From the author of The Rossetti Letter comes a thrilling new novel of intrigue, romance and murder set in the world of academia in present-day Cambridge and the royal court of Restoration-era London.
American academic Claire Donovan has been teaching at Cambridge University's Trinity College for two months. She feels like a fish out of water in England, and can't seem to do anything right where her academic mentor Andrew Kent is concerned. Claire also has to contend with romantic overtures from another history professor, Derek Goodman. When Goodman is found dead at the base of Trinity Tower, apparently from a fall, with a torn page from a seventeenth-century diary clutched in his hand, his death is deemed an accident, or perhaps a suicide. But Claire and Andrew suspect foul play when they discover the professor's most recent source of study - the diary of the female physician to King Charles II's rival mistresses - which appears to hold the key to a series of unsolved murders in 1670's London, and to the professor's death.
The Devlin Diary marks the return of fictional modern-day historian sleuths and rival academics, Claire Donovan and Andrew Kent, characters from The Rossetti Letter.
With its rich, sensuous depiction of the historical period, its multi-faceted characters, sensuality and emotional power, Christi Phillips's new novel will appeal to readers of Philippa Gregory's and Sarah Dunant's historical novels. With its swiftly-paced narrative that shifts tantalisingly between the past and the present, it will remind readers of Kate Mosse, A.S. Byatt's Possession and Leslie Siebert's The Intelligencer.
