Sebastian St. Cyr is drawn into a murder investigation in a deceptively peaceful English village in this gripping historical mystery from the national bestselling author of Why Kill the Innocent . Ayleswick-on-Teme, 1813 . Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, and his wife, Hero, have come to this deceptively peaceful Shropshire village to honor a slain friend. But when the body of a young widow is found on the banks of the river Teme, the village's inexperienced new magistrate turns to Sebastian for help. Sebastian soon realizes that Emma Chance was hiding her true identity, and she was not the first beautiful young woman in the village to be murdered. Also troubling are the machinations of Lucien Bonaparte, the estranged brother of the megalomaniac French Emperor Napoleon. Held captive under the British government's watchful eye, Bonaparte is restless, ambitious, and treacherous. Home to the eerie ruins of an ancient monastery, Ayleswick reveals itself to be a dark and dangerous place with a violent past that may be connected to Sebastian's own unsettling origins. And as he faces his most diabolical opponent ever, he is forced to consider what malevolence he's willing to embrace in order to destroy a killer.
I swear the covers are getting worse as these books go along! He looks like a strapping hamburger eating linebacker or a Sears catalog model... anyway, the story meanders a bit but Harris has created fully rounded characters and you do feel completely caught up in the emotional undercurrents of the mystery’s slow revelation.
Here’s the thing: I am a fast reader- famously so- and I slow myself down and even re-read passages to make each and every one of her books last! This series rewards the commitment.
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