My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery
Content: Strong Language
Fall 1889: Lady Rotherton has arrived from London intent on
chaperoning her niece Prudence through a New York social season to find a
suitable husband. It's certainly not her niece's devilishly handsome
partner in Hunter and MacKenzie Investigative Law. Aunt Gillian's eye
for eligible suitors is surpassed only by her ability to discern genuine
gems from nearly flawless fakes. At the Assembly Ball at Delmonico's,
she effortlessly determines that the stones in the spectacular diamond
waterfall necklace adorning the neck of the wife of banker William De
Vries are fake.
Insisting on absolute discretion to avoid
scandal, the banker employs Prudence and Geoffrey to recover the stolen
diamonds pried out of their settings--priceless stones acquired by
Tiffany, originally purchased for Marie Antoinette. Their search for a
possible fence rapidly leads to a dead end: a jeweler brutally killed in
his shop during an apparent theft.
The jeweler's murder is only
the first in a string of mysterious deaths, as Prudence and Geoffrey
pursue their elusive quarry. But the clues keep leading back to
duplicity on the part of the De Vries family, who, it turns out, have a
great deal to hide...
I almost stopped reading this series after the last book Death Brings a Shadow,
but now I'm glad I didn't. This was probably my second favorite book in
the series. I enjoyed reading about Prudence and Geoffrey in this book.
Prudence was less annoying and reckless than she was in the last book. I
was happy that there seemed to be some positive character growth for
her, and Geoffrey is beginning to realize that he needs to accept that
she isn't going to take a back seat in the investigations, no matter how
dangerous they might be. Also, Prudence's aunt who was visiting from
London was an interesting character, even though she could be a bit of a
snob, and I really enjoyed reading Josiah's thoughts regarding Prudence
and Geoffrey.
I thought the mystery in this one was quite good. Though I
figured out one element of the mystery early on, part of it kept me
guessing for most of the book. This time around there was no real
big historical event tied to the book, but that was ok. The author notes in
her afterward that the Marie Antoinette diamonds were completely made up
by her. Regardless, it was a good plot devise. Keeley's Gold Cure for
Alcoholism that was talked about in the book was a real thing however.
After reading up on it, it sounded like a money making scheme to me.
My
one big complaint about this book is the way it ends. Just when
something I've been waiting for seems about to happen, it ends and now I
have have to wait another year to find out what happened. That was so
frustrating!
Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for providing me with an ARC of this book.
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