**'She liked lies...To lie readily and cleverly, recklessly and yet successfully, was, according to the lessons which she had learned, a necessity in a woman'*Lizzie Eustace is young, beautiful, and widowed. Her determination to hold on to the Eustace family's diamond necklace in the face of legal h...

**'She liked lies...To lie readily and cleverly, recklessly and yet successfully, was, according to the lessons which she had learned, a necessity in a woman'*Lizzie Eustace is young, beautiful, and widowed. Her determination to hold on to the Eustace family's diamond necklace in the face of legal harassment by her brother-in-law's solicitor entangles her in a series of crimes - apparent and real - and contrived love-affairs. Her cousin Frank, Tory MP and struggling barrister, loyally assists her, to the distress of his fiancée, Lucy Morris. A pompous Under-Secretary of State, an exploitative and acquisitive American and her unhappy niece, a shady radical peer, and a brutal aristocrat are only some of the characters in this, one of Trollope's most engaging novels: part sensation fiction, part detective story, part political satire, and part ironic romance. The Eustace Diamonds * (1873) belongs to Trollope's Palliser series. Though often considered the least political of the six novels, it is a highly revealing study of Victorian Britain, its colonial activities in Ireland and India, its veneration of wealth, and its pervasive dishonesty.

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