A Wicked Conceit

February 15, 2021
A detective duo battles to overcome a scandalous past. As a heavily pregnant Lady Kiera Darby and her husband, Sebastian Gage, await the birth of their child in Edinburgh, Kiera's still crushed by the scandal of her abusive first husband's association with body snatchers. Now someone has published an anonymous book about Bonnie Brock Kincaid, a hero to the poor, intimating that Kiera's child is his. Kincaid, whom they know from other cases, is furious, especially since a series of plays based on the untruthful book are being performed. When they try to discover the author's identity, Kiera and Gage are thwarted by his publisher, who soon ends up murdered. Kiera, meanwhile, is troubled by her sister's insistence that she give up detecting and become respectable and by her own inability to tell her husband he has a half brother. The police think Kincaid is the killer, but Kiera and Gage continue to talk to publishers, printers, and theater managers in an attempt to discover the identity of the author, who obviously hates Kincaid for reasons far more personal than his lawlessness. Each time the pair visit the more insalubrious parts of the city, they put themselves in danger from the cholera epidemic ravaging the area. The fact that Gage has a formerly unknown half brother provides a surprising clue to the killer. Cholera may have nothing on Covid-19, but it still adds a sense of dread to a mystery both complex and romantic.

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April 23, 2021

The ninth "Lady Darby" mystery (after A Stroke of Malice) features Kiera Gage, aka Lady Darby, a likable, strong-willed woman detective who assists her husband Sebastian as an inquiry agent in 1832 Edinburgh. Kiera and Sebastian have returned to Edinburgh to find themselves featured in a popular novel about Bonnie Brock Kincaid--the notorious thief, Robin Hood figure, and ruthless gang leader--whom they had helped to find justice in an earlier case. The book's publisher refuses to identify its author, much to the displeasure of the Gages and Kincaid. When the publisher is murdered, Kiera and Sebastian collaborate with Kincaid to find the killer. Meanwhile, a plague of cholera threatens, and Lady Darby is nearing the end of her first pregnancy. VERDICT The book's many ahistorical references impede the willing suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy a historical mystery. It's a Georgian Scotland with a 21st-century mindset. However, like the other books in Huber's popular series, it is a well-plotted mystery that deepens even as the twists keep coming--Cheryl Bryan, Orleans, MA

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