The Scottish merchant Keith Kinnaird, having received a letter from his friend Henry Greene asking for help, travels to Saint-Denis in France in the autumn of 1792, but his friend has disappeared. Determined to find him, Kinnaird makes enquiries, but soon he finds himself at the centre of a web of intrigue. Will he be able to make it out alive?

I love Robert Wilton's historical thrillers, centred on documents found in the archives of the (fictitious) Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey. His novels are tense, intricate, complex and compellingly readable, and with enough twists and turns to make a reader feel dizzy, while remaining eminently realistic; this fourth volume in the series (not chronological) is no exception. The prose is one to savour as Robert Wilton has a knack to describe a character, setting or atmosphere with a few well-chosen words that make the action come alive before one's eyes. It's a fairly demanding read because the reader is required to pay attention not only to the things that are said, but also to what remains unsaid; sometimes the threads become visible only later on in the book. However, it is not perfect: the rather loose structure, just as in the other novels in the series, takes some getting used to, with short sections providing a focus on one character, only for the next section to move to another. I also found the jump between tenses at times slightly distracting, but when the narrative is this compelling, that is easy to forgive.

As with Robert Wilton's author books in the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey series, Treason's Spring is fiendishly clever and definitely worth a re-read, to better understand, and to better appreciate, how the plot threads are interwoven.

In the author's notes Robert Wilton mentions certain connections to characters in Treason's Tide, set only a decade after the events in Treason's Spring, which make this book worth a re-read sooner rather than later.

Apparently this is the beginning of a new trilogy, and I can't wait to get my hands on the sequels when they're eventually published. ( )