The Blue Ribbon

Marlowe (The Valet and the Stable Groom) brings together many beloved tropes of historical adventure—the ghost story, the lost heir, the penniless orphan—in this Pimpernel-tinged tale. Dr. Theo Aylmer is an impoverished and rather self-centered young lecturer at Cambridge in the unsettled days following the Jacobite Rebellion. He’s called to his Cornish birthplace upon the illness of his father, an innkeeper, who dies before Theo can reach him. To add insult to injury, Theo is robbed en route by an exceptionally charming highwayman and is stuck in Cornwall until he can raise funds to return to Cambridge. The inn is derelict, the local earl is a murderous scoundrel, and Theo is inept. But hope, of more than one kind, blossoms when the highwayman, Philip, appears at the kitchen door with a stock of smuggled French brandy. Don’t look for historical verisimilitude here—those details are often rather sketchy. The appeal is in the swashbuckling and the sweet romance, all grumbles and insouciance, between two mismatched young men. (Dec.)