Review by Francine:
Written in M. J. Logue’s inimitable
style, “A Broom at the Masthead” edges toward the realms of a psychological
thriller, in which the author wields a mind-bending analogy to that of a deeply
troubled and tortured mind: almost in the format of a journal, as though the
main character is secretly confessing to revenge enacted without any sense of
guilt. Thus deceit, rumour, and inference enough to ruin any man’s chances of
elevation in favoured social circles – prevails
amidst the ambitious, the dubious, and the worst of the notoriously real-time debauched
courtiers of their time.
Initially it is the year of 1663, three
years since the Restoration of Charles II to the throne of England. A dreadful
murder sets the scene for a mystery that will linger akin to smoke-laden miasma
drifting throughout this novel. By 1665 the once Parliamentarian officer, Thankful
Russell, who despised all that the Royalists ever stood for during the years of
the English Civil Wars, is now gracing the corridors, and the drawing rooms of
the great and not so good Royalists. Not only is he newly married and revelling
in the glory of having one of the youngest brides on the royal campus, old
fears of rejection, fears of failing Thomazina, fears of failing others, and
most of all fear of failing his old commander; Russell is under pressure as a maze
of seeming madness surrounds him. And all whilst some unknown person is hell-bent
on putting his neck in a noose! All told, this is a suspenseful read peppered
with humour, and earthy language enough to lighten and lift the reader in
between the more sinister elements as they unfold.
