Lady Darby returns to London with her new husband, Sebastian Gage, but newlywed bliss won't last for long when her past comes back to haunt her in the latest exciting installment in this national bestselling series.
November 1831. After fleeing London in infamy more than two years prior, Lady Kiera Darby's return to the city is anything but mundane, though not for the reasons she expected. A gang of body snatchers is arrested on suspicion of imitating the notorious misdeeds of Edinburgh criminals, Burke and Hare--killing people from the streets and selling their bodies to medical schools. Then Kiera's past--a past she thought she'd finally made peace with--rises up to haunt her.
All of London is horrified by the evidence that "burkers" are, indeed, at work in their city. The terrified populace hovers on a knife's edge, ready to take their enmity out on any likely suspect. And when Kiera receives a letter of blackmail, threatening to divulge details about her late anatomist husband's involvement with the body snatchers and wrongfully implicate her, she begins to apprehend just how precarious her situation is. Not only for herself, but also her new husband and investigative partner, Sebastian Gage, and their unborn child.
Meanwhile, the young scion of a noble family has been found murdered a block from his home, and the man's family wants Kiera and Gage to investigate. Is it a failed attempt by the London burkers, having left the body behind, or the crime of someone much closer to home? Someone who stalks the privileged, using the uproar over the burkers to cover his own dark deeds?
I thoroughly enjoy this series, and I enjoyed this one too, but I think it might be the one I liked least.
Anyone who has read the earlier books in the series will readily agree that Lady Darby has had an unarguably difficult and painful past. Her first husband, a famous anatomist, forced her to attend his human dissections to draw the illustrations required for his planned masterwork on the human anatomy. When her part was revealed upon his death, she was vilified and run out of London. Now she's back, in love, married, and pregnant, and her timing is awful; burkers have been caught attempting to sell the body of a dead boy to anatomists, and it's obvious he did not meet his end naturally. Then the nobs start getting killed in the streets of Mayfair and everyone is looking at Lady Darby again.
It's a great story, but unfortunately, Kiera's wallowing just a bit. Not as much as your average historical heroine cliche, but more than what I'd expect from this strong and talented character. Call it a justifiable response to the equivalent of PTSD, but she became a victim, and it was a bit disappointing, given all the adventures she's had. Usually, this wouldn't be as big of a stand out as it is this time, but the murderer was obvious to me from the start, so I had nothing to distract me from Kiera's sudden-onset mousiness. She gets her mojo back in the end, so that's something.
In spite of my nit-picking, it was still an enjoyable read overall, and I look forward to the next one.
Reading updates
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Started reading
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18 July, 2019:
Finished reading
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18 July, 2019:
Reviewed