Friends in High Places

Starred review from June 15, 2015
A crackerjack plot and engaging characters make Peacock’s seventh Liberty Lane mystery (after 2013’s The Path of the Wicked) her best yet. On Sept. 1, 1840, Liberty, a private investigator who has done sleuthing work for high-up government officials, receives a summons from Lady Marguerite Blessington to Gore House, her London mansion. Monsieur Lesparre, one of the plotters involved in a recent failed coup attempt by Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, Prince Louis, has taken refuge at Gore House. Lesparre seeks to return to France to provide evidence that will help Prince Louis, but the French government isn’t eager for him to do so. Lady Blessington, alarmed by some odd incidents that suggest an attempt to abduct her secret guest, asks Liberty to make arrangements to smuggle him out of England. The discovery of a corpse at Gore House and the subsequent murder investigation considerably complicate Liberty’s efforts. Peacock (the pen name of Gillian Linscott) makes the political intrigue of the period feel immediate and her stalwart, progressive lead plausible.

August 1, 2015
Upon returning to London from a case in the Cotswolds in September 1840, Liberty Lane, a private intelligencer, finds an invitation to Gore House, Kensington, the home of writer Lady Blessington. Disraeli won't be there, but an associate of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, whose attempted landing at Boulogne ended in fiasco, will be. Lady Blessington is hiding Monsieur Lesparre in the attic of Gore House but wants urgently to have Liberty escort him back to France. But before the plan they made can be executed, Lesparre is killed, and Liberty, along with her helpersstreet urchins Tabby and Plush and Liberty's groom, Amosis thrust into a maelstrom of international intrigue as the politics of France and Italy play out on English soil. The writing is somewhat stodgy and definitely repetitive, but Liberty is a strong character who draws her cases from high society but can work the underbelly to track down the information she needs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)