Charles Finch
A Beautiful Blue Death (2007)
A Beautiful Blue Death has come up for awhile now as a recommended book for me, and there is good reason for that: I love historical mysteries.
Charles Lenox is a gentleman who likes to dabble in the investigation of crimes. Being a gentleman, he has the time and the wealth to dabble as he pleases. His neighbor, Lady Jane Grey, asks him to investigate the death of her former maid who had gone into the service of George Barnard to be closer to her fiance, who was a footman at Barnard’s house. Barnard wants