Death in the Floating City

August 13, 2012
Alexander’s featherweight seventh Victorian historical (after 2011’s A Crimson Mourning) takes Lady Emily and her British intelligence husband, Colin Hargreaves, to Venice, Italy. Emily’s not-so-BFF, Emma Callum, wants the crack-detective couple to solve the stabbing murder of her father-in-law, since the Venetian police have failed to do so. Emma also hopes they can locate her missing husband, who she is sure is innocent of his father’s murder. While Emily is loath to take the case because Emma has rubbed her the wrong way since childhood, she accepts her duty with as much grace as she can muster. The claws-on-a-chalkboard persiflage commences the moment the two women meet face to face and provides some of the book’s best dialogue. Running concurrently with the suspense story are heartrending chapters recounting a centuries-old ill-fated love affair that ties to the murder mystery. Period purists may have a problem with Lady Emily’s anachronistic vocabulary. Agent: Anne Hawkins, John Hawkins & Associates.

September 1, 2012
Lady Emily investigates the murder of a Venetian count, unleashing a veritable Pandora's boxful of ancient scandals. In this latest addition to Alexander's Lady Emily Victorian mystery series (A Crimson Warning, 2011, etc.), our heroine, along with her fetching husband of five years, Colin Hargreaves, arrives in Venice to aid her erstwhile rival, Emma, who married Paolo, son and heir of the Barozzi family, only to discover that the fortunes of this hoary branch of Venetian nobility were in serious decline. Now, the patriarch, Conte Barozzi, is dead of stab wounds, Paolo has gone into hiding, and there are no clues to the identity of the murderer, or rather, too many clues. A ruby ring with the initials BB and NV is found clutched in the deceased conte's hand. With the aid of a bookseller's scholarly daughter, Donata, Lady Emily tracks down an array of leads. Venice, it seems, does not lack for those who had it in for Conte Barozzi. Among them are Paolo, whose inheritance might have been at stake, a fired Barozzi gardener, and two women whom the conte antagonized, including a medium who delivered an unpleasant message from his late wife. And of course, Vendelinos are always suspect when a Barozzi is murdered--the feud between the two noble Venetian families dates back to the crusades. Interspersed with Emily's peregrinations of the watery city are short vignettes about the doomed love between Besina Barozzi and Nicolo Vendelino in late-15th-century Venice. Forbidden to marry Nicolo, Besina is forced by her parents into a marriage with a brutal man. Before she ends her days in a convent, a tryst with Nicolo results in a son whose legacy may hold the key to both the Barozzi financial quagmire and the conte's murder. Just exactly how involves multiple threads as convoluted and murky as Venetian back alleyways, but thanks to authoritative depictions of Venice's history, atmosphere and culinary delights, the story glides along as smoothly as a gondola. Lady Emily travels well.

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September 1, 2012

In this seventh installment of Alexander's Victorian series (after A Crimson Warning), Lady Emily Hargreaves and her husband travel to Venice to investigate a murder tied to a series of old manuscripts. Trying to clear the name of an acquaintance, Lady Emily finds Emma Barozzi as secretive and duplicitous as ever. Enlisting the help of a local historian and his daughter, Lady Emily searches archives, palazzos, and the hidden passages of Venice to uncover the truth behind the mysteries (both ancient and current) tied to her friend's infamous family name. VERDICT This dependable series with plucky heroines and memorable villainesses is filled with local and period detail. An exceptionally good bet for readers who appreciate historical mysteries and the combination of past and present voices. [See Prepub Alert, 7/2/12.]--Catherine Lantz, Morton Coll. Lib., Cicero, IL

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