Baroness Orczy
12 books
- You get the Scarlet Pimpernel in Revolutionary Paris, working through danger with that wonderfully ridiculous public mask of Sir Percy Blakeney and much sharper courage underneath. It’s melodramatic and politically shadowed rather than subtle, but the disguises, narrow escapes, and doomed atmosphere make it satisfying if you like your adventure theatrical.
- Juliette swears on her father's deathbed to destroy the man who killed her brother, then makes the mistake of falling in love with him, and Orczy wrings every drop from that bind. Full-tilt Revolution melodrama, less Pimpernel than you'd expect, but the guilt is genuinely tense.
- If you liked the Scarlet Pimpernel, this one takes you to Nantes during the Terror, where Carrier's drownings make the stakes genuinely grim, and Percy stays offstage longer than you'd want. The revenge plot against Yvonne is pure melodrama, but it's melodrama done with real conviction.
- If you loved Sir Percy, know this is his descendant Peter in post-war Transylvania, and the swashbuckling stays offstage for long stretches. What carries it is Rosemary's awful bargain, write propaganda or two young people die, which Orczy squeezes for every drop of melodrama.
- You get the pleasure of watching Percy Blakeney turn his ridiculous foppish mask into a weapon, while Marguerite remains far sharper than the people around her realise. It’s a brisk, episodic later adventure, best enjoyed for the disguises, narrow escapes, and Percy’s dry theatricality rather than emotional depth.
- You get Sir Percy Blakeney at his most entertainingly maddening, hiding sharp intelligence beneath foppish manners while Marguerite and Chauvelin circle each other through disguises, coded messages, and near escapes. It’s melodramatic and occasionally breathless, but the theatrical suspense makes the pages go down easily.
- If you liked the Pimpernel's swagger, his ancestor Diogenes has it rawer: a laughing soldier of fortune in frozen Holland, with the vengeful Stoutenburg circling him and Gilda again. It helps to read The Laughing Cavalier first, but the derring-do stands fine on its own.
- If you liked the Scarlet Pimpernel, this is Orczy imagining his ancestor: Diogenes, a broke soldier of fortune in frozen 1620s Holland who takes a shady job abducting a girl and can't stop grinning about it. Pure swagger and snow, happily unserious, slow in patches.
- If you already like Sir Percy, this is the fun-size version: short, self-contained rescues where he slips into Paris in some grubby disguise, drawls his way past Chauvelin, and vanishes. Slighter than the novels, and the formula shows, but each little escape still lands.
- If you like your detectives armchair-bound and slightly smug, this delivers: a fidgety old man in a teashop, endlessly knotting a piece of string, unpicking murders for a journalist without ever leaving his seat. He rarely cares if the guilty walk free, which is half the fun.
- You get a deliciously theatrical adventure in Sir Percy Blakeney, who hides sharp courage beneath his ridiculous clothes and vacant drawl, while Marguerite is far more complicated than the society beauty she first appears. It’s melodramatic and occasionally florid, but the disguises, coded messages, and narrow escapes make it wonderfully easy to settle into.
- You get more of Sir Percy Blakeney’s deliciously ridiculous foppish mask, ingenious disguises, and the League’s breathless rescues, with Marguerite bringing sharper intelligence than the melodrama sometimes gives her credit for. It’s pulpy and theatrical rather than subtle, but if you enjoy daring escapes and aristocratic villains getting outsmarted, it goes down easily.