by Tasha Alexander
A year or so ago, I stated a goal of buying one new book a month by an author who was still living. The point of this was to support living authors, and preferably authors who were not already popular. I abandoned that year's book challenge but I still think it's important to support contemporary authors. In my recent book buying binge, the vast majority of the books I bought fell into this category, including this one.
This is the first of Alexander's books and one that I bought on sale because of the blurb on the back cover. It is an impressive debut. Alexander avoids all the usual first book problems. In fact, I wouldn't be too surprised to find out that Alexander is a pseudonym. However, wild speculation aside, this was a well plotted mystery set in Victorian England. The main character, Lady Ashton, is a newlywed turned widow after her husband dies on a hunting expedition in Africa. Mourning for Victorian women was a strange and oddly rigid thing, and for a while the oddity of setting hides the beginnings of the mystery plot-line.
Overall the book reads as though Jane Austen wrote a mystery novel and I applaud Alexander for creating a thoroughly enjoyable book. The history was well integrated and the voice absolutely superb. This book is the beginning of a series and I have no idea how well it holds up but I say it's worth a try.
No comments:
Post a Comment