read and I look forward to the next book in the series.

Very Boring.......2003-08-21

This is the first time I've read a book by this author and will probably be my last. I am an avid reader but I had to force myself through this book. It didn't hold my attention. The plot was very weak and there just wasn't much to the storyline. I found the book very boring.

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Richard Long: Dartmoor
Richard Long
Manufacturer: Walther Konig
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound

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ASIN: 3865600441
Release Date: 2006-08-15

Book Description

This thick spiral-bound artist's book presents documentation of an eight-day walk taken by the renowned English earth artist. Each thick, almost cardboard-y page is cut into three sections, so that the reader can see the horizon, the middle-ground or the foreground of mixed-and-matched pages, or from a single photographed moment, at once. Includes views of mist-enshrouded rock piles, running streams, just-blooming wildflowers, waving heather grasses and all variations of cloud.

Sherlock Holmes and the case of the hound Of the Baskervilles (Great Illustrated Classics)

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Sherlock Holmes and the case of the hound Of the Baskervilles (Great Illustrated Classics)
Arthur Conan, Sir Doyle , and Malvina G. Vogel
Manufacturer: Abdo Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1596792507

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A compelling read!
A good old-fashioned serial, but not Roberts' best
Captain Caution
A lusty saga of privateers

Captain Caution
Kenneth Roberts
Manufacturer: Down East Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0892724676

Customer Reviews:

A compelling read!.......2004-03-15

Captain Caution, the final installment of the Chronicles of Arundel series, is markedly different from the other five Roberts novels I have read so far. In some ways, it is the best.

Because it is written in third person instead of first, the lead character, Dan Marvin, can be developed very slowly. Early on, Marvin seems like a secondary character. As the action progresses, he becomes a reticent and hesitant protagonist. But he evetually emerges as likeable, resourceful, heroic, and uniquely American. This character, dubbed "Captain Caution" by his crew, really grows on you.

The novel despite its compactness, provides plenty of rich scenery, most notable being the prison hulk prize fight between Marvin and Little White, which jumps off the page.

Character development is, as always, superb. Argandeau, Marvin's colorful French sidekick, is among the very best of Roberts' characters, and the slave ship captain, Slade, is so subtly villainous that it's hard work not to like him a little, drooping eyelid and all. And Corunna is portrayed with such a careful balance of delicacy and depth that she is at once physically ethereal and emotionally strong, typical of Roberts' heroines.

If you could choose only one of Kenneth Roberts' fine novels, this wouldn't be the one most people (including me) would recommend. Nevertheless, it is one of the best novels I have ever read, and you're not likely to stop at one anyway, so enjoy!

A good old-fashioned serial, but not Roberts' best.......2001-01-30

At slighly more than 200 pages, *Captain Caution* may be Roberts' shortest novel after *Boon Island*. Its historical context- privateering during the War of 1812- makes it very similar to *The Lively Lady*, which I consider a superior novel for its handling of the love story and its potent evocation of Dartmoor Prison. However, a more discriminating reader will probably admit, with Booth Tarkington (Roberts's closest friend) that it is "about an entirely different sort of privateering, and about a phase of war imprisonment wholly unlike the sorry interlude of Dartmoor."

The plot is rather simple: returning from Canton and unaware that war has started between America and Britain, the merchant barque *Olive Branch* from Maine is captured by a British ship and its crew sent to Europe. Among them is the hero, Daniel Marvin, a.k.a. Captain Caution, and the Captain's daughter, strong-minded but easily blinded Corunna Dorman, whose budding attraction to Daniel appears to be crushed by her holding him responsible for her father's death during the capture. As always in Roberts' novels, the two lovers are separated by external forces and the book is basically a story of the hero's undaunted efforts to regain his dulcinea.

