2020 historical thriller, fifth of its series. As London panics over
the Ripper murders, Veronica and Stoker are asked to get Albert Victor
("Prince Eddy") out of potential trouble by retrieving a distinctive
piece of jewellery from a high-class courtesan…
I went into this with some trepidation: I'm aware of the
suggestions (mostly originating in later-confessed 1970s fakery) that
Albert Victor could have been the Ripper, as well as some of the very
basic flaws in their methodology. Like made-up controversies over the
authorship of Shakespeare's plays, I find this whole business rather
dull, especially when handled by writers whose talent for portrayal of
character seems to desert them when it comes to aristocrats, who must
all be scheming monsters or babbling syphilitic idiots. (Sometimes
both at once.)
So I was very glad to see that Raybourn has no truck with believing
this nonsense, but does use it as part of a plot: if the public
could be convinced of the plausibility of a connection, this would
certainly destabilise a monarchy already mildly precarious. Prince
Eddy is portrayed as perhaps something of a fool, something of an
innocent, but at least trying to do what he sees as the right thing.
And Veronica, as the reader is aware, is Prince Eddy's secret older
half-sister, close enough to legitimate that she could be a lever
applied to confuse the situation further. She has no ambitions in that
direction, but some of her relatives…
In addition to that, the series reader will be aware that at the end
of book 4 Veronica and Stoker admitted their mutual attraction and
agreed that they would sleep together. But not before we get one last
book of sexual tension, and of course they have to visit the
Establishment run by said courtesam…
It's oddly segmented; the first major part is the visit to the
Establishment, then a spell of captivity during which much becomes
clear, and finally a resolution in which all the villains (and loose
ends) are tidied up. Also, the Ripper is almost entirely in the
background; this doesn't pretend to offer a solution, even a fictional
one, to those murders, but considers the effects they had on the
various underclasses of London and people's readiness to turn on their
slightly-different neighbours. Good stuff!
There are a few infelicities, particularly a villain who says:
"Of course, it would have been easier to take the pair of you from
Bishop's Folly, but abducting you from under the nose of Lady
Wellie's hired surveillance is no easy matter."
No, it might have been "more elegant", or something of that sort, but
the double "easy" just breaks the sentence. Ah well, I still enjoyed
this rather more than I feared I might, and regard it as a fine
continuation of the series.