I can’t believe we are up to book 10 in the Lady Darby mysteries by historical mystery author Anna Lee Huber! A PERILOUS PERSPECTIVE and the others in this series straddle, to me, the line between historical mystery and cozy mystery. Lady Darby and her husband are inquiry agents, but the main reason that artist Kiera, Lady Darby, works as an inquiry agent is her vast knowledge of death in its many guises due to her work as a reluctant cadaver illustrator. While there is plenty of historical detail to flesh out the scenes, much of the focus is on Kiera and her relationships with her dashing husband, Sebastian Gage, and her family and friends.
Huber reminds me of the Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, who is known for imbuing her paintings with the glow of domesticity and motherly love. I follow Huber on social media so I know about her daughters and Huber’s love for family. So while reading about Lady Darby interacting with her infant Emma, I pictured the author interacting with her daughters; her domestic scenes are suffused with a mother’s tender love for her offspring.
Kiera and her husband have traveled to the Highlands with their baby to attend the wedding of her cousin Rye to her friend Charlotte. The wedding will take place at the estate of Kiera’s great-uncle, the crotchety Marquess of Barbreck, who is frankly an ass. Kiera’s artistic eye discerns that several of Barbreck’s lauded paintings by various masters are actually forgeries. As Kiera and her cohort investigate the fraudulent masterpieces, the dead bodies start to pile up.
This is a fun whodunit, with plenty of intrigues, danger, and red herrings. The slow evolution of Lady Darby from the mousy abused widow in book one to the more confident woman and mother has been charming to watch. Much of my enjoyment of this series is the gentle focus on family, both biological and found family. Huber’s A PERILOUS PERSPECTIVE brings us a gentle domestic scene enlivened by a few corpses in this entertaining historical mystery.
An all-new historical mystery in this USA Today bestselling series featuring beloved inquiry agents Lady Kiera Darby and her dashing husband, Sebastian Gage.
Argyll, Scotland. July 1832. After a trying few months in Edinburgh, Kiera and her husband and investigative partner, Sebastian Gage, are eager to escape to the Highlands with their three-month-old child. Kiera is overjoyed for her cousin Rye and her detractor-turned-friend Charlotte who are being wed in a private ceremony at the estate of Rye’s great-uncle, the Marquess of Barbreck, in what seems to be the perfect wedding party.
But when Kiera is invited to peruse Barbreck’s extensive art collection, she is disturbed to discover that one of his most priceless paintings seems to be a forgery. The marquess’s furious reaction when she dares to mention it leaves her shaken and the entire house shocked. For it turns out that this is not the first time the word forgery has been uttered in connection with the Barbreck household.
Matters turn more ominous when a maid from a neighboring estate is found murdered where the forged painting hangs. Is her death connected to the forgeries, perhaps a grisly warning of what awaits those who dare to probe deeper? With unknown entities aligned against them, Kiera and Gage are forced to confront the fact that they may have underestimated their opponent. For they are swiftly made to realize that Charlotte’s and Rye’s future happiness is not the only issue at stake, and this stealthy game of cat and mouse could prove to have deadly consequences.
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