Lady Emily #19
Like a great box of chocolates, all of Tasha Alexander’s books are deliciously enjoyable, some more than others, but all of them pure pleasure to consume. The 19th novel in this series is no exception, and this installment finds Lady Emily in 1907 London, being asked (along with her dashing husband) to look into the mysterious death of the most fabulous debutante of the season, Victoria Goldsborough, who collapsed in her fiancée’s arms while waltzing. And that’s just the prologue.
Alexander always has an expertly done traditional mystery at the heart of her novels, complete with all the golden age trappings – red herrings, clever investigative set backs, surprising turns and reveals. It’s such a knotty puzzler that it’s hard going for the sleuths, but one of the things they manage to unearth is that Victoria was part of a secret suffragette group who were hoping to change things from the inside (to say much more would be a spoiler).
Either for it or against it, the Suffragette movement is top of mind for many of the women in the book, with Emily, of course, all in favor of women’s rights while her conservative mother finds the very idea a ridiculous scandal. With the full support of her enlightened husband and the disapproval of her butler, Emily operates in a very modern manner, drinking port with the gentlemen after dinner and even indulging in the occasional cigar.
Alexander always has a dual storyline, one of them set in the past, in this case in the time of Queen Boudica, the warrior Queen who led a revolt against the Romans in AD 60. While ultimately defeated, she remains to this day a symbol of resistance against an oppressor. This thread, however, mostly follows a young woman named Vatta, who is being courted by a prominent Roman, and gains some status by befriending Boudica, but still does not feel that she fits into her tribe very well. Other than her name, I knew next to nothing about Boudica, and enjoyed learning about her and her era. The toggling between the two engaging storylines becomes an effective narrative device setting up nice cliff hangers at the end of each chapter. Sometimes I was more in suspense about one storyline or the other, but the chapters are short, and the cliffhangers are quickly resolved.
The solution of the mystery in Lady Emily’s storyline was both heartbreaking and surprising. After 19 books into this series I still didn’t see the twist coming, earning a chef’s kiss for this clever and endlessly inventive author. The resolution of the Iron Age storyline was heartbreaking and satisfying as well, delivering a much appreciated history lesson. To the last morsel at the bottom of the candy box I savored my annual reunion with Lady Emily. — Robin Agnew