Old Money

In this witty comedy of manners, the reader is conspiratorially invited into a circle of British aristocrats who relentlessly pursue the pound with wry smiles on their faces and knives behind their backs. The author ensures reader complicity, in fact, by dispensing privileged information as she kills off a major character, Chloe Post, on the first page, and then tells the majority of the story in flashback. Handsome, well-bred bachelor Morgan Steer, in need of funds, courts Chloe, heiress to the old-money Post fortune. But Morgan still feels an undying attachment to his first love, Caroline Barstow, who begins to question her own, lackluster marriage when Morgan and Chloe announce their engagement. Meanwhile, the Steer family's consensus is that the immense profitability of Morgan's impending match is offset by the union's lack of passion. The only enthusiastic supporter of the engagement is 90-year-old Leonora Steer, the irascible and domineering family matriarch. When the betrothed couple visits the Steer family home in Northumberland, their arrival catalyzes change among Leonora's three daughters, who have long bristled under their mother's tyranny. The havoc that ensues yields an archly funny examination of the subtle wiles of the rich. Palmer's third novel (after Scarlet Angel) is an acerbic tour de force. (Feb.)