wealhtheow 's review for:

The Toll-Gate by Georgette Heyer

3.0

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John "Crazy Jack" Staple is rich, well-bred and, since the end of the Napoleonic wars, bored. A chance meeting at a toll-gate with the beautiful granddaughter of the local squire leads Jack to stay in a small village. While he woos Nell, he notices a number of unlikely coincidences...and eventually figures out a deadly local plot. Although I liked both Nell and Jack, and thought them well-matched, Nell basically disappears after the first third of the novel. The rest of it is Jack's adventures with the local criminals, which are particularly annoying due to the heavy dose of "theives' cant" they provide. Heyer's novels would have been greatly improved if at least half the Regency slang was removed. This is a better Heyer romance than many, but not the best.