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Captain Gabriel Lacey, late of the 35th Light Dragoons, leads a fairly dismal life. He retired, lamed and under a cloud, following the Peninsular Campaign against Bonaparte and is trying to scrape along on half pay while retaining his status as a gentleman. When he comes upon a rock-throwing mob in an exclusive area of London, he is intrigued by the leader, an elderly and respectable-looking person. This man alone remains facing the line of five cavalry who have effectively dispersed the rest of the crowd by firing their weapons. He is clearly distraught and intent on continuing his assault on one house in the square. He persists despite warnings and is shot; his wife appears and throws herself on his bleeding body. The cavalry lieutenant intends to take the man to prison, expecting him to die there, but Lacey defies him and takes the elderly couple home, where he hears a grim tale of the disappearance of their beloved only daughter. Jane and her maid Aimee simply vanished from a coach while travelling through the city one day. Weeks later she was seen in a carriage and followed to the house in Hanover Square where Lacey encountered her desperate father. Lacey determines to discover what has happened to Jane and Aimee. I quite enjoyed this book. The sense of the period is well-established without being intrusive -- one is not assaulted with the author's scholarship. It can be a tricky business to elucidate aspects of another time, aspects that are no doubt well-known to some readers and not at all to others, such as the functioning of law enforcement, the political atmosphere and social conventions, and the author pulls this off very well. I wouldn't say the plot has any astonishing features, but it ticks along nicely and has a few interesting twists. Where the author really shines is in the characters. Captain Lacey is very well-presented, a man of great complexity. He is deeply honourable, yet struggles with both a hot temper and a tendency to melancholia, or what we now call clinical depression. I was particularly taken with his relationship with the wife of his erstwhile best friend and commanding officer. This is a first-person narrative, and we are shown a state of mind that would be very difficult to imagine occurring in a modern soul. Lacey clearly loves Louisa dearly, yet never even approaches a dishonourable thought about her. She is married, there is no more to be said. Even when he implies that her husband has displayed some jealousy toward him, he doesn't bother to defend himself against the idea, even in his own mind. It is very deftly and admirably done. This is to be the first in a series, and I happily anticipate the next. Recommended.
Reviewed by Diana Sandberg, January 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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