Oh dear. Never in the running for literary gold, Claire Lorrimer's writing has slipped even further down the scale, from Philippa Gregory in The Chatelaine, to Baroness Orczy in The Wilderling, before finally regressing to Enid Blyton in The Dynasty. Like badly written fan fiction, every other sentence ends in an exclamation mark, and pronouns have qualifiers - 'He, Guy, thought ... said ...' Also, the chirpy terms of endearment are straight out of a spoof radio show, with 'darlings' and 'old chaps' abound.

Nor could the story or the characters themselves excuse the dreadful technical style, this time. The Dynasty is a tying up of the Rochford family's loose ends, set during the late thirties and into the Second World War, with the spotlight on Willow's niece, Zandra (daughter of the crippled Dodie, who is unceremoniously killed off mid-trilogy). I had high hopes for Zandra, based on her youthful exuberance and confidence in the second novel, but she too disappoints by marrying a pantomime villain. Are we meant to feel sorry for Anthony Wisson, or boo him off stage? The man is an arrogant little peasant who envies the haves of this world, and marries a Rochford to propel himself the rest of the way up the social ladder. Obviously neither his immigrant parents nor the bullies at public school told him that money alone can't buy class or respect. He's so 'evil' that it's laughable - his one facial expression is a narrowing of the eyes and a tightening of the lips (showing distaste/anger/repressed memories, etc.) A few shades of grey might have made Zandra's long, drawn-out sentence of marriage either more interesting, or less obvious, instead of merely echoing Willow's first disastrous union with Rowell Rochford.

The pacing is similarly atrocious - Anthony's sadistic treatment of Zandra sort of peters out during the war, everyone accepts steady but dull Guy Bristow into the fold, and Rochford Manor is once again turned into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. The safe house in France, and the shocking deception at home, come rather too late to counter the first 500 pages of repetitive dialogue and clumsy infodumps, I'm afraid.

I would definitely recommend The Chatelaine, and Lucy in The Wilderling is a worthy heroine like her mother, but don't bother with Zandra's story. ( )