Product Description

1795, and a young woman called Mary Finch travels in haste from Cambridge to the Suffolk coast. She has been invited to meet her wealthy uncle - and so end a twenty-year estrangement. But before she reaches her destination she discovers a dying man on the road. He is a stranger, and yet he is carrying an oddly familiar watch bearing her uncle's initials. He also seems to know who Mary is, and hints that she is in terrible danger. His whispered warning soon exposes Mary to a ruthless conspiracy that threatens not only her family's reputation, but her very life. Far from home, Mary must learn quickly how to distinguish friend from foe. Can she trust the two men who want to help her? What is their interest in the mysterious Blackstone Key? Does it guard a secret treasure, or might it have a more sinister purpose...? The first in an exciting new mystery series, The Blackstone Key is a gripping and vivid historical adventure that will appeal to fans of such classic tales as Jamaica Inn.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #124897 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

About the Author
Rose Melikan was born in Detroit, Michigan, and since 1993 she has been a Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, Dr Quentin Stafford-Fraser.

Customer Reviews

Romantic spy adventure
Giving up life as a schoolteacher on the hope of better prospects with her wealthy estranged uncle, Mary Finch travels from Cambridge to the Suffolk coast. The journey by coach and the people she encounters open up Mary's view of the world, but one particular incident is to have major consequences on the direction her life takes. Near Ipswich, the coach party come across a man who has been injured by the roadside. Mary stops off to look after him until help arrives, and finds that the injured man has a watch belonging to her uncle.

Accompanied by a kindly army officer, Captain Holland, Mary arrives at her uncle's estate to find that there are other suspicious activities taking place in and around the house late at night. The year being 1795, the activities could be those of freetraders and smugglers, but the discovery of coded letters found among her uncle's papers suggests that there is a traitor in their midst conspiring with the French Revolutionaries at war with England.

There's definitely a female spin on events here, the plucky and enterprising Mary not only finding herself embroiled in a spy adventure, but also finding her feelings torn between the brave Captain Holland and the handsome Mr. Déprez from St. Lucia, who is investigating the situation. The romantic aspect is well handled and doesn't in any way hinder the story or make the twists and turns any less compelling, since Mary's uncertain feelings towards each of the men is further complicated when she realises there is every possibility that one of them might actually be a spy. With strong characterisation that keeps revealing new facets to the characters and an intriguing spy mystery, the author holds the reader throughout, right up to the thrilling conclusion on the dangerous streets of London.

A struggle
This book starts off with an interesting (though familiar) premise - young, single woman, orphaned, mysterious uncle, smuggling etc. After struggling through the first few dozen pages, I looked on Amazon to see what the reviewers had to say about it. I can hardly believe that I've read the same book as some of them. I gave it another chance and plodded on to the end, skimming bits along the way, and I have to agree with the other people who have given this book a low rating.

Overall, it features a lot of clichéd characters dully wading their way through what is supposed to be an adventure but sadly wasn't much of one.
The dialogue in places is far too modern, with such phrasing as 'I guess you don't...' and 'say mister,is that right?' Reading the author blurb, it was no surprise that the author is American, and I feel that her editor should have picked up on these inconsistencies of speech and corrected them. The interview with the author at the end sounds far too similar in style to a lot of the dialogue in the book, which suggests the author hasn't got a strong grip on how the characters spoke, and this is a shame because the dialogue was, I think, the biggest part of the novel that kept lifting me out of the story. If that had been better I may well have enjoyed the story a bit more.

The cover is absolutely beautiful, though, the one with the red dress, and it deserves a star for that.

I recommend Jane Borodale's 'The Book of Fires' as a great historical read - it also has a more realistic cross section of reviews...

Historical Fiction, Not Romance
(kind of like Vanity Fair meets National Treasure...although, the story takes place in 1795.) It is based on historical fact concerning the making of gunpowder in the last quarter of the 18th century, and the theft of paperwork from a scientist whose interests included experiments on explosives. To be honest, a book about a gunpowder conspiracy didn't interest me, but I love to read historical fiction, and I have enjoyed other books from Touchstone, such as Philippa Gregory's books (The Queen's Fool, the Other Boleyn Girl, the Virgin's Lover), so I decided to expand my horizons.

I was very pleased with the amount of research the author, Rose Melikan, put into The Blackstone Key. She even includes a simple map with places of interests that are mentioned in the story, and the code system referred to is easy to understand; this helps the story flow quite smoothly.

I can't stand reviews that reveal too much about the plot, but the book is so much more than just a mystery about gunpowder. The main character, Mary, is out of her time: she wants to change her place in society; she doesn't behave like a "proper" young lady should, and yet everyone she meets appreciates the way that she thinks. Many of the other characters are also struggling with what society expects of them. The first 100 pages or so were the slowest - setting up the story, but after that I didn't want to put the book down...just when one situation is resolved, you find yourself in the middle of something more. I liked the fact that not everything was written from the viewpoint of the main character - in fact, sometimes you are taken away from Mary to see what the other characters are thinking and doing...but Mary is definitely the center of it all.

At first I was disappointed to find out that the book is part of a trilogy (The Counterfeit Guest will be published in 2009, and the author is currently working on the third installment), but after I finished reading The Blackstone Key, I realized that the novel could stand alone...there were no loose ends.

The Blackstone Key includes a Touchstone Reading Group Guide:
*Eleven discussion questions
Ex: what role does social status play in the novel?
OR what is the Blackstone key?
*"Enhance your bookclub"
- Shakespeare sonnet
- Queen dowager code game
- Commentary weblinks
*"A conversation with Rose Melikan"