Hello there, gentle readers! After last chapter I was almost afraid that the bad-stravaganza would let us down, that we would never see feats the like of chapter 14, chapter 16 or chapter 18 again... but worry not, because my squeaky clown shoe prophecy ended up being fulfilled. (What a sentence.)
Let's jump right into the fail!
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| I think this image should... adequately warn y'all of the kind of chapter we're getting. |
Chapter 21: An Epic Comeback
Chapter 21 starts with everyone aflutter as they get ready for the murder ball, including Ned Boodle, a.k.a. the guy who delivered Anemone her dad's letter all the way back in chapter 1. If you didn't expect him to make such an epic comeback, don't worry because I didn't either. (May that sentence count as foreshadowing for the next few pages.) We then land in a scene where Mr. Carstairs takes a second to confer with his daughter, and he's positively shaken with anxiety because he senses that something stupid is about to happen. No, seriously.
Every second that elapsed brought them closer to disaster, but when or how it would strike he did not know.
Disaster? That's not a very nice thing to call the climax of this book. I mean, it's accurate, but hey.
Anemone, meanwhile, has just returned from a long walk that's described in way more detail than I care about, where she managed to not meet De Vauban...
SUPER MEGA SPY!
...because apparently her dad's intricate spy network can't check where he is so she can pretend to run into him. Frankly, that tracks. And she can also sense that something stupid is about to happen. No, seriously.
Now, as she sat beside her father in the golden and white salon, she sensed his tension and knew that he, too, was anxious about the wisdom of their plan.
As I said in my previous recap: ma'am, please stop poking the plotholes, that's my job.
So after Anemone and her dad apparently agree that the Thirty Second Wonder Plan might not be as smart as they first thought, she asks again why they can't just spirit Lord Bromford away from the murder ball, but her dad dismisses it by saying that he thinks De Vauban wouldn't be stupid enough to attempt to kill the guy under his own roof. Keep that line in mind while I marvel at the fact that even the characters keep pointing out how this plan makes no sense. On both sides.
However, Anemone decides that they haven't had enough wild guesswork in this masterful spy plan yet, and tells her dad that since De Vauban "is a man who relishes taking risks", he might just attempt to murk Lord Bromford at his own ball tonight. I'd sarcastically applaud her for deducing the guy's personality from a few minutes of getting her boobs stared at, but the book expects me to take this whole thing seriously, so I'll be nice and take a stab at doing so.
My attempt lasts precisely until the next paragraph, when Mr. Carstairs gravely informs his daughter that he's keeping his eyes on a local cutthroat named – I shit you not – One Eye, who he suspects of being mixed up in the whole murder ball business because he was seen with one of the conspirators in locales like "Scar-Footed Mattie's place on Girod". So that's what we're working with. After Anemone tries to warn her dad away from going alone into such dens of evil, Mr. Carstairs reassures her that he's been through worse (although I doubt he's been through dumber) and shills Anemone's super mega spy skills some more as he internal monologues about her. And then I laughed very hard.
She was good at her work, damn good, and much of that came from the joy she brought to spying.
Don't change the channel, because next is the Joy of Spying with Tom Carstairs! He doesn't make mistakes... he just has happy accidents.
So after I lost it a little at that phrasing, Mr. Carstairs proves that he does, in fact, have eyes by asking Anemone why she and Burke keep acting weird around each other, and she jumps like she sat on a tack. Since Mr. Carstairs is not a whole idiot, only, let's say... three-quarters of one, he deduces from her over-the-top reaction that she's in love with the guy (I mean, "in lust" would be more accurate because these two still don't know a damn thing about each other, but I digress). Anemone tells her dad she'd rather not talk about it, he thinks back on the soldier guy who played her back when she was sixteen and how she didn't tell him very much about that affair either, and then he unleashes another bit of phrasing that made me laugh very hard.
Yet he had heard her sobbing on her bed after she had shoved the damned fellow into the horse trough.
I've been trying to come up with a joke about the pure bathos of that sentence for the past five minutes, but I don't think I can top it. Feel free to try for yourselves, dear readers.
Mr. Carstairs then briefly wins my adoration by offering to shove Burke into a horse trough too, "Or better yet, a muddy Mississippi bayou". Aside from me waving frantically at the book and mouthing 'PLEASE DO IT', this is a genuinely sweet and intentionally funny moment of dad-daughter bonding for once. I kind of love it. Too bad it's ruined by the next sentence.
She stared at him in numb shock, and then gave a cry that was something between a giggle and a sob.
That must have been a very interesting acoustic effect.
Anyway, after a bit of giggle-crying Anemone hugs her dad and assures him that she can do her job despite the Burke-shaped wound on her heart. Armed with that knowledge, Mr. Carstairs leaves in a better mood to continue his preparations...
...and he then proceeds to lose all my admiration immediately by thinking that Burke and his daughter are perfectly suited to each other and "they would have to find their own way to each other – after this job was finished". Aside from the fact that he couldn't be more wrong, the fact that he's still shipping his daughter with the guy who visibly broke her darn heart and who she JUST TOLD HIM "loathes me every bit as much as I loathe him" has me officially taking away the Dad Of The Year Award I was this close to handing him. Shame on you, sir.
After Mr. Carstairs disappoints us all, he then thinks about bringing the Spider to justice, as apparently the guy works in the English intelligence service too, and was the one who ordered Mr. Carstairs to be killed in Spain when he stumbled across the New Orleans conspiracy (hence him having to fake his own death). And if you're wondering who the Spider must be, since Mr. Carstairs has been hinting at suspecting his identity for the past three chapters... he thinks about going back to the hotel to tell Anemone and Burke about his thoughts when a carriage races by him, making him stumble into an alley, and a familiar voice behind him tells him in italics not to move a muscle. What a marvelous contrivance!
Before Mr. Carstairs could react to the plot train hitting him with full force, the mystery man jams a pistol into his back and tells him to walk until they get to someplace less public. How they can do that without anyone else on the street seeing said pistol shoved into my man's back is honestly beyond me, but that's still not as stupid as what happens next.
"Lead the way, Oliver, old boy," Thomas said. "As ever, I am entirely at your disposal."
OH MY GOD IT'S OLIVER.
...who?
Yes, dear readers, you saw that right: Anemone's boss, who couldn't even be bothered to grace us with his presence in chapter 1 or to appear on-page at flippin' all in the entire book, is revealed to be the Spider.
The squeaky clown shoes just kicked us all in the stomach.
So after that epic fail of a plot twist, our mysterious mustachioed mastermind steps forward and "nudged the gun into Thomas's spine" – um, ow – which somehow makes people not see it despite the fact that he'd have to be standing at a very, very friendly distance to Mr. Carstairs to cover what his hand is doing. The sight of which probably would raise exactly as many eyebrows as Oliver just pointing the darn gun at him. Despite that, the two of them make tense conversation as they somehow manage to make their way through the street, until the same carriage from before stops next to them. Turns out that's not a coincidence because the carriage is driven by the esteemed One Eye Jones (snrk) himself, and the chapter ends by Oliver prodding Mr. Carstairs with the gun until he climbs in.
Holy moly, dear readers. I told y'all this would be stupid. See you next time with even more dumb!
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