RogerBW's Blog

A Grave Matter, Anna Lee Huber 19 April 2024

2014 historical mystery; third in Huber's Lady Darby series (post-Regency amateur detection). Still shaken by the events of the previous book, Lady Darby must step forward again when a caretaker is murdered and a body stolen…

Because it's not a recent body, as might have been had away by the grave-robbers feeding the demands of the medical schools, but one that's been in the ground for long enough to become a skeleton. And it seems that it's being held for ransom, and that this has happened to other corpses too. Have the grave-robbers come up with a new way to make money? Or is there something more sinister going on?

Again, though, the mystery isn't the most important thing here, with most of the resolution being pretty obvious and only one false lead. Instead, most of the narrative time is given to the relationship between Lady Darby and Sebastian Gage, the private enquiry agent who's obviously her destined partner. That relationship comes to something of a resolution here, after some very obvious obstacles are dealt with, so I'll be interested to see how the balance may shift in future books.

But also I'm not carried away enough that I don't notice a misphrasing like this…

Though the light of day had not yet completely vanished from the sky, the waning crescent moon already shone on the horizon as we crested the ridge of land that would lead us down into Shotton Pass.

A waning crescent moon is just ahead of the sun in its movement across the sky, and so would have set before it.

It's never any great shakes on subtlety or characterisation, but there's some fun to be had here, probably more for the romance reader than for the crime-solver.

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Previous in series: Mortal Arts | Series: Lady Darby Mysteries | Next in series: A Study in Death

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