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.