Review 3: The Medici Diamonds

Written by Deborah McGillivray:

Who is Marguerite de Vallencieux? Marguerite does not know. There is a big gap in her memories, years missing from her consciousness, and when bits and pieces float to the surface, it makes her physically ill. Physicians have been no help, just advise her not to push it, let the memories return on their own. The problem is they don't return, and it puts Marguerite's life in danger. Someone murdered her husband, in what looked like an act of robbery, only the mysterious, shadowy figure, Le Chevalier, warns Marguerite it was a contract killing. Someone paid for her husband's murder. He warns Marguerite's her very life may be in danger and advises her to leave the city.

Marguerite does so, meets, falls in love with a Marquis and marries him, but on her wedding night, he beats her and takes a whip to her. Later, he claims to have made a mistake, that he thought she was Margot de Bassy and he was getting even for a wrong she had done him. He claims Margot has the same green eyes, the same face as Marguerite. Can Margot has some connection to Marguerite, a connection to the period in her life she cannot recall?

As Marguerite's life spirals out of control, she learns a priceless, cursed, diamond necklace is at the center of the plots swirling around her, and her memory holds to key to the riddles. Le Chevalier is out to avenge the murder of his wife,and the necklace and Marguerite are pieces in a chess game of revenge.

This is Fleming's newest book, and her writing style shows strong growth, spinning a true book of historical fiction. It's fast paced, the mystery keeps you involved, her prose showing a polished, assured style of a writer who has arrived. I hear constantly, from American readers, you cannot find old-style historical fiction any more. Thanks to gutsy writers like Fleming and the new age of technology with fresh publishers offering books that readers WANT, not what they are told they should want, you could find some super reads. It's mystery, adventure, duels in the night and a damsel in distress...in the old tradition of Scaramouche, The Three Musketeers and a Tale of Two Cities!