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
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.
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...