A HERITAGE OF SHADOWS - Book review

Madeleine Brent’s historical first-person novel A Heritage of Shadows was published in 1983. 

It’s 1891 in Paris and eighteen-year-old Hannah McLeod is a waitress in La Coquille restaurant. She’s bilingual and is especially useful to the owner when English patrons dine there. She lives in a modest garret and conceals her real past and has invented an alternative which she doesn’t volunteer but which is available if pressed. She gets on well with the other staff but her only true friend seems to be a neighbour across the landing, Toby Kent, an Irish artist, for whom she occasionally poses (fully clothed).

One night on returning from her stint in La Coquille, she rescues a stranger who was being attacked by thieves. This leads to some complicated relationships which entail her taking up employment as a French teacher for two children of Mr Sebastian Ryder in England. ‘As soon as we were seated Mr Ryder said briskly, ‘Grace’. We all bowed our heads and he thanked the Lord for what we were about to receive, but in a manner which seemed to hint that he would have managed very well without the Lord’s help’ (p88).

Gradually, we learn about Hannah’s tragic past, some of it quite salacious though never graphic. ‘I have a heritage of shadows, long dark shadows thrown by my past. They are not of my making, yet I must walk in those shadows all my life’ (p197).

Hannah is a well-drawn, likeable and believable character, made of stern stuff; bold, forthright and honest – a marvellous heroine. There are several other characters of interest, too who come into her orbit – for good and ill. There is a reason why Mr Ryder had employed her. There is a betrayal, a kidnapping, and a confrontation with Mexican bandits – plenty to keep those pages turning.

Well-written, well-visualised, this is a most satisfying read. I’d previously read three Brent novels (in bold below) and enjoyed every one.

Madeleine Brent was one of the best-kept secrets of the publishing world. She was the pseudonym of Peter O’Donnell, creator of Modesty Blaise which he scripted for a comic strip, and which then became the first of a series of 13 best-selling thrillers. His Madeleine Brent books are Tregaron's Daughter (1971), Moonraker's Bride (1973), Kirkby's Changeling (1975), Merlin's Keep (1977), The Capricorn Stone (1979), The Long Masquerade (1981), A Heritage of Shadows (1983), Stormswift (1984), Golden Urchin (1986). He died in 2010.