Cozy Victorian mystery... takes a bit for the story to get going, though. I'm an AVID MYSTERY FAN - have been since I picked up my first Trixie Belden book at age 9.At first glance, this book looks... well, large - lots of pages. But in reality, it's a fast read. I did it in one evening. I enjoyed the book: while Lady Julia might seem a bit too "modern" for an aristocratic Englishwoman, she is a March and the time period is the late 1800s, creeping up on 1900. Nicholas Brisbane is an interesting mix -- at times I thought perhaps too many things mixed up in this wild, dark man... But he's intriguing.However, as others have noted, the mystery isn't really about Whodunnit. That's fairly obvious. But I must admit, I didn't catch the WHY -- I had an entirely different scenario playing in my head. Like Lady Julia, I found myself a bit shocked, but not for the same reasons. I was simply taken aback -- did I miss something? IMO, the author intended for the reader to feel Lady Julia's shock on more than one level -- shock, betrayal, and hurt. We knew this marriage wasn't a love story for the ages, and while the "whoring" and even the Hellfire Club could be expected, I, frankly, didn't expect the homosexual angle. And that twist to the plot, characters, and the why caught me by surprise - enough so that I will read book #2 to see if Nicholas Brisbane and Lady Julia can hold my attention through another murder.
