Tag: Deanna Raybourn

Day 1169: A Treacherous Curse

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Cover for A Treacherous CurseA Treacherous Curse is the third Veronica Speedwell novel by Deanna Raybourn. I don’t think much is lost in reading the novel out of order. Background information is provided as you go.

Veronica Speedwell is apparently a woman well ahead of her time. She is a scientist and a feminist who believes in free sex. She wears trousers and picks locks. She is also the illegitimate daughter of the Prince of Wales. Is she a very likely character for 1888? Not so much.

Veronica and her professional partner, Stoker, are working with a collection of artifacts when they begin hearing about a curse on the Tiverton expedition to Egypt. Soon, the news of the expedition affects Stoker, whose wife deserted him for John de Morgan, a member of the expedition. De Morgan and his wife left the expedition, apparently with the diadem, one of its most important finds. His wife has returned to her parents, but de Morgan is nowhere to be found.

The police want to question Stoker about de Morgan, because their enmity is well known. The story has reopened all the rumors of Stoker’s disastrous expedition to the Amazon, where he was left for dead by his wife and de Morgan, and the lies they told about his relations with his wife. So, Stoker decides he must find de Morgan to clear his name. Any notion that he is going to do this without Veronica’s assistance, he must speedily dismiss.

Concerned parties are the Tivertons and their assistant, Mr. Fairbrother, and Caroline de Morgan. Stoker and Veronica begin looking into the incident, but they can find no trace of de Morgan beyond his landing in Dover. Oddly, though, apparitions of the god Anubis, which haunted the Tiverton expedition, have now relocated to London.

For some time, I followed Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey series, a mashup of the mystery and romance genres. I tired of the series because of the cliché of the couple always arguing about the wife taking part in the investigation. Apparently, Raybourn has decided to hold the couple of Stoker and Veronica apart indefinitely, maybe hoping to avoid this problem.

link to NetgalleyBut I don’t like Veronica nearly as well as I did Lady Julia, and there is something about the breezy, sometimes slightly racy narration that I find irritating. Too many young men are stripping to the waist for no apparent reason, for one thing, in a time that was much more modest than our own. As I mentioned before, I find Veronica not very believable for the time period.

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The Dark Enquiry

The Dark Road to Darjeeling

Twelfth Night

Day 545: Twelfth Night

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Cover for Twelfth NightFans of the Lady Julia Grey mystery series will probably enjoy this novella, which seems as if it was written for Christmas even though published in June. It is a simple little holiday story, a bagatelle.

The Marches, Lady Julia’s family, have gathered together during the holidays to celebrate Twelfth Night. Every decade the family itself performs the Revels, which are attended by the countryside around. During the rehearsals, an abandoned baby is found in the stables.

Lady Julia’s father asks her husband Brisbane to try to find the mother, but Brisbane’s initial inquiries turn up nothing. Lady Julia has heard her young niece and nephew buzzing about a witch living in an abandoned cottage, and then Lady Julia catches her niece Perdita sneaking out at night to see the witch.

http://www.netgalley.comThis short piece doesn’t involve much of a mystery, but it is always enjoyable to spend time with Julia and Brisbane.

Day 305: The Dark Enquiry

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Cover for The Dark EnquirySome elements of Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey romantic mystery series sometimes get old, such as the debate between Lady Julia and her husband Brisbane about how involved she is allowed to get in his investigations. This debate begins The Dark Enquiry, and eventually Brisbane reluctantly agrees that she can be a partner in his investigations, but not before she discovers for herself that her own proper, conservative brother, Lord Belmont, is being blackmailed. As a government official, he should have known better than to get involved with a lady, but especially to send her love letters. The lady turns out to be working for a foreign government.

In following up her investigation into her brother’s difficulties, Lady Julia disguises herself as a man to go to the Ghost Club, where Madame Séraphine holds nightly séances. There she is discovered by Brisbane. As they sneak back into the club together later in the evening, they are just in time to see Madame Séraphine be murdered by poison.

This novel is peopled with Lady Julia’s eccentric family, but it also features blackmail, gypsies, and spies. Raybourn’s novels are lively, and the dialog is entertaining. If we can just get over the endless debate about Julia’s part in the investigations, the series will continue to be fun to read.

Day 103: Dark Road to Darjeeling

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Cover for Dark Road to DarjeelingMy interest in the Lady Julia Grey series by Deanna Raybourn waxes and wanes. Although it is unusual for me to like books that mix mystery and romance, I usually enjoy reading this series, but I enjoy some books more than others. The books have followed the relationship of Lady Julia Grey and Nicolas Brisbane–who solves crimes for a living and whose breeding makes him an unsuitable mate for Julia–since they first met when her husband was murdered. Now, after several books following the ups and downs of their relationship as they solve crimes and get each other into and out of danger, they are married.

In Dark Road to Darjeeling, Lady Julia and Brisbane have been persuaded to interrupt their honeymoon in the Mediterranean by Julia’s sister Portia, who is worried about her friend Jane. In a previous novel, Jane left Portia to be married, and she is now a widow on a tea plantation near Darjeeling. Portia has asked Julia and Brisbane to investigate the possible murder of Jane’s husband. Jane herself is obsessed by her own pregnancy and the mysterious death of her husband Freddy, who may have been murdered for his inheritance.

The Brisbanes take along part of her eccentric family, Portia and brother Plum. Upon arriving at the plantation, they get to know the potential suspects, including Freddie’s aunt, his cousin Harry, several neighboring families, and the mysterious White Rajah.

I was unable to guess the murderer but figured out which family the murderer belonged to. Although this series sometimes resorts to the typical conflict between romantic co-investigators about the danger of the job, a conflict that I find extremely tedious, the dynamic between Julia and Brisbane still holds my attention. If you are interested in this series, I recommend that you start with the first book, Silent in the Grave.