★★★½

In an ideal world, I’d use long journeys to finally read that second volume of Proust, catch up on some Herodotus, or focus on foreign-language exhibition catalogues. Instead, my brain cheerfully clocks out and I end up reading stuff like this. That isn’t to say C.S. Pacat’s trilogy is bad: on the contrary, it’s an engaging tale of political skulduggery and brooding romance. But I wasn’t going to own up to it until I saw a photo that Kerstin posted on Facebook, while lazing in the garden with her Kindle, and noticed that she was reading it too. At that point I decided that everyone’s entitled to a bit of froth once in a while, and thought I’d do a quick post on the trilogy – if only because, as Kerstin’s interest indicates, there’s more here for Dunnett readers than you might initially expect.

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