The Devil Earl (Regency Quartet, #2)

[vintageromancereader]

Out Of A Midnight Coach Stepped Ravenscar The Perfect Gothic Mystery Man

Dark and brooding and rumoured to have done murder, the Devil Earl was everything Prudence Lancaster's imagination could conjure. But he was also flesh and blood, and infinitely more seductive than anything she had ever created. In his presence, the dreamy authoress became a sultry sleuth, hungry to solve the mystery of Ravenscar's missing brother and to save her beloved Devil Earl from his own wicked legacy.

Original Publisher: Harlequin
Original Year of Publication: 1994
Page Count: 304

This book can't decide if it's a homage or a pastiche of the Victorian gothic novel, and it reads like a poor rendering of Sylvester. It starts with a sly wink to the era with Loretta Chase-levels of meta, but the further I got into the book, the more I began to think I was supposed to take this story seriously, and that didn't make for fun reading at all. Everyone is dumb and beautiful and sex-crazed, which makes for a boring (and stupid) story. I'll definitely go for the original Heyer before I try something like this again...