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The Trouble at Aquitaine (G. D. H. Pringle, Bk 1)
The Trouble at Aquitaine - G. D. H. Pringle, Bk 1 Author:Nancy Livingston The Castle at Aquitaine is not some medieval French fantasy but an imposing edifice located on the Yorkshire moors that has been converted by Colonel and Mrs. Willoughby, with occasional assistance from the Colonel's Harley Street brother, into a very superior health clinic. Among the current guests (or patients) are "Jonty" Powers... more », a fading and irascible TV producer; his lovely and long-suffering "companion," the Hon. Clarissa Pritchett; his mother, Mrs. Rees, who has survived two marriages and expects no more from life; Dr. Hugh Godfrey, a G. P. from Pinner, striving to be rid of his wife and his ulcer; Maeve Kelly, an Irish subversive, who is hotly suspicious of everything English; Valter Von Tenke, a man of mystery; and a couple of Aquitaine regulars, Mrs. Arburthnot, a social climber who keeps slipping, and Miss Brown, her hearty companion. They are hardly a happy family, even when things are not going too badly. And things begin to go quite badly indeed when a body, nastily dead, is found floating in the indoor pool. Skeletons are to be heard rattling in everyone's cupboard, and there are more mysterious comings and goings in the corridors of Aquitaine in the small hours than there are in a Feydeau farce. The plot is highly ingenious, the fun is fast and furious, and the whole affair is audaciously outrageous. And, as a bonus, the reader gets a first glimpse of Mr. Pringle, a retired tax inspector whose character is far more colorful than his demeanor and previous occupation would seem to suggest.« less