Ambrose's (Coastal Corpse) background as a Romantics scholar provides the basis for this first book in a proposed trilogy about Lord George Gordon Byron and his inner circle. At 75, Claire Clairmont is the last survivor of the Byron/Shelley "haunted summer" of 1816. The stepsister of Mary Shelley, Claire was Byron's lover and mother to their daughter, Allegra. When a British visitor wants to buy her letters from Shelley and Byron, Claire looks back to that stormy summer. Years later, she still wonders if someone had wanted to kill her. Now living in Florence, Italy, with her niece Paula, Claire fears her secrets may have led to the murder of her priest confidant. Yet the mystery of what actually happened to Allegra, who supposedly died from a typhoid epidemic while attending a convent school as a child, continues to haunt her. VERDICT While the historical figures are all tragic characters, the leisurely paced story, with its overly descriptive language and grand emotions, will mostly appeal to those interested in the Romantics. There's little to attract mystery readers in this plodding tale.
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