Lady Antonia Fraser Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Harriet Waugh

Critical Essay by Harriet Waugh

The first mystery in Antonia Fraser's detective novel, Cool Repentance, is why it is not set in Ireland. The characters give off such a strong whiff of decadent Anglo-Irish flesh that it seems perverse to have located them somewhere in rural-England-by-the-sea. Anyway, despite the eccentricity of the setting, it starts off excellently.

Christobel Herrick, whose fate is at the centre of the novel, is a prematurely retired famous actress about to be enticed back on stage by an ambitious, pseudish director…. She has recently returned to her husband's home after a protracted desertion of a humiliating kind: she had run off with the stable boy, the son of the domestic servants of the house. The stable boy had used her as a stepping-stone to becoming a pop star, ruined her career, then deserted her, only to die in a motorbicycle crash. Christobel has now returned to resume her role at...
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