Unnatural Fire: A Countess Ashby de la Zouche Mystery (Countess Ashby de La Zouche Mysteries) [Paperback]

Fidelis Morgan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2002 | Series: Countess Ashby de La Zouche Mysteries

Restoration London, 1699 -- Anastasia Ashby de la Zouche, Baroness Penge, Countess of Clapham, and former mistress to King Charles II, has astonishingly been jailed in debtors' prison. Joining forces with her loyal ex-maidservant, Alpiew, the formerly pampered and proper Countess sets out to make a living by working for the scandal sheets -- a line of work that inevitably leads her through some of the seamier byways of the city. She and Alpiew find a welcome additional source of income when they are approached by a stranger who asks them to gather evidence to prove her husband is committing adultery. But the uncomfortable job of trailing after the handsome merchant in the depths of winter ends abruptly in a Covent Garden churchyard with a brutal murder.

Implicated in the crime, the Countess and Alpiew find themselves drawn into a complex labyrinth of deceit, violence, and the mysterious world of alchemy. And the more they investigate, the more complex the picture becomes, involving everyone from the most decrepit back-alley criminals to some of the most influential people in all the land.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A boisterous, bawdy romp through Restoration England, Unnatural Fire introduces a pair of unlikely heroines and sets them on a merry chase through London just before the dawn of the 18th century. The Countess Ashby de la Zouche has lost her place in society with the death of Charles II, her former paramour, and the subsequent disappearance of her husband, a swindler who's gone to America to seek his fortune. Languishing in debtor's prison, she's soon rediscovered by her erstwhile maid Alpiew, whose circumstances aren't much better than her former employer's. But the two women swiftly discover how to turn their shared fondness for gossip into a tidy livelihood as stringers for an infamous scandal sheet. Hired by a wealthy matron to get the goods on her philandering husband, they stumble on a murder that sets this fast-paced, funny story in motion. The mystery mixes royal intrigue, theatrical shenanigans, cross-dressing strangers, and secret formulas into a delicious potion brewed by an actor and playwright who specializes in Restoration comedy. Author Fidelis Morgan's thorough familiarity with the period informs every paragraph of this delightful historical romp. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

British actress and playwright Morgan's (Hangover Square) love of Restoration comedy fires her first novel, a bawdy romp featuring a pair of unlikely female sleuths: the intrepid 60-year-old Lady Anastasia Ashby de la Zouche, who was once Charles II's mistress, and her former personal maid, the buxom, alluring Alpiew. Desperate for money, the countess and Alpiew join forces to write articles for a London scandal sheet, but get sidetracked following a well-to-do merchant, Beau Wilson, at the behest of his worried wife, who is suspicious of his long, unexplained absences from home. As they trail Beau around London's seedier districts, the countess and Alpiew attend a play or two as well as a lecture on the eclipse of the sun (due later that year of 1699), comment wittily on the state of the theater and scientific learning and eventually stumble on their quarry, his throat cut from ear to ear, one night in Covent Garden. Like a comic Restoration play, the action proceeds pell-mell, replete with bad puns and knockabout farce. The discovery of a secret "elaboratory" where Beau dabbled in the "hermetic arts" (alchemy), a fishing outing to the country, the murder of the Wilsons' loyal servant, Betty, and a cipher in alchemical symbols all lead in the end to a surprising plot involving King William himself. Fans of light historical mysteries are sure to be amused. (Mar. 16)Forecast: The BBC and Channel 4 are adapting Unnatural Fire for a TV movie; A&E and PBS are both interested in U.S. rights. Adaptation by either of the latter will boost sales of the book down the road.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (February 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060007834
• ISBN-13: 978-0060007836
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,376,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Fidelis Morgan was born in a red gypsy caravan, Kiomi Romani, in an orchard at the corner of the grounds of the ancient Amesbury Abbey, halfway between Stonehenge and Woodhenge.

Her parents, Liverpool Catholics, believed in education in the widest sense, and enjoyed picking up waifs and strays. Once the family moved to a house it was not only crammed with animals (cats, dogs, chickens, geese, goats and foxes) but an endless stream of eccentric characters: boisterous painters who picked up women in the street to pose nude in the living room, musicians who battered away on milk bottles, the disgraced son of a local Earl, an Irish builder who had won and lost a million three times over and a bearded man who wore her mother's underwear and did the cleaning while Mae West records played. There was even a famous cat-burglar, who was proudly paraded at school sports day.
Fidelis survived school, despite being jeered at for her northern accent, and being expelled a number of times.

During her school holidays she spent a lot of time living in Paris where her mother sometimes worked as a painter on the Butte, Montmartre. Fidelis regularly earned enough money painting clowns, playing the guitar and giving Americans guided tours in a cod French accent ("Don't you talk good English, little girl. Here's a dollar.") to buy supper for them both.

She gained an honours degree at Birmingham University. Her finals papers were on Restoration London and the world of the 17th century theatre. Which led to her ground-breaking book THE FEMALE WITS, which rediscovered the long lost women playwrights of the Restoration. She followed up with numerous anthologies and biographies set in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including A WOMAN OF NO CHARACTER, and The WELL-KNOWN TROUBLEMAKER.

She works as a professional actor. Her screen appearances include Jeeves and Wooster, As Time Goes By, Mr Majeika, Dead Gorgeous, Big Women and Never Let Me Go.
Fidelis has played leading roles by Brecht, Chekhov, Wilde, Coward, Lorca, Orton, Shaw, Genet, Goldoni, Massinger & Schiller, in companies like West Yorkshire Playhouse, Nottingham Playhouse, Liverpool Everyman, Paines Plough and particularly the Glasgow Citizens, where her work won her a Best Actress nomination in The Observer.
She has played opposite Rupert Everett, Glenda Jackson, Dame Judi Dench, Ciaran Hinds, Gary Oldman, Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman.


As a playwright, her adaptation of Samuel Richardson's PAMELA won her a nomination as Most Promising Playwright, and was described in the Guardian as "a new eighteenth century play". The Morgan/Benedict play Fragments From the Life of Marie Antoinette won the LIPA award for large cast play 1997, while her adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's HANGOVER SQUARE played for an extended run at the Lyric Hammersmith, where it acquired cult status, and was recently revived to great acclaim at the Finborough Theatre.

Her four murder mysteries featuring The Countess Ashby dela Zouche and her maid Alpiew are acclaimed throughout the world.

She has a new short story collection TRIPLE SHORTS and a modern novel, MURDER QUADRILLE available for Kindle and download to computers.