Review: A satisfactory story, but the author is not quite up to the psychology of the story
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 15, 2013
An Infamous Marriage takes quite a bit from Heyer's An Infamous Army, but suffers in comparison.  Heyer's characters leap off the screen whereas Fraser's plod along in a fairly commonplace way.  The book ends in Belgium before and during the Waterloo Battle, and again, the descriptions of the city, the balls before the war, and the battle itself just does not compare to Heyer's book.  Also somewhat like An Infamous Army, and An Infamous Marriage looks at the complications arising from marriage, in this case, an improbably Marriage of Convenience between the Hero and Heroine.  Again, in Heyer's book, the H continues his extra-marital dalliances, but in An Infamous Marriage, the affairs the H has are quite tawdry and unappealing.  He just appears NOT to have taken his vows at all seriously.In the meantime, the Heroine is taking care of the Hero's lands, horses, and mother, who is senile!  She decides to take on the task of adding sheep to the farm.  The Hero's uncle makes an appearance or two, but the story never has the salty verity of a book by Carla Kelly, who takes you into the day-to-day life of people much more graphically.I am also always a bit distressed with using Waterloo as a backdrop to a story because some 50,000 casualties occurred in less than 3 days of battle.  It was horrible, but the Heroine not only sets up a hospital in her rental home, she finds a horse (?really) to go ride out a find her wounded (slightly) husband.The psychology of the characters is also not quite right, but I don't want to spoil the book by revealing the "big conflict" that occurs between the H and h.  It just doesn't work, and the antagonist's motivations are also mind boggling.Read it, but take away any hope for a realistic or original text, especially if you have read Georgette Heyer's or Carla Kelly's books.