Paris in the revolution!

Traitor in Her Arms (The Scarlet Chronicles #1) by Shana Galen. 

The opening scenes are gritty and vivid, laced with a certain amount of gallows humour. Lady Gabrielle McCullough is in a tumbrel in Paris rumbling over cobblestones, having had her hair slashed off in readiness to meet Madame la Guillotine,  and surrounded by crowds screaming for yet more beheadings. Yes! This new series has us smack in the middle of Paris at the time of the French Revolution. The scenes of gore and crowds howling for blood, the sansculotte, Robespierre, even Fouché, is here. Above all, the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel is in the background moving people around, directing the rescue of aristocrats and others, always within a whisker of being discovered.

The action then retreats to how Gabrielle has arrived at this state. It seems that upon being widowed Gabrielle found herself responsible for her husband's considerable gambling debts. Debts owed to a very nasty man. To keep herself afloat, Gabrielle has taken to stealing antiquities. In the middle of appropriating an Egyptian necklace aGabrielle is surprised by her husband's best friend, Ramsay, the Earl of Sedgwick. Ramsay is being blackmailed by a mysterious woman (who seemingly has informants everywhere), into doing various tasks for her in order to regain important papers she has about him. The scene of Gabrielle and Ramsay's meeting in the darkened is both amusing and tense. The results, interesting.

When Gabrielle is approached by the Pimpernel in London to rescue a French countess from a Paris prison, Gabrielle agrees. 

Imagine her surprise when she finds Ramsay making another appearance in her life, bound for Paris on the same ship as herself. Trust goes out the window, even as sensuality rushes in. And the dark dangers of Paris await. Little does Gabrielle know that Ramsay needs to discover the Pimpernel's identity, and that Gabrielle is to be that conduit.

What is so fascinating about this story by Galen is the tension generated between what Gabrielle and Ramsay are forced into doing, the dangers they find themselves in, their conscience or lack thereof, and the undeniable chemistry between them, all set against a particularly bloody and horrendous time in French history.

In the meantime we are treated to an interesting array of secondary characters, some of whom I'm sure we will meet in the future.

A NetGalley ARC

*****