THE FINAL PATTERN

Lesley Mackie brings this final volume of the Armstrong family trilogy, set in the borderlands of Scotland, to a brilliant conclusion. Mackie, a native of Scotland who trained at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, is naturally at ease with the material in this romance saga. Her presentation of villainess Lucy Armstrong is at times highly charged and appropriately melodramatic and at other times subtle and seductive. As Lucy succeeds in manipulating her naïve niece, Mackie portrays a soul-searching and tender ingenue without being mawkish. Mackie glides flawlessly from female to male speaker, from aristocrat to mill laborer, and from Scot to Aussie. M.D.H. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 03]