The first of VA Richardson"s sequence of historical romances about Dutch traders, The House of Windjammer has all the chiaroscuro and busy-ness of the Rembrandt paintings that form a significant part of its inspiration. The plotting is the purest of melodrama and Richardson has no especial commitment to avoiding cliché--but there is a conviction here and a sense of a society that is all about bustle and feeling righteous and the complex hypocrisies that go with them. The Windjammers lose their merchant fleet to a storm off the Americas and the young heir fights his uncle for control and a conniving banker, Hugo, for the right to send their remaining vessel on a rescue mission. Adam is pursued by a murderous preacher to whom the mob listens and is in ambivalent love with Hugo"s daughter Jade. In addition, we have the inflationary craze for tulips getting progressively out of control with masked figures in low taverns exchanging notional fortunes for a couple of bulbs. There is an intensity and sense of place to this at its best which bodes well for the series as a whole, as well as some lazy use of default plot elements which does not. --Roz Kaveney