Whom the Gods Love

Starred review from May 29, 1995
Julian Kestrel, introduced in Cut to the Quick, returns again to probe beneath the surface opulence of Regency London society. Until he was bludgeoned to death with a fireplace poker in his own study, charming Alexander Falkland fairly glittered in that society. At the request of the victim's barrister father, Kestrel investigates and finds that the dead man was ``far more complicated than most people knew.'' An erudite correspondence with his father shows that Falkland was a man of depth and intellect; he had also cultivated the socially risky acquaintance of a Jewish investment advisor. Falkland had doted on his beautiful wife, and both humored and neglected his adolescent brother-in-law, who benefits financially from the death. Kestrel works efficiently with Bow Street Runner Peter Vance, who supplies added information about an unidentified woman found murdered only a week before Falkland's death. In a tale as sparkling as champagne (with a dash of arsenic), Ross motivates her characters with human desires ranging from the loftiest intellectual yearnings to the basest physical appetites. Offering this level of entertainment, her dandyish sleuth will never go out of fashion. Author tour.