The Pimpernel Plot

Poor old Percy; the Elusive Pimpernel never survives intact in pastiches of Orczy's stories. Feminists like to knock him down a peg or two, and male writers obviously prefer to get him out of the way altogether, and focus on Marguerite. Are they intimidated by the Baroness' hero, or just jealous?

Here, in the third of a series of books about time travel, Sir Percy is dispatched by accident in the first few chapters, and 'rampant specimen of manhood' (I kid you not) Finn Delaney is sent back to patch up the tear in the fabric of history. Finn is a man's hero, swearing, fighting, and drawing his precocious tomboy assistant Andre and Marguerite Blakeney alike to his charms. He assumes the Pimpernel's identity and continues his plans for a league to rescue French aristocrats from the guillotine. This twist works well, because at the start of Orczy's novel, Percy and Marguerite are newly married after a whirlwind romance and already estranged, and he has been living abroad since the death of his parents. Nobody knows him well enough to notice a change. Marguerite falling for 'Finn' is also understandable, if predicatable, because she only realises that she loves Percy when his secret identity is revealed. Instead of killing off Orczy's hero, and replacing him with a stand-in (not even Delaney), a 'Quantum Leap' scenario might have worked better, with (the real) Percy and Marguerite being restored to each other at the end. The Scarlet Pimpernel is far too charismatic a hero to die under a horse's hooves by accident!

The time travel aspect of the adventure is very complex, and Finn's 'nemesis', Mongoose, only complicates matters further. Without the continuing thread of the futuristic agency, however, this would just have been a regurgitation of Orczy's novel, so the blend of historical fiction and William Gibson-esque sci-fi works well. Hawke is fairly faithful to the original source, considering the plot, and doesn't do any of Orczy's characters too much of a disservice (apart from killing off Sir Percy!) There are a couple of anachronisms, possibly intentional signs of an alternate timeline (the Bastille is still standing in 1792), but otherwise this is a unique take on a favourite story. ( )

Book three in the Time Wars series, intertwined with the events of The Scarlet Pimpernel. The story is enjoyable, but this entry in the series sees things fall into more of a formula. There's no real surprise in the team of time commandos and while the tale starts off as a "simple" historical adjustment (fixing a historical change caused by another time traveler), there is once again an adversary with the same high tech as the good guys. A bit of a let down from the previous two volumes, but it's still enjoyable and has a few surprises. Check it out.
--J. ( )