2020 historical mystery anthology, a crossover between four authors.
The pocket watch known as La Sirène has always been said to be
cursed. But is it really?
This is a really interesting idea. Like several promotional
anthologies I've read, it has material connected to several series,
presumably in the hope that the completionist fan of one of them will
be lured in and then try the others. But in this case, since the
various series are all notionally set in the real world the stories
are all connected.
"Weapon of Choice" (Kearsley) starts things off with a sequel to her
A Desperate Fortune, in which (in one of the parallel plots) a
Jacobite exile recounts her adventures and romance. There are no
flashes-forward here, though; instead, safely married but still
working for the Jacobite cause, Mary and Hugh find themselves in 1733
stranded by weather in Portofino, in northern Italy. Their job is to
protect an exiled Jacobite duke from an English assassin, and
naturally both of them will show up too. But there's also a notorious
flibustier, who was at the sack of Cartagena in 1697, and whose
father had a fine watch made from gold looted from the churches. Well,
I always have trouble with pro-Jacobite stories; it's not a matter of
the legitimacy or otherwise of their candidates for the throne, it's
that the Stuarts were such a wretched lot, always ready to beat up
women who depended on them but otherwise generally a bit lacking.
Ignore that, though, and the story is quite enjoyable, with what seems
like a lead couple from another novel not yet written and various
covert shenanigans.
"In a Fevered Hour" (Huber) lies in the series that I was reading
already, the Lady Darby mysteries. It's 1831, just after the
wedding, and our heroes are delayed before their honeymoon, then have
to deal with an outbreak of plague in Edinburgh. This one's mostly
detective work, tracking down the watch and working out why various
things have been done with it and what the ultimate goal of it all
must be.
As usual, I mostly enjoy Huber's writing, but she tries to go just a
little beyond her vocabulary and I don't think she realises it. For
example:
The speed of the young runners Bonnie Brock's gang employed was
envious.
"Enviable" is clearly what you meant there.
"A Pocketful of Death" (Trent) moves forward to 1870 and the Lady of
Ashes series about a female undertaker in Victorian London. Lots of
social climbing and looking down on the wrong sort of people here, and
the closest we get to actual supernaturalism, though it's mostly
implied.
"Do you know, Mrs. Harper, that my family obtained its baronetcy
under the Conqueror?"
Well, no, there were baronets before James I reinvented it to raise
money for his war in Ireland, but none of the titles had survived.
Also he's referred to as a baron every other time his rank is
mentioned, even being addressed as "Lord Claybrook" rather than "Sir"
something as a baronet would be. Call it "barony" here and it would be
fine. Similarly, nobody would say "a gentlemen's club"; they'd just
call it "a club", because that's the near-universal sort of club in
this time and place, and clubs that admit ladies or working men are
the rare exception that would need to be described every time.
Finally in "Siren's Call" (Harris), the only one of these not
connected to another book, it's 1944 in Kent and an MI5 team is trying
to track down a German spy. But is that anything to do with the
amiable old clock-collecting Major, apparently murdered for The Watch?
As the only non-series story here it's the only one that can manage an
actual romance, if a fairly minor one.
Can we avoid any major errors here? Oh, so nearly! When a plane
comes in to pick up the German spy, it's "a twin-engined Gotha Go 242
assault glider". Let me give you a hint here: gliders typically don't
have engines, and while this one was in fact redeveloped into a
powered aircraft, that was the Gotha 244 transport. Actually, for this
job of flying below radar cover, landing on a beach and picking up an
agent, a Fieseler Storch would have been a much more suitable plane
for the job.
Individually the stories are quite fun, but nothing remarkable. This
would be a poor introduction to Lady Darby (because most of her
initial problems have been resolved by this point in the series and
the new ones haven't been brought in yet) and it didn't immediately
lure me into any of the other authors' works, though I may perhaps
give Lady of Ashes a try eventually when I'm in a mood to ignore
rather than pick at nits.