The Bastille Spy

By: C. S. Quinn

Narrated by: Madeleine Leslay

He was alive when he went in the mortuary.

1789. The Bastille is marked for destruction. Skirmishes in the city are rife and revolution is in the air. When a gruesomely murdered rebel is found in the prison morgue, a plot is suspected.

English spy Attica Morgan, is laying low after an abortive mission. So when she's given an assignment inside the Bastille, her instinct is to run. Instead, she's offered a pardon, in return for solving the mystery of the dead revolutionary; and exposing a plot that leads to Marie Antoinette.

But as tensions rise to breaking point in the city, Attica quickly realises she's in a race against time. Soon there could be no Bastille to investigate.

©2019 Atlantic Books Ltd (P)2020 Audible, Ltd

Difficult to Suspend Disbelief

This is the second series by this author. I found Lily Boswell of her first series, The Thief Taker, implausible, but I was willing to suspend my disbelief. Not so for this new series. A historical novelist has a difficult balancing act to accomplish: keep the reader firmly planted in the historical period of the setting while still catering to modern sensibilities. I don't feel that C.S. Quinn managed this in The Bastille Spy. Attica Morgan is strictly a 21st-century heroine. It was simply impossible to imagine her as anything but that. But that may not be as big a problem for all listeners as it was for me. On a positive note, I disagree with a previous reviewer that this is a YA novel. I'm not sure where she's getting that.