Book Review: The Adventuress by Tasha Alexander

The Adventuress (Lady Emily Mysteries #10)

By Tasha Alexander

Published by Minotaur Books and distributed by Macmillan, October 13, 2015

Purchased and read on Amazon Kindle

Links: Amazon, B&N, Powell's

Rating: Four Stars (out of five)

Lest you think this blog has over the course of its brief life morphed into an all-Lewis-and-Phryne TV-fest, let me disabuse you of that notion by posting a review of the most recent Lady Emily mystery by Tasha Alexander.  This series, which focuses on the crime-solving adventures of an English noblewoman at the end of the nineteenth century, is one of my favorites, and for at least the last several years Alexander has released a new volume every October.  I hope she keeps it up for a while at least.

The Adventuress marks a return to form after what were, for me, a couple of less worthy entries in the series.  Both Behind the Shattered Glass (2013) and The Counterfeit Heiress (2014) had resolutions that were either unsatisfying or so obvious as to be irritating.  In The Adventuress, Emily’s lifelong friend and one-time suitor Jeremy Sheffield is finally engaged—to an American heiress named Amity Wells.  Amity’s family arranges a two-week engagement celebration in Cannes, to which Emily and her husband Colin, along with some other friends and family, are invited.  Soon after their arrival, Jeremy’s friend Chauncey Neville dies by drinking poisoned whiskey.  Everyone but Emily believes it’s a suicide, but when a young French dancer who had met the English party on the night of Chauncey’s death is found murdered, Emily’s instincts are proven right.

Amity of course knows about Emily and Jeremy’s longstanding friendship and one-time romance, and she sets out to befriend Emily.  However, someone wants her to think that Emily has no interest in her friendship and is out to sabotage her engagement.  Who?  Why?  The solution to this mystery is integral to the resolution of the murder plot. Like all of the Lady Emily books, The Adventuress uses alternating narrative perspectives.  This time, we get third-person narration from Amity’s point of view as well as Emily's first-person perspective. This has caused Alexander problems in the past, most notably in The Counterfeit Heiress where the second narrative voice made the mystery's solution fairly obvious, but in The Adventuress, it works pretty well by developing the "who wants to sabotage Emily and Amity's friendship" plot alongside the murder plot.

The Lady Emily books overall are fun, quick reads.  If you’re a fan of the Late Victorian era or of historical mysteries in general, they’re reliably enjoyable in spite of the occasional dud.  One thing I really appreciate about this series is that once Emily and Colin are married (at the end of book 3), their relationship is mostly a background to the mysteries.  It’s nice to read about a partnership between a married couple who love and can count on each other without a lot of relationship-based drama.  I particularly like how, in The Adventuress, jealousy never enters the picture on Colin’s part, even though there’s some suggestion that Jeremy and Emily might have lingering feelings for each other.

On a final note, for fans of other historical mysteries there’s a lovely shoutout to Elizabeth Peters’s Amelia Peabody books.  I like thinking of the characters as all inhabiting the same fictional world at the end of the nineteenth century.  Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot and will continue to look forward to new entries in the series.