A Calculating Heart by Caro Fraser

I have been reading Caro Fraser's Caper Court series since she published the first one 'The Pupil' back in 1992.  I believe this is the sixth in the series, each one has been about the same main protagonist Leo Davis.

I have always enjoyed following the lives of the lawyers at Five Caper Court as they appear in each subsequent novel. Leo Davis is a charismatic character and throughout his career seems to manage to escape scandal time and again.

Nothing has changed in this latest novel, Leo is still getting himself into trouble. Although he has of late decided that he is maybe ready to settle down, with one woman, it does not workout. No surprise then as once again he is tempted to stray this time into the arms of an extremely calculating lady.

On the back of the copy of the book I read there is a quote 'Smart, complex and deliciously racy .... the thinking woman's chicklit'.   I have to say I agree, nothing brain stretching but a good read. Although I find it more interesting to have read the earlier novels and have got to know the characters it is certainly not a prerequisite to have done so.  I will now have to look out for the seventh 'Breath of Corruption' and with an eighth in the pipeline one wonders for how long Caro Fraser will keep this series going. It has already been 18 years!

Caro Fraser's Website

 

Some interesting background information about Caro Fraser from Wikipedia.  A British novelist, and the daughter of writer George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman books.

Fraser was born in Carlisle in 1953, but moved to Glasgow shortly afterwards and was brought up there until her mid-teens, attending Glasgow High School for Girls. When she was 15 her father wrote the first book in the Flashman series, and the family moved to the Isle of Man, where she went to the Buchan School. She started writing professionally in 1992, before that she was a commercial lawyer, and before that an advertising copywriter.

Her first novel, The Pupil, was based on her time spent in pupillage, which is the training required to become a barrister. The novel was written largely from a male standpoint, and deals with the trials and fortunes of Anthony Cross during his six month pupillage at Caper Court, and the various characters he meets in the eccentric world of the Inns of Court in London. Chief among these is Leo Davies, an attractive, talented, charismatic and extremely successful barrister, who happens to be bisexual, and under whose spell Anthony quickly falls. This work became the foundation of the Caper Court series, which at present comprises seven novels: The Pupil, Judicial Whispers, An Immoral Code, A Hallowed Place, A Perfect Obsession, A Calculating Heart and A Breath of Corruption. In the later novels Leo, rather than Anthony, is the hero and the centre of attention.

She has also written six stand-alone novels; The Trustees, An Inheritance, Beyond Forgiveness, A Little Learning, Familiar Rooms In Darkness and A World Apart, which she describes on her web site as romantic fiction for the thinking woman.