As a big fan of Cornwell's earlier books in this series, I am sad to say that I really, really disliked this book. It is hard to even give it a rating of one star. I thought the overly long book spent way too much time on Kay's paranoid thoughts about everyone (including her husband and niece) and boring, boring minutiae of conversations with her husband. When this series started, the books were stories that were interesting and I would fly through them. Unfortunately, with this and the few prior, I have found myself having a hard time getting through them, falling asleep while reading, and although not dreading the book, certainly not looking forward to curling up with it as I did at the beginning of the series.