On a dark and blustery night as Dido Twite and her friend Captain Hughes are on their way to London bearing an important dispatch for the Admiralty, the coach in which they are travelling overturns. The two soon find themselves amidst an exceedingly strange assortment of people. There is the aged Lady Tegleaze, whose passion is horse racing; her grandson, Sir Tobit, who spends his time sipping cowslip wine and casting himself as the hero of various romantic plots; the two witches, Tante Sannie, purveyor of intoxicating joobie nuts, and the sinister Mrs. Lubbage; the Wineberry men, a gang of rum-runners who meet beneath the Cuckoo Tree; and the scheming Colonel FitzPickwick and Mr. Mystery. It falls to Dido to try to forestall a Hanoverian plan to put St. Paul's Cathedral on rollers and, during the coronation of James IV, to roll it into the River Thames.
Joan Aiken is at the top of her form in this pell-mell novel blending excitement, humor, and a pleasantly-chilling spookiness as only an Aiken story can.
—from the dust jacket
Did you find this review helpful?