April's Affections and Intrigues: Love and Mystery Bloom

As Death Draws Near, July 2016 Lady Darby Mystery #5 by Anna Lee Huber Berkley Prime Crime Featuring: Lady Kiera Darby; Sebastian Gage 352 pages ISBN: 0425277720 EAN: 9780425277720 Kindle: B016JPTK2I Trade Size / e-Book Add to Wish List Purchase Amazon Kindle Barnes & Noble Kobo Apple Books Google Play Powell's Books Books-A-Million Indie BookShop

"Lady anatomist and her investigator husband unveil a murderer during their honeymoon"

As Death Draws Near
Anna Lee Huber

Reviewed by Make Kay
Posted October 15, 2016

Mystery Historical

AS DEATH DRAWS NEAR is book 5 in the Lady Darby Mystery series by the fantastic Anna Lee Huber. This is a series that grabbed me from book 1, and I am thoroughly enjoying each successive book. This historical mystery series set in Georgian England features Sebastian Gage, an inquiry agent, and his newly wed wife, Lady Kiera Darby. Lady Kiera was previously married to a cruel anatomist who forced her to illustrate his work in dissecting cadavers for a textbook. Widowed Kiera met Sebastien when using her anatomic knowledge to assist in a murder investigation during a house party in book 1, The Anatomist's Wife. Kiera and Gage have had a slow burn romance that finally culminated in a wedding in book 4, after the course of cooperating in multiple mystery investigations.

As Death Draws Near opens during their honeymoon in the halcyon halcyon Lake District, where an urgent and terse message from Gag from Gage's father sends the honeymooners rushing to an abbey ou abbey outside Dublin, Ireland to look into the recent death of a dis of a distant relative of the Duke of Wellington. Kiera then dis then discovers a second nun is slain just outside the abbey grounds grounds just beyond her classroom of young girls at the abbey sc abbey school. Kiera and Gage must not only race to find the kill the killer before he or she strikes again, but they must navigate navigate the tricky currents of civil unrest in Ireland to learn wh learn what they must in order to uncover the murderer. And it seems it seems everyone has a secret to keep, that might or might not shed not shed light on the killings!

Much of what is so fascinating to me in these books is the the depiction of current events in 1830's England and her surr surrounds. The view Huber provides into the "Irish Ques Question" with its Catholic and Protestant factions is fasc fascinating and well fleshed out without being at all over overbearing. It provides a rich counterpart to the murder myst mystery, and the wealth of historical details provides a sump sumptuous underpinning to the tension of unmasking the brut brutal slayer of innocents.

Too, Huber gives us well-developed characters who can stand well on their own in the story. Kiera is now beset with fears for what her life will become as a wife, and investigator, and a possible mother. I have adored watching Kiera evolve and grow over the course of each book, and Huber never disappoints in showing Kiera and Gage as nuanced individuals. The secondary characters around them are equally as well done. Watching Gage and Kiera work together to resolve their own personal issues as well as those of the mysteries they work on is very satisfying. Huber has written another finely crafted winner in AS DEATH DRAWS NEAR.

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SUMMARY

The latest mystery from the national bestselling author of A Study in Death tangles Lady Kiera Darby and Sebastian Gage in a dangerous web of religious and political intrigue.

July 1831. In the midst of their idyllic honeymoon in England’s Lake District, Kiera and Gage’s seclusion is soon interrupted by a missive from her new father-in-law. A deadly incident involving a distant relative of the Duke of Wellington has taken place at an abbey south of Dublin, Ireland, and he insists that Kiera and Gage look into the matter.

Intent on discovering what kind of monster could murder a woman of the cloth, the couple travel to Rathfarnham Abbey school. Soon a second nun is slain in broad daylight near a classroom full of young girls. With the sinful killer growing bolder, the mother superior would like to send the students home, but the growing civil unrest in Ireland would make the journey treacherous.

Before long, Kiera starts to suspect that some of the girls may be hiding a sinister secret. With the killer poised to strike yet again, Kiera and Gage must make haste and unmask the fiend, before their matrimonial bliss comes to an untimely end...

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