*Captain Caution* was a tough sell for Kenneth Roberts, and for the right reasons, I think. Carl Brandt (who must have been Roberts' agent) said that "the absence of the heroine for such a long period... would make monthly magazines reluctant to use it." And reluctant they were. As Roberts noted in his diary on October 25, 1932, "*Captain Caution* has now been to every slick magazine in the United States, and has been unhesitatingly rejected by all of them". Even the editor of *Adventure*, a magazine which Roberts said did not "pay much" and was therefore a "last resort", commented that "slackening of interest in the principal characters had killed all possibility of making *Captain Caution* into a serial".

Indeed, the main characters are much less endearing than Roberts' other creations. Daniel Marvin is first shown as a rather powerless victim and only begins to show the resourcefulness and endurance of the typical Robertsian hero much later into the book. As he puts it himself, "I've always looked for easier ways to do things, and almost always there's an easier way. It appears to me most people make things as hard for themselves as they can." His inventiveness, in the course of the novel, leads him to come up with modern boxing, the gangway pendulum and a winning formula for roulette (in whose efficacy Roberts, who was later completely duped by dowsing, may well have believed.)

For all this deluge of creativity, however, Roberts fails to give Marvin the enduring personality traits of the other fictional natives of Arundel he so lovingly protrayed. As for the love interest, Corunna Dorman, she is so deluded about both the hero and the scheming villain, Slade the slaver, and is so consistently wrong and angry, that her redemption falls rather flat.

In fact, I really thought that she would be another red herring, like Mary Mallinson in *Arundel*, while the much more lively niece of Talleyrand's would turn out to be the novel's Phoebe Nason (I consider the scenes between her and Marvin as really the most delightful of the whole work.) I found the combination of youthful naiveté and deep wisdom in her character really brilliant, and her advice to Marvin priceless: "You are doomed to be an unhappy young man if you think that no woman is a good woman unless she has made no mistakes and had no desires, ever; and in case you wish that sort of good woman, you must be careful to marry a plaster saint out of a church."

It does seem as though Roberts was more inspired by his minor characters than by his protagonists this time: Lucien Argandeau, the bragging, loquacious French privateer and ladies' man, ranks among Roberts' best drawn supporting characters, up there with Cap' Huff and King Dick.

*Captain Caution* also lacks the historical texture of Roberts' longer pieces of fiction, and feels more like a Patrick O'Brian novel, focusing on plot and dialogue rather than on immersing the reader in the period by richly detailed descriptions (indeed, O'Brian may have been inspired by this novel: at one point, Marvin escapes capture by pretending he has cholera aboard, a trick which Maturin uses in *Master and Commander* with the same effect.) In other words, if you want painlessly to absorb the equivalent of a dozen historical volumes, you would be better off with *Lydia Bailey* or *Rabble in Arms*.

This said, *Captain Caution* is a rather enjoyable book, though definitely of a lighter sort than the rest of Roberts' fiction.

Captain Caution.......2000-02-04

Keneth Roberts wrote many great novels and Captain Caution is another fine example of his descriptive narrative style. You find yourself engrossed in the lives of the main characters from the battles at sea to the horrible living conditions upon the prision ships in England. There are twists and turns that will suprise you. Only Roberts could make history so vivid.

A lusty saga of privateers.......1997-12-15

Very well written chronicle of our turbulent beginning. I highly recommend for readers of all ages.

Average customer rating:

A nice collection of local folklore

The Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor
Ruth E. St. Leger-Gordon
Manufacturer: Bell Publishing Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Customer Reviews:

A nice collection of local folklore.......2007-07-23

I first picked up this book because it dedicates a couple of chapters to black dogs/whisht hounds, one of my favorite ghosts/cryptozoological entities. The author collected a variety of stories and tales of everything from hauntings to dancing stone circles to wart healing white witches and created this nice compendium of folklore specific to Dartmoor in the UK. Apparently Dartmoor has more than its fair share of etheral and paranormal activity, as evidenced by the rich abundance of examples the author was able to give.

