Book Review: Faro's Daughter

It may be inaccurate to categorize Georgette Heyer's works as just romances. They do have romance in them, but none of them deal exclusively with romance. They are more of historical novels, rich in period detail and in human interest. She is a writer who can create plots that appear simple and even trivial, and yet keep a reader hooked on to the book till the last page.

The plot of Faro's Daughter may look simple, cliched and wholly predictable. A rich bachelor seeks to extricate his young cousin, a nobleman from the toils of a young woman whose aunt runs a gaming house. But Deb is hardly the traditional heroine with a sob story, and Max Ravenscar is not the philanthropic guardian angel who falls for her charms. From the beginning, it is a battle of wills between them, with neither able to get the better of the other.

Throw in Arabella, the saucy young sister of Ravenscar with a penchant for falling in love and falling just as quickly out; Lucius Kennet, an adventurer who hangs around Deb and has a way with ladies; Adrian, Ravenscar's cousin and The Earl of Mablethorpe, wholly infatuated with Deb; Lord Ormskirk, a middle aged nobleman who holds a mortgage on Lady Bellingham's house as well as her bills and who is desirous of making Deb his mistress; Sir James Filey, a repulsive man who is trying desperately to beat Ravenscar and challenges him to a race; Kit Grantham, Deb's younger brother, who is as heedless as he is expensive; Lady Belligham, Deb's feckless, but wholly practical aunt and Phoebe Laxton, a beautiful, but insipid young girl who is forced to run away from the man her parents had chosen for her; and we have a cast of unforgettable characters.

The plot starts interestingly with Adrian's worried mother importuning Ravenscar to save her son from “that female,” and unfolds with Ravenscar's visit to the gaming house and their subsequent clashes. Matters come to a head when Deb has Ravenscar kidnapped on the eve of his race with Sir James Filey and Kit forcibly takes the key from Deb and releases him since he's in love with Arabella. In the meantime, Adrian falls in love with Phoebe Laxton whom Deb had sheltered, and Lucius Kennet forms a scheme to kidnap Arabella. Georgette Heyer resolves all complications with enviable simplicity and when the predictable end comes to pass, it is with a realization that the journey has been far different from the anticipated one. Ravenscar is wholly indifferent to the world, and when Deb tells him that he cannot marry a wench out of a gaming house, he tells her that he was going to marry a wench out of a gaming house with as much pomp and ceremony as he can contrive. And since he is one of the richest men in town, we can imagine that he will contrive a great deal.