This historical novel relates the stirring adventures, conspiracies, and feasts prev-alent during the last years of Charles IX's reign in the latter part of the 16th century. The marriage of Marguerite de Valois, sister of King Charles IX, to Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre, triggers the mostly riotous events of this story. She was Catholic, he was Protestant, and their weddeing took place during the religious wars in France between the Catholics and the Huguenots.
Every hundred years, four kids from four cities must save the world. Rome, December 29. A mix-up with their reservations forces Harvey from New York, Mistral from Paris, and Sheng from Shanghai to share a room with the hotel owner’s daughter, Elettra. The four kids discover an amazing coincidence—they all have birthdays on February 29, Leap Day. That night, a strange man gives them a briefcase and asks them to take care of it until he returns. Soon afterward, the man is murdered.
Babson's 12th mystery has more geneological skeins than the Book of Genesis. Zita is painter David Fallbridge's second wife; Caroline, spoiled and irresponsible, his first. By her first marriage, Caroline had a daughter, Fanny. Now Caroline wants to marry gambling czar Xavier. To enliven the courtship, Caroline plans a cruise aboard her suitor's yacht and prevails upon the weak-willed Zita to babysit for Fanny, who is an obnoxious child. On the day David leaves for America, Fanny is kidnapped.
A lifetime of craving more cuddly companionship than her hectoring mother has led fortyish Bettina Bilby to board her neighbors' felines for a long holiday weekend: an expectant tabby, a pampered blue-eyed Balinese, a depressed ginger Persian with a cod-liver-oil addiction, and Adolf, an imperious mouser with a patchwork face.
Trixie Dolan and Evangeline Sinclair, Babson's feisty elderly heroines, are back, just as bickering, inquisitive, and delightful as ever. The two former film stars are at leisure (temporarily, of course) but they have, again of course, expectations of juicy parts in a movie in the near future. Meanwhile, circumstances force a move to a penthouse suite in an only partially remodeled London warehouse. Currently the quarters are pretty primitive, but the two actresses cope bravely, not even minding the dangerous door in the kitchen that opens onto an unguarded three-story drop.
