Kim was taking up an alarming amount of space in his mind. If he was thinking this much about a woman, he’d have no trouble finding a name for it. [loc. 1626]
Second in the Will Darling Adventures (the first was Slippery Creatures: that novel ended on a hopeful note, but at the opening of The Sugared Game Will Darling (war hero turned bookseller) hasn't seen Kim Secretan (Bolshevik sympathiser turned probably-spy-certainly-shady) for weeks, and is berating himself for thinking there could be anything between them.
Will enjoys a night out with his friend Maisie at a glamorous but seedy night-club, the High-Low -- and catches up with an old friend from the army who, down on his luck, is working as a waiter there. That's the cue for Kim to reappear with a tangled tale of attempted blackmail and criminality which is linked to the High-Low. Will is reluctant to trust Kim again, what with the subterfuge and the outright lies and the lack of response to telephone messages, but he does crave action, and Kim offers the opportunity for mayhem.
The Sugared Game lays bare the fast and frivolous social life of the Smart Set -- which Will is perfectly happy not to belong to -- and the private miseries that support it. We get quite a bit more insight into Kim's character (though he is no less vexatious than in the previous volume), and Phoebe and Maisie both have more prominent roles in this novel. The ambience is excellent (reminded me in places of Dorothy Sayers) and the plot and character development very well-paced. Kim's relationship with his fiancee, the excellent Phoebe Stephens-Prince, is given more context: Maisie's ambitions as a designer open more doors.
Because I am terribly shallow, I made undignified noises when Kim's erstwhile boss from the Private Bureau appeared. I do hope we'll be seeing more of him. And I was also very happy when Will was the target of designer Edward Molyneux' flirtation. Molyneux is far less of an arse than Kim Secretan: but it does look as though there might be hope for the latter.
Great fun, pulp-inspired without the period-typical racism / sexism / misogyny (though some of the characters do exhibit these), and now I am eagerly awaiting the conclusion to the trilogy.
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