The Pretender, first in a series following the members of The Liar’s Club spy organization, features very fresh writing and a delightfully joyous heroine. It’s a blast to read, even though there are also some clumsy plot devices and an historical inaccuracy or two. You may have to suspend your disbelief a bit more intensely in certain spots, but the book’s strong points make up for its weaknesses.

Agatha Cunnington is country born and raised, and as innocent as the lambs she oversees on her brother’s estate. She hasn’t heard from him in months and, desperate to find him, travels to London. Knowing she cannot, as a young, unmarried woman, travel to London or set up a household on her own, she invents as husband whom she talks about to all the ladies she meets. Agatha, however, is hoisted on her own petard when she has to produce her husband for inspection. Luckily she finds a chimneysweep who looks as if he might clean up quite nicely.

And so he does. Simon Rain, city born and raised, was saved from a life on London’s mean streets by a gentleman who educated him and brought him into the spying business. Simon works with an interesting cast of characters, and he’s infiltrated Agatha’s house because he suspects her of involvement with a French spy. He plays along with her charade to see just what her game is, and along the way he finds himself entranced by her energy, enthusiasm and honor. Not to mention a really terrific pair of breasts.

Agatha sets out to educate Simon to be a gentleman in a few short weeks, since she believes his thick h-dropping accent is real and that he has never encountered a salad fork before. Of course, he can do all the things she is teaching, and the scenes where they are together learning manners are fun and sexy. Of course, although Agatha attempts to keep her mind on finding her brother, she cannot help but notice Simon’s dashing good looks and rippling muscles. At first, he dismisses her as nothing more than a tolerable-looking female with a whole lot of curves, but soon he is as enthralled with her as she is with him.

The plot, involving various spies and hidden traitors, was not particularly intriguing; it did allow the author to trot out an interesting cast of characters as well as some funny scenes at the actual establishment that bears the name of the Liar’s Club. The author’s strength is in her characterization and dialogue, and the character she has created in Agatha is a pip who seems like someone one might actually know and whose behavior is understandable and even laudable (although at times anachronistic for the period). Simon is an extremely sexy character whose sangfroid is shaken by Agatha’s passion, something he both tries and fails to resist. The man who is clearly the hero of the next book is just as sexy, but Bradley doesn’t make the mistake of writing this book as a prequel for the second – she keeps her hero and heroine front and center, and their dilemma seems unsolvable until a very handy deus ex machine arrives in the nick of time.

Celeste Bradley made a few mistakes in The Pretender, but bad writing is not one of them. Her prose floats enthusiastically off the page, and it was hard not to root for both Agatha and Simon. I will definitely pick up the second book of the Liar’s Club series.