Who says spies can't fall in love?
The Agents of the Crown
About the Agents of the Crown
The Agents of the Crown books—set in 1814-15 England about two former spies—will always be special to me because they mark my first foray into epistolary techniques. In To Catch an Heiress, Caroline Trent keeps a “personal dictionary,” in which she defines a word and then uses it in a sentence. Each chapter begins with one of her entries, and her chosen sentence provides (often hilarious) insight into the story.
How to Marry a Marquis also employed an epistolary device, this time a book-within-the-book. Elizabeth Hotchkiss is constantly consulting a regency-era dating advice guide, generally with poor results.
I enjoyed Caroline’s dictionary and Elizabeth’s guidebook so much that I went on to use similar devices in many later books: gossip columns, excerpts from gothic novels, diary entries, and the like.
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Reader Questions about the Agents of the Crown
- I loved the Hotchkiss family in How to Marry a Marquis. Are you going to write stories for the younger siblings?
- In Minx (published 1996), William Dunford falls in love with Henrietta Barrett and marries her, but in How To Marry A Marquis (published 1999) he’s a bachelor again. What gives?
Agents of the Crown Extras