The folklore chapters are much stronger than the witchcraft ones. St. Leger-Gordon collects a nice variety of local examples involving ancient stones and ruins, as well as tales of souls condemned to transformation and impossible feats before they can rest, as atonement for their wickedness. She manages to fit a lot of these stories in without shortening them too much-in fact, she does an excellent job of managing her space, tying the stories together without adding too much filler. And rather than only relying on older stories, she brings up a number of relatively recent (to her time, anyway) examples, showing that haunts and hunts and other such things do persist into modern day (though she worries for their continuation amid "progress").

The witchcraft chapters, on the other hand, are heavily littered with a lot of Margaret Murray's bunk. The author also takes Gerald Gardner's claims of Wicca's antiquity as truth, which damages the integrity of the book as a whole. However, the examples of both healing and cursing done by local witches (who use Bible verses in their wart charming, rather than dancing to Diana) show once again the local folklore in practice. St. Leger-Gorden would have been better off sticking to the traditional folklore rather than attempting to bring in modern, unverified sources that draw less on the traditions and more on 19th-century romanticized reconstructions.

Still, overall I really liked reading this book. Beyond the poor modern research it's an excellent look at the tales and traditions of a particular part of the world shown in detail, written by a skilled author. Definitely a keeper!

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Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities
Jeremy Butler
Manufacturer: Devon Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0861149106

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Walking Dartmoor's Ancient Tracks
Eric Hemery
Manufacturer: Robert Hale Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0709060750

Book Description

This is the definitive guide to Dartmoor's most important and hitherto uncharted historic tracks. The moor's traditional travel routes have been shrouded in mystery and many of them were in danger of being lost altogether. Through meticulous research and intensive field work over decades, Eric Hemery established the historical background to the 28 tracks described here. An important feature of track-routing throughout the book is the use of recorded evidence from experienced moormen, present and past, for route details. Detailed maps and illustrations allow readers to follow in the steps of monks, merchants, tin miners, and others who over the centuries established safe ways across the treacherous moor.

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Not up to the standards of Rabble in Arms or Arundel
A tightly woven adventure!
Romance/adventure novel
Interesting continuation of Arundel saga
Sjakulc's Opinion of "The Lively Lady"

Lively Lady
Kenneth Roberts
Manufacturer: Fawcett
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0449244822
Release Date: 1982-01-12

Customer Reviews:

Not up to the standards of Rabble in Arms or Arundel.......2004-12-23

Don't take me wrong: "The Lively Lady" is a darn good read. I've read enough of Roberts now to know his basic formula: take a stock love story (boy sees girl, circumstances come between boy and girl, circumstances clear up by end of book and boy gets girl), interwine it with gripping battle narratives, and inject oodles and oodles of history into the narrative. Roberts is a good enough writer to always get mileage out of these basic ingredients.

They're all here in "The Lively Lady," but never jell as well as they did in the earlier novels I mentioned. I think Roberts was running out of steam by the time he came to write this, the third installment in his "Chronicles of Arundel" series. This time out, Roberts' narrative pace is in hyperdrive. The book has a third as many pages as either of the first two books, and it shows: "The Lively Lady" reads like a Reader's Digest version of "Rabble in Arms." Characters are described rapidly, without really being developed: the character of King Dick appears all at once as the acknowledged "King" of Dartmour Prison. But how white prisoners in 1814 would have come to accept a black - even a physically powerful and intelligent one like King Dick - as a leader is never really explained, as though racism and slavery didn't exist. Even the history Roberts typically teaches is shortchanged: precious little is said of the reasons for the War of 1812, and the lasting effects of that conflict - a new sense of American nationalism - is explored in a mere paragraph or two. That is in sharp contrast to Robert's superior (and far longer) novel, "Oliver Wiswell," which reads at times almost like a history lecture on the Loyalist viewpoint during the American Revolution.

The love story suffers likewise; we are simply told that Emily falls in love with Richard Nason almost at first glance... but never learn why she is attracted to him, save for a bad marriage.
The relationship seems a bit too obviously contrived for the sake of the narrative.

