A friend of mine attending a Baptist school mentioned her class was reading The Scarlet Pimpernel, so I decided to check it out, though I did so with a bit of trepidation. The last book introduced to me in such a manner was Silas Marner, and I did not relish embarking again on something similar to that. Happily, though, I discovered in Pimpernel a mildly entertaining bit of British-French historical romance written with a 20th-century sensibility.
The book is fairly fast-paced, with the plot's events limited to about a week's time. Briefly, a French girl is forced by blackmail to endeavor to find the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, a Briton who has been sneaking into revolutionary France to save aristocrats from the guillotine. She discovers the Pimpernel is none other than her boring, shallow husband whom she resents. He is in France rescuing people, unaware of the betrayal, so she rushes off there to save him, falling in love with him along the way.
The novel featured sufficient twists and turns, and the prose was pleasantly concise. The characters were well-wrought, and the story wasn't hindered by background or extraneous plotlines. Altogether, an excellent effort.
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