The Death of Me

January 15, 2020
A Victorian courtesan with a sideline in detection faces danger while her mother is plunged into even deeper trouble. Heloise Chancey (A Necessary Murder, 2018, etc.) is visiting Paris with her current lover, Lord Hatterleigh, and Violette, a French-speaking maid she's borrowed for the trip in lieu of her usual personal servant, Amah Li Leen, a Chinese woman who's actually her mother--a secret they keep between themselves. Sir Simon Somerscale has asked Heloise to visit him in debtors prison, where, knowing of her detective skills, he asks her to travel to a sordid part of town to meet someone who may be involved in a sinister and murderous plot the government has recently uncovered. Back in London, Amah returns from a walk to discover that their house has been ransacked, but nothing seems to be missing, including the item she most prizes, an earring that was her mother's and whose mate is in the possession of Heloise's absent father. Made up as a man with Violette as her date, Heloise arrives at a raffish bar, where she meets an American named Ripley, barely escapes a brawl, and realizes that Hatterleigh's pistol has been stolen from her pocket, where a booklet has been left in its place. As for Amah, first she's blackmailed by a mysterious couple who've come into possession of the other earring and then she's kidnapped while carrying jewels she planned to pawn for the money to buy the earring back. After Violette is mistaken for her temporary mistress and murdered, Heloise returns to London, where the government asks her to search for a possible bomber. Posing as a governess and hiring a room in a dicey neighborhood, she meets Ripley again and mingles with revolutionaries while Amah desperately tries to escape her captors and discover where they found the earring that offers a clue to the whereabouts of Heloise's father. Victorian atmosphere abounds in a twisty, exciting tale of danger and lost love.

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January 27, 2020
Set in 1864, Tjia’s solid third Heloise Chancey mystery (after 2019’s A Necessary Murder) finds the English courtesan and sometime private detective in Paris, where she’s surprised to receive a summons from Sir Simon Somerscale, an affluent countryman, to the debtor’s prison where he’s confined for failing to pay £500 in a breach of promise suit involving a French waitress with whom he had a one-night stand. Somerscale tells Heloise that “certain people at Westminster” have intercepted a letter regarding a planned crime on English soil; he was to pose as the letter’s intended recipient and attend a meeting with the unknown sender that night at a Paris locale specified in the letter. He persuades Heloise to go in his stead. A special code in the letter will allow her to recognize the sender. She soon learns that the plot includes a terrorist bombing campaign, and she must act fast to identify the culprits before they can strike. Tjia keeps the pace brisk and makes her redoubtable lead plausible. Fans of Carole Nelson Douglas’s Irene Adler series will be pleased.