{"id":745,"date":"2012-09-28T15:47:55","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T21:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=745"},"modified":"2012-09-28T15:47:55","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T21:47:55","slug":"tasha-alexander-death-in-the-floating-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/tasha-alexander-death-in-the-floating-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Tasha Alexander: Death in the Floating City"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/form>\n

While I am weary of Anne Perry and can\u2019t read another sentence by her, I am infatuated with Tasha Alexander\u2019s delicious books set in Victorian England.\u00a0 Featuring Lady Emily, wife of the dashing Colin Hargreaves, she and her husband get around the continent solving crime puzzles on behalf (secretly) of her majesty\u2019s government.\u00a0 They make a good team, as Emily can go where Colin cannot, and vice versa.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In this outing Emily and Colin are in Venice to help a childhood frenemy of Emily\u2019s, Emma Callum, find out who has murdered her father in law and framed her missing husband for it.\u00a0 Emma has married well \u2013 her husband is an Italian count and they live in a magnificent Venetian home \u2013 but she seems strangely unhappy.\u00a0 Putting her old feelings aside, Emily promises to investigate.<\/p>\n

One of the strengths of this series is the fact that Emily is also a scholar of Greek \u2013 everything Greek, the language, the art, and the literature.\u00a0 Because she has instilled scholarly discipline in herself, she is often able to bring it to bear when she is investigating crimes.\u00a0 It\u2019s a translatable skill, obviously, and in this adventure she puts it to good use.\u00a0 And better yet it\u2019s a believable skill.\u00a0 It helps to make Emily as a whole more believable.<\/p>\n

Another strength of the series \u2013 and really, it\u2019s not a small one \u2013 is that Alexander is wonderful at settings.\u00a0 She makes you really feel as if you are there<\/em>, whether it be Venice, Istanbul, or Vienna.\u00a0 She has written about all of them and after every book I feel I\u2019ve made a bit of a journey.\u00a0 Another bonus are the clothes Lady Emily wears \u2013 lovingly described, I feel I\u2019ve been \u201cthere\u201d too.\u00a0 It\u2019s only one of the things that makes me look forward to a new Lady Emily installment.<\/p>\n

The story in the book is complicated and has a parallel, and powerfully moving, story set in the past, which Emily and Colin only slowly uncover as they search for the count.\u00a0 Emily is helped by Donata, the daughter of a bookseller, and she and Emily begin to uncover the secrets behind a slashed portrait and an old ring clutched in the dead count\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

The Renaissance love story recounted between chapters of Besina and Nicolo, scions of two warring families, was never to be, though the lovers always found a way to communicate.\u00a0 Their love is a love affair of words, and the words have their own effect on the reader, drawing you further into the story.<\/p>\n

Emily takes her handy gondola all over the city, uncovering clues in paintings as well as in old documents, while Colin takes on the more action oriented task of hunting down Emma\u2019s missing husband.<\/p>\n

Eventually I was flipping faster and faster through the chapters, dying to see what happened to Bessina and Nicolo.\u00a0 As the women uncover secrets both about the dead lovers, the dead count, and Emma\u2019s missing husband, things come to a very satisfactory (though at points heartbreaking) finale.\u00a0 This is another completely enjoyable entry in what has become one of my favorite historical mystery series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I am weary of Anne Perry and can\u2019t read another sentence by her, I am infatuated with Tasha Alexander\u2019s delicious books set in Victorian England.\u00a0 Featuring Lady Emily, wife of the dashing Colin Hargreaves, she and her husband get around the continent solving crime puzzles on behalf (secretly) of her majesty\u2019s government.\u00a0 They make … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","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=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":747,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}