Rating: 
Summary: Spinning his wheels
Review: Trollope supposedly wrote this book in response to public disappointment at the ending of _Phineas Finn_. I can't imagine why; it seemed to me that the former novel's ending was quite brilliant, really, and Phineas himself was always rather a cipher. In both novels, he seems to represent little more than a conduit for the influence of womanly wiles (as Trollope conceived of them) upon the political process.So what we get here is Trollope's _Merry Wives of Windsor_. The plot trundles along through a minutely reported debate between Liberals and Conservatives upon the disestablishment of the church, followed by a very run-of-the-mill murder trial that pales in comparison to just about any one of John Mortimer's Rumpole stories. One gets the sense that Trollope is marking time, here. Nonetheless, there are some wonderful character sketches sandwiched inbetween the long passages of reportage, and it's a fairly quick read. The Palliser completist should approach it with only mild apprehensiveness, not outright dread.
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