Concord in Jeopardy

Full Flavour and Fair Company both had women as the focus of interest. This time the story pivots around a man. Once again, Miss Leslie is eminently successful in her etching in of period and background, in her characterization of minor figures, in her dialogue. But somehow, this hasn't quite the meatiness of its predecessors, the central figure of Alexander Concord is less convincing than her women characters, and the story lacks the swift pace that kept the others, in spite of their length, from ever dragging. Concord is an artist; as a boy he sees with an artist's eye, and finds the path laid out by his mother, whose every gesture and thought are bound up in his career, one that he cannot follow. The conflicting influences in his early life bear fruit, but some of the threads seem tenuous. He pays the price of possessive love, as two women dominate his life, demanding sacrifice of his art -- and the love of the third is too late. Thoroughly readable tale, spanning the period from the latter part of the century on, and drawn against the shifting background of England and Italy.