Still, I have read reviews of "Oliver Wiswell" on Amazon complaining the book is too long and boring; if you want "Roberts Lite" in a condensed version: "The Lively Lady" is it. It's probably the Roberts book of choice who want to enjoy a Roberts book without investing the time to read his better, longer work. I do think anyone who likes Roberts should read this book - you'll enjoy it, but don't expect the same sense of satisfaction you had reading "Arundel" or "Rabble in Arms" if you love history.

A tightly woven adventure!.......2004-03-09

"Lively Lady," delivers plenty of the sinewy narrative and strong character development that typify Kenneth Roberts' previous novels, "Arundel" and "Rabble in Arms." But it differs from its predecessors in its compactness. It is like a string quartet compared to those more orchestral works, producing a sound and feeling that is just as powerful if not as loud or lengthy.

Set during the War of 1812, most of the action takes place aboard ship or inside the walls of the infamous Dartmoor Prison. In such close quarters, the narrator's psyche tends to loom large.

The result is a compact novel that, despite its size, really packs a punch. I recommend it.

Romance/adventure novel.......2002-06-22

This novel, first published in 1931, has gone through many editions. It is written in the style of the period, e.g., Errol Flynn type stories. It goes into excessive detail at some points which can make the story drag a bit. In some ways, it reflects a Thomas Hardy type writing style. It is a narrative style as told by the main character. Some parts of the action were borrowed by later writers.

The setting is March 1812 to April 1815. Merchant captain Richard Nason is trading with the British, carrying supplies to the British Army in Spain, and is generally opposed to the war, when he is pressed aboard a British Royal Navy sloop. His attitude changes and (after escaping) he takes a privateer to sea in July 1812 after war is formally declared. Details of sail handling and such are held to a minimum, and much of the story takes place on land. He becomes enamored with the young wife of an older English landowner, Sir Arthur Ransome, first meeting her before the war, then again aboard a ship he captures.

After various adventures he is captured and imprisoned at Dartmoor along with his crew. A major part of the novel is concerned with Dartmoor prison commanded by the evil Royal Navy Captain Shortland. The prison was par for the course for that time period. Similar conditions were found in both Union and Confederate prisons during the American Civil War 50 years later. Deaths from disease were common in active Army and Navy forces, usually higher numbers than battle deaths, and deaths in prisons were undoubtedly higher (smallpox, typhus, etc.). The novel describes the deliberate massacre of American POWs three months after the war ended.

Captain Nason, of course, survives (narrators usually survive), meets the woman again, etc.

Interesting continuation of Arundel saga.......2002-06-20

Lively Lady's protagonist is the son of two of the main characters in the earlier Arundel books: Arundel and Rabble at Arms. While not as epic as either of its precursors, Lively Lady illuminates a little-known episode of this country's history, when our war against Britain in 1812 (in effect a side-action of the Napoleonic Wars) was conducted at sea largely by private vessels licensed by our fledgling government to attack, capture, and destroy Britain's ocean-going commerce.

Roberts can come across as a bit stodgy and old-fashioned--and certainly not "politically correct"--to modern readers, but if you make allowances for his writing reflecting his times, you'll be richly rewarded with fascinating details and great storytelling.

Sjakulc's Opinion of "The Lively Lady".......2000-02-10

This book starts off in Arundel where Captain Mason falls for a young girl maried to a older cold husband. The young captain Mason enters the Revolutionry war but is captured and put in Dartmoor prison. After a sucessfull escape he is caught with the young girl by her husband. He sends the man back to Captain Nason back to jail and has his own wife arrested. Captain Nasoon survives a massacre in Dartmoor prison but is realeased and is reunited with the youg girl.

I did not like this book. Not that the book was bad but I do not believe it was good. I'm writing a report on the book and I will try to post it on the internet so I can spare anybody the waste of time in reading this book.

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