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The Madonna Of The Sleeping Cars (1925)

by Maurice Dekobra(Favorite Author)

3.45 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1612190588 (ISBN13: 9781612190587)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Melville House

review 1: This book reminded me a bit of _Travels With My Aunt_ by Graham Greene – it is written with a similar type of light-hearted spunk. I am sure it was considered rather racy when it was first published in 1927, but it still sizzles with slinky rich women and power-crazed female villains. Our heroic narrator, a Prince Seliman, has a sense of humor, is courageous and is suitably noble. A gentleman throughout, Seliman makes us admire and adore the decadent Lady Diana almost as much as everyone else does. This is a romp into a forgotten era that still manages to be an engagingly-paced thriller.
review 2: I had a bit of trouble deciding how to rate this; there were things I liked a lot about it, and things that very much annoyed me. The style is florid, sometimes... more to the point of seeming like parody, and while reviews have commented on the way that Dekobra keeps the tone light, even in the more harrowing scenes, I found that juxtaposition jarring rather than charming. I also found the character of Lady Diana annoying much of the time. All that said, at bottom it is quite a good spy-ish (not actually about espionage, per se) adventure story, and very firmly rooted in the inter-war period at the birth of the Soviet Union. That setting is compelling, and it is rendered well here, with only a touch (it seems to me) of exaggeration. less

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