2022 historical mystery; tenth in Huber's Lady Darby series
(post-Regency amateur detection). The Gages are staying at a remote
castle for a wedding party; but when Kiera is introduced to the
owner's famous art collection, she's disturbed to notice that some of
the most notable pieces are forgeries…
Lord Barbreck becomes furious and demands an investigation, but
clearly already knows whom he favours as a culprit, and refuses to
give various key pieces of information. And soon a maid from a
neighbouring estate is found murdered under one of the forgeries,
though she had no business being in the house in the first place.
There are many side considerations as well: Kiera has a small baby
whom she is nursing herself (mildly scandalous, but hardly the worst
thing that's been attached to her name), which means she can't be away
from the castle for more than a few hours; the bride is a friend of
hers, and the groom is her cousin, and they have their own problems
that will need to be sorted out; and so on. The mystery is still
primary in the narrative, but particularly in the first half of the
book it can feel as though it's progressing very slowly. Still, as a
reader of the series from the start I'm glad to see the elements of
the long-term plot continuing to develop.
A greater impediment to my enjoyment was one of the classic
mystery-writing tricks: towards the end, our heroine realises that the
killer must be A or B, and then A is excluded, so off the party goes
to confront B. And yet all the things that could be said of B could
similarly be said of C, but this lady who's normally a clever
detective doesn't think of that. It's too obviously a literary trick,
to shock the reader when C does turn out to be responsible, and I feel
it does the character a disservice.
Combine that with an ending that feels rushed (into a teaser for the
next book in the series, as Huber has often done before but it still
feels a little tawdry to me, like an end-of-season cliffhanger) and
this book felt as though it mostly went well but let me down in the
last chapters. Still, I'm perhaps more interested in the side
concerns, the personal situations of the characters who won't come
back in future books, than is usual for a mystery reader.