Review: The Talisman Ring, Georgette Heyer

You know, I came kind of late to Georgette Heyer. I think it was catching the dramatisation of Friday's Child on BBC Radio 7 (now 4extra) that did it for me, but it wasn't until a good few years after that I finally read one of her novels - whereupon I learned that my mum had been an avid Heyer reader in her youth, but that she'd thrown them out in a fit of Respectability when she went to university.
"Why didn't you tell me about her?" I asked.
"I didn't think they'd be you'd sort of book," she replied - which led me to wonder what she thought my reading habits were as an early adolescent, but never mind.

Anyway, what can I say about The Talisman Ring? Well, in short, it's a Georgette Heyer novel - one of her historical romances, mind, not one of the murder mysteries. Best read in tattered paperback format while snuggled under a blanket with a box of Malteasers, or else your preferred cheap-posh chocolates (Aldi do some nice ones.)

So far at the plot goes,  the heir to a great esate has been banished for a murder for which he was framed, and clearing his name all hinges on the eponymous Talisman Ring. Unfortunately, he's currently living as a smuggler and the excise men are after him - can our intrepid heroines keep him safe until the inevitable double wedding?

You've got the impulsive, spitfire heroine (the cultural stereotype Eustacie de Vauban as she runs from an arranged marriage) and the wry, sensible one (Sarah Thane). You have three whole pretty boys to chose from, all nicely in the Heyer mould: the sexy, reckless Ludovic Lavenham; the taciturn and melancholic Tristam Sheild; or the arch, dressy Basil 'Beau' Lavenham - although one of them is, naturally, a desperate villain. People fall in love and are picturesquely injured, pistols are fired, punches are thrown, smugglers smuggle and schemes are hatched. The clothes are fabulous, all the men drink too much, and everyone plays cards wittily.

Basically, it's funny, delightful, and positiviely begs for slash fiction. There is a reason Heyer is the acknowledged queen of the genre. Yeah, obviously, she was a dreadful classist, and yeah, there's antisemitism, and yeah the gender rep is a terrible - so really, I suppose it depends where you set the bar for these things. Books like this are written to scratch a very particular itch and if you're content to ignore those faults The Talisman Ring delivers admirably - plus, you get to see Ludovic in a dress. That's got to be worth something, right?