Linda is not your normal sixteen-year-old. She is feisty and adventurous in a genteel age when girls are expected to be polite, chaperoned and groomed to marry.
It is May 1910 and her father is in Paris on a research trip. Linda is worried about him. Even more so when she receives a Jack of Spades playing card in the mail. The envelope was not in her father’s hand, or was there anything with it to give her a clue, but, she knows it’s a sign from him, a code they both know. The Jack of Spades is a sign of danger.
Without alerting anyone Linda decides to leave for Paris immediately. She has been there with her father and has friends she hopes to stay with while she searches for her father. She knows his favourite places and where he usually works. Feeling confident in her own competence she leaves Britain.
On arriving in Paris, she is accosted but the thief is thwarted when she is assisted by a gallant young man, who offers to help her.
The illustrations throughout the book are delightful. The Victorian railway station illustration with Linda gathering up her belongings and meeting her new friend is a clue to where the story leads.
What she finds in Paris is intrigue and mystery filled with danger. What was her father really doing? Where is he now? Who can she trust? Her friends are not at home and she has nowhere to stay. A single unchaperoned girl alone in a city. Her new friend offers to refer her to acceptable accommodation and there she meets interesting characters and a scoundrel.
While searching for her father Linda finds a trail of murders and shady characters. Her investigations put herself and her new friends in peril.
This book is a delight with mystery, a budding romance, and a tenacious and inquisitive teenage girl as the lead character. I loved it!
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