A review by cimorene1558
The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery by Catherine Bailey

4.0

Very compelling, but I'm not sure I'd say it was a Gothic mystery. Mystery yes, Gothic, no, except perhaps in a very broad sense. If you had any doubts that Dukes and Duchesses could be as petty, nasty and selfish as anyone else (and with a much greater ability to do harm than most of us), this book will remove any of those doubts. It's mainly the story of a very unhappy family who happen to be noble, which in a way is what spoilt everything for them--as anyone who knows anything about history will know, there's nothing like being fabulously wealthy and desperate to hang onto it in perpetuity to screw everything up--the need for a male heir is responsible for a great deal of tragedy in countries which practise primogeniture. In the end, I am reminded of a quote (which I think is somewhere in Agatha Christie, but I could be wrong): "they're all very unpleasant people". Although that's not quite fair: weak, misguided, selfish and without any perspective is perhaps closer to the mark, in this case.