And Only to Deceive

And Only to Deceive
by Tasha Alexander
Recommended Ages: 13+

It's the late 1880s, Victorian England, and a young lady named Emily has no sooner married a rich viscount than she finds herself a widow. She barely knew her husband, Lord Ashton (Philip to his friends), so she finds the socially expected mourning period rather tedious and decides to enliven it by learning about the man. Too late, she discovers that he deeply loved her and wanted to make her happy, and that he was a much more interesting character than she'd suspected. A patron of the arts. Passionate about ancient Greek artifacts. Well versed in the classics. So much more than the thoughtless sort of rich gentleman who normally goes off and dies of fever during an African big-game hunt within months of his wedding. To her horror, and that of the ladies closest to her, Lady Ashton finds herself falling in love with her dead husband.

But then comes a cold splash of reality. Ah, yes, it seems Lord Ashton is somehow connected with a scheme to steal antiquities from the National Museum and replace them with highly credible forgeries. If he's really involved in the plot, he wasn't the man of principle Emily had come to believe in. As much as it breaks her heart, only too recently given to the man who widowed her, Emily just has to find out for sure. But dangers and intrigues swirl around her. A man with a scarred face has been following her. Someone burgles and ransacks her Paris hotel room. Her husband's scorchingly handsome best friend, Colin Hargreaves, is up to something fishy – maybe up to his neck in it. And now credible evidence has come to light suggesting that Philip may still be alive after all, alive but not at all well, and stranded in the African bush. Obviously, nothing will stop Emily from going to him. Nothing except, perhaps, still more surprising discoveries, romantic encounters and risky detective work amid the social elite in London and Paris.

Emily is one of those ahead-of-her-time female protagonists of historical novels set in the era of corsets, like a certain Venetia and Enola Holmes of whom I've previously written. Partly due to the course of study she pursues while trying to understand her late husband, she becomes uncomfortably aware of the bounds that her society places around her, and even begins to reflect on the unlikelihood that her husband would like what she is becoming. If only there were a guy whose ideal woman was not just beautiful but independent, intelligent and strong-willed. Oh, who could that be ...?

Tasha Alexander is the wife of Andrew Grant, author of the David Trevellyan thrillers, who is in turn the brother of Lee Child, the creator of Jack Reacher. Quite a literary family, there. Apart from a film novelization titled Elizabeth: The Golden Age, her literary output comprises 16 "Lady Emily Mysteries" written from 2005 to the present day, plus a handful of related short stories. This is the first novel in that series; next after it is A Poisoned Season, while book 17, A Cold Highland Wind, is scheduled for release on Oct. 3 of this year. I doubt I'll have caught up with the series by then, but I'm interested in reading further, for sure.