{"id":1104,"date":"2013-08-30T18:25:34","date_gmt":"2013-08-31T00:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2013-08-30T18:25:34","modified_gmt":"2013-08-31T00:25:34","slug":"anna-lee-huber-the-anatomists-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/anna-lee-huber-the-anatomists-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna Lee Huber: The Anatomist\u2019s Wife"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Like Tasha Alexander\u2019s debut (And Only to Deceive),<\/i> Anna Lee Huber\u2019s novel has a unique and memorable premise.\u00a0 Young, widowed Lady Darby is staying with her sister and her husband at their castle in Scotland.\u00a0 She\u2019s recovering not from the loss of her husband, but from the slings and arrows thrown her way by disapproving members of high society.\u00a0 Lady Darby was married, as the title suggests, to an anatomist, and being a skilled painter it\u2019s thought (but not proven) that she did the drawings for his anatomy guide.\u00a0 In 1830 or thereabouts, that was a scandal of the highest order.\u00a0 There\u2019s more to the story but I don\u2019t want to give away details that Huber has been at pains to tease out throughout the story.<\/p>\n

\"anatomistswife\"<\/a>Because Lady Darby \u2013 or Kiera \u2013 is a painter, her inclination is to spend time alone and it\u2019s not a difficult challenge for her to more or less hide out at her sister\u2019s house.\u00a0 It\u2019s a slight inconvenience to her sister, though, who has resisted any type of entertaining in deference to Kiera.\u00a0 All that has ended at the start of the novel, with a house party in full swing.<\/p>\n

More terrible, though, is the discovery of a rather savagely murdered noblewoman inside the castle maze.\u00a0 Kiera being one of the first to stumble over the body, she is accused and suspected by the rest of the house party of being the killer.\u00a0 This is a classic mystery set up, of course \u2013 the main character must prove his or her innocence to the satisfaction of the rest of society.\u00a0 And naturally, Kiera has her champions \u2013 primarily her sister and her husband but also the gruff Sebastian Gage, who has something of a reputation as an inquiry agent.<\/p>\n

Asked by her brother-in-law to assist Gage with the autopsy thanks to her knowledge of anatomy, Kiera steps in and becomes a part of the investigation, despite the fact that a majority of the household suspects her of killing the unfortunate Lady Godwin.<\/p>\n

As she and Gage become respectful friends though not technically friendly (one senses this is a relationship that will continue past the first book), Kiera is more than helpful to Gage in sorting out not just the physical details of the murder but the emotional ones.\u00a0 This novel doesn\u2019t break new ground but it\u2019s awfully fun and enjoyable. \u00a0 Kiera seems more or less of her time period, and Huber supplies interesting details about painting and how paints were prepared, among other things.\u00a0 The web of characters created by the author is a good one, and Kiera\u2019s family is one I\u2019d be happy to meet again.<\/p>\n

Because Kiera has been maligned and insulted she\u2019s especially empathic, which of course makes her both a good investigator and an interesting human being.\u00a0 I\u2019m very much looking forward to the next book in the series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like Tasha Alexander\u2019s debut (And Only to Deceive), Anna Lee Huber\u2019s novel has a unique and memorable premise.\u00a0 Young, widowed Lady Darby is staying with her sister and her husband at their castle in Scotland.\u00a0 She\u2019s recovering not from the loss of her husband, but from the slings and arrows thrown her way by disapproving … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1106,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions\/1106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}