Sir Percy Blakeney returns in the swashbuckling sequel to the classic novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel, as the French Revolution rages and danger abounds.
Despite the brutality that scarred the city during the early days of the Revolution, Paris has proved resilient with curtains rising on theatrical performances and residents seeking escape in make believe. But the new Republic’s rule of bloodshed and terror continues unabated.
Rarely out of France, the Scarlet Pimpernel, English aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney, has selflessly tried to save the innocent from death and imprisonment. His men, spoiled society darlings, hang onto his every word, willing to leave the luxuries of London or Bath to save the helpless victims of tyranny. One such man is Blakeney’s own brother-in-law, Armand St. Just. It is Armand’s capricious heart that will lead him to betray his leader to enemies that want nothing more than to bring the Scarlet Pimpernel to his knees.
Baroness Orczy (1865–1947) was a member of the Hungarian aristocracy, and her family settled in London when she was a teenager. At Heatherley’s School of Fine Art, she met her future husband, Montague Barstow, and in 1903 the two collaborated on The Scarlet Pimpernel, a play about an English aristocrat’s adventures during the French revolution. The play and its subsequent novelization were great successes, and Orczy went on to write more than a dozen sequels featuring the Pimpernel and many other works of romance and mystery, including The Old Man in the Corner and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard.