Title: The Locksmith's Daughter
Series: Standalone
Author: Karen Brooks
Release date: July 31, 2018
Cliffhanger: No
In Queen Elizabeth's England, where no one can be trusted and secrets are currency, one woman stands without fear.
Mallory Bright is the only daughter of London's most ingenious locksmith. She has apprenticed with her father since childhood, and there is no lock too elaborate for her to crack. After scandal destroys her reputation, Mallory has returned to her father's home and lives almost as a recluse, ignoring the whispers and gossip of their neighbors. But Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's spymaster and a frequent client of Mallory's father, draws her into his world of danger and deception. For the locksmith's daughter is not only good at cracking locks, she also has a talent for codes, spycraft, and intrigue. With Mallory by Sir Francis’s side, no scheme in England or abroad is safe from discovery.
But Mallory's loyalty wavers when she witnesses the brutal and bloody public execution of three Jesuit priests and realizes the human cost of her espionage. And later, when she discovers the identity of a Catholic spy and a conspiracy that threatens the kingdom, she is forced to choose between her country and her heart.
Once Sir Francis's greatest asset, Mallory is fast becoming his worst threat—and there is only one way the Queen’s master spy deals with his enemies…
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REVIEW
The Locksmith's Daughter by Karen BrooksMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
When I saw the synopsis for this book, I was immediately hooked and had to get my hands on it. After reading and loving The Alice Network last year, I was so ready for another female spy book to give me that same rush of emotion and inspiration. I wish I could say that this was another five star read, but it wasn't quite what I had anticipated. Let me start out by saying that when it comes to the author's attention to historical facts and information, I couldn't have been more impressed. Her descriptions hit on every one of my senses and painted an incredibly vivid picture.
The archaic speech took a little getting used to, but it was perfectly on point and necessary for accurately setting the scene. When you open the book, you're stepping into a whole new world that is far from what we live in. She doesn't try to sugarcoat London, in fact the descriptions of the city was often unpleasant with its misogynistic culture and religious unrest. Mallory Bright lived in a time when women's virtue and Protestant faith were the only assets they had. In the beginning of the book, it's understood that she has lost all semblance of respectability and brought shame on her parents' house.
In God’s eyes and those of my parents and neighbors, I was more than a fallen woman—I was a scourge, the blight they labeled me.
At the age of nineteen I found love, and by twenty-one had forsworn it. In two brief years I learned love was but a phantasm, a fool’s paradise until we bit into the apple and saw the garden for the bed of thorns and stinking refuse it is. Love was merely a word used by men to beguile, seduce and deceive.
When her father sets up a meeting with "an old friend" Sir Francis Walsingham for a job, she believes it's her one chance to redeem herself and her reputation. With her unique set of skills, she not only met the expectations of those training her, she exceeded them. She could crack any lock under pressure, play any part as if she was made to walk the stage, and she was loyal...to a fault. Desperate to win approval, she pushed aside her niggles of conscience and performed every task given to her no matter what occurred. But she soon realizes that accepting a job as a watcher for Queen Elizabeth's spymaster will bring many hard truths and unearthed secrets that she never bargained for.
I wanted to love Mallory, but a lot of the time I couldn't make sense of her decisions or actions. As intelligent as she supposedly was, she fell short of the strong heroine I was expecting that would break through societal norms. First of all, it's reiterated repeatedly that women had no value other than their reproductive abilities and giving their men pleasure. Mallory survived a terrifying ordeal at the hands of a sadistic man and for almost the entire length of the book it clouded her judgement and self-worth. After a point I wanted her to hold her head up high and stop blaming herself for the actions of another. To thumb her nose at those who disparaged her and stand tall. Her constant thoughts of how she was a loose woman filled with pitiful unworthy feelings started to get to me. It felt like she was a chess piece being moved around by the men in the book rather than a player in control of her own fate. She just wasn't the inspirational and courageous spy that I had envisioned. After witnessing the grisly executions of three Catholic priests that she helped to capture, I thought that she would start listening to the guilty voice in her head.
“Guilt is a demanding guest and most unwelcome.” One that had visited me often of late.
Something that I couldn't make sense of was the fact that she hunted Catholics and reported them, telling herself that even the peaceful families she turned in deserved it. And all the while, her own mother was a Catholic herself who refused to renounce her faith. They paid hefty fines for it, and they were protected because of their connection to Walsingham. It never occurred to her however, that her family was no better or worse than the people she was hunting?? That in fact, her boss also fell in love with a Catholic in his younger years, and he now looked at them all as the devil's spawn? I didn't get how she was unable to see the hypocrisy of it all. Was her desperate need for love and approval so overpowering?
At the end, when she finally turned on Walsingham, it was with an apology to him, and a naive idea that she could bargain for the fate of her father. How in the world?? As she set her plan in motion, I felt a moment of pride, thinking that she was knowingly trading herself in order to free her father. That wasn't the case. She honestly thought that her demands would be honorably met by the man who she knew to falsify papers to guarantee a man's death. This is a man who put his country before family, honor, honesty, and morals. After everything she saw and knew, I didn't understand how she could feel this way.
Then after a horrifying torture scene, I thought that perhaps she would find a way to prove to everyone how much they underestimated her and find a way to save herself. Nope, she was a damsel in distress that was for some reason shocked that her rescuers were now going to be exiled for helping her. AGAIN, knowing everything she knew, how could she possibly think this? The man who broke her out of the tower was a respected Lord, so that means he's excused from the Queen's wrath after helping a traitor? I was so confused by her thought process again.
Okay, now that I've gotten my complaints about Mallory out, let me finish by saying that at almost six hundred pages of dense historical detail, this story could have been slow and boring. As frustrated as I got at times, I was riveted to the pages and binge reading huge chunks of the book in order to see what happened next. There was an ominous feel throughout, especially after the execution which was so appalling and disturbing that I had a hard time reading it all the way through.
Expect a few surprises along the way, and a subtle romance subplot simmering in the background. Lord Nathaniel endeared me to him from the very beginning, even when he was being boorish and brash with Mallory. There was a never a doubt that he was a man of strong principles and uncommon respect for everyone no matter their gender or social status. The more I read about him, the more I loved his strong character and unbending loyalty.
Even though I didn't love The Locksmith's Daughter as much as I anticipated, I was really impressed with the author's skill in melding fact and fiction in such a riveting way. She depicted the Tudor time period in England in minute detail and fused her fictional characters and historical figures flawlessly. Her note at the back was fascinating, and proved her dedication to research. So if you're looking forward to reading this, and you're captivated by this time period, this could very well be the book you're looking for. I'll be interested to see what other eras she explores in the future.
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