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Rating: 
Summary: Traditional Regency set in Devon and London
Review: Sheila Bishop opens The Wilderness Walk with a picture of Caroline Prior living with her married sister after their father's bank has collapsed. Jack Eltham is a much put upon young man with a wicked uncle who is deeply in love with Ada. The wicked uncle is apparently keeping Jack short of funds, has chopped down one of the woods of the estate, has been speculating with the proceeds and stands accused of murder. For who dunnit fans there is an interesting mystery tucked away in the book, for the rest of us watching Sheila Bishop at work as the plot unfolds will have to suffice. From the back of the book... Lavinia Reed is horrified when her husband announces that she is to take her annual holiday in Cleave, for he is not aware that Cleave had been the setting for his wife's misbegotten romance with Lord Francis Aubrey. Stifling these unpleasant memories, Lavinia and her sister journey to Cleave. There the two women are thrust into a romantic intrigue involving none other than Lord Francis...
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting--Three and a Half.
Review: This is a fairly short book. Some characters and situations remain underdeveloped, which is a negative since I enjoy Sheila Bishop's ability to create realistic people and relationships for its own sake. However, the mystery is suspenseful. I could hardly put the book down until it was solved. Ms Bishop is also clever at turning around our perceptions of one character. This doesn't always work for me, but in this case she won my sympathy for "Richard III."
Rating:
Summary: Rates 4 1/2 stars for mystery; less developed in romance
Review: This is an intriguing book, which worked magnificently as a Georgian murder mystery. I cannot say too much about this book without creating a lot of spoilers. But the book does not begin conventionally. The heroine is, we think, the wife of a well-to-do London solicitor, the daughter of a ruined City banker. She dreads returning to her summer home of her childhood, for fear of meeting a man who jilted her after hearing that she had lost her dowry. But the heroine is not this lady, but her younger unmarried and dowryless sister. And the hero is - well, slightly unusual. You will certainly be led up the garden path, or the wilderness walk (a theme in the mystery). The only straight-forward people in this book are the young Marquess (whose intentions are transparent if naive), the brother-in-law of the heroine, and a few other people. Everyone in this novel has secrets to keep, some for better reasons than others. And at least one person must change considerably in this novel to win the approval of others. The problem I had was that the book was really short. It ended before all the characters had been fully fleshed out, and before I had time to believe in the essential decency of the hero or the romance between the hero and heroine. While the motivations for keeping secrets made perfect sense, the whole plot seemed a little rushed (as far as the romance went). Read this book as a mystery with a romance thrown in, not as a romance. As a romance, I must rate it 3.5 (with reluctance), but as a mystery, I would have to rate it far higher (about 4.7). The average rating is about 4 stars.
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