"realistic entertaining whodunit"

In Brighton in June 1811, the Prince Regent hosts a fete at the Royal Pantheon when he finds the woman he planned to make his mistress dead with a dagger in her back. The Prince falls apart so it is up to LordJarvis to learn what happened. He asks Viscount Sebastian St. Cyr to find out who killed Marchioness Guinevere Anglessey. St. Cry declines until he sees the necklace the victim is wearing.

The last time St. Cyr saw the necklace his mother wore it on the day she died at sea. The dagger belongs to Prinny, but Guinevere actually died from arsenic poisoning. Many English believe the Hanover dynasty is tainted with madness and assume the crazy Regent killed his latest whore; some go so far as to believe the country would better off with a Stuart restoration. Civil war seems imminent as St. Cyr considers how Guinevere fit in a highly charged political picture as she didn't dabble in affairs of state only in affairs with heads of state and had no connection to the Stuarts except the necklace.

C. S. Harris cleverly uses words to paint vivid colorful pictures of a decadent era symbolized by its hedonist prince and a country divided like a checkerboard in many chaotic ways. The hero is intent on solving the mystery of the necklace perhaps more than the homicide though he knows uncovering the killer might give him clues as to how Guinevere got his mother's death jewelry. The cast brings out the ambience of the era inside a realistic entertaining whodunit.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 5, 2006

Summary

Brighton, England, 1811. The beautiful wife of an aging Marquis is found dead in the arms of the Prince Regent. Draped around her neck lies an ancient necklace with mythic origins—and mysterious ties to Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin. Haunted by his past, Sebastian investigates both the Marchioness's death and his own possible connection to it—and discovers a complex pattern of lies and subterfuge. With the aid of his lover, Kat Boleyn, and a former street urchin now under his protection, Sebastian edges closer to the killer. And when one murder follows another, he confronts a conspiracy that threatens his own identity...and imperils the monarchy itself.