Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

On Kindle via Project Gutenberg

This is the sequel to "The Three Musketeers" and in my opinion is a more enjoyable book.   All the quartet from the previous novel are reintroduced this time to cope with the machinations of Cardinal Mazarin, an Italian of such reprehensible character as to make them long for the good old days of Cardinal Richelieu.
Anne of Austria, the Queen Mother, is Regent for King Louis the Fourteenth and is very much under the influence of Mazarin which causes a group of nobles to form an opposition party known as the Fronde.   D'Artagnan as a lieutenant in the Musketeers must support the Queen which also means Mazarin whilst Athos and Aramis are with the Fronde. Porthos is persuaded to join D'Artagnan though neither are keen to support anything to do with Mazarin. Into the plot comes a young man who is the son of the infamous Lady de Winter who was executed at the behest of the Musketeers in the previous novel.   Needless to say this young man is bent on vengeance and contrives to cause the quartet a heap of trouble before he is overcome.
Twenty Years After is an excellent book that I had intended to read for years but never got round to and I can thank a dose of the 'flu for finaly bringing me to settle down to it.
As the saying goes they don't write them like that any more which is all the more reason to cherish them now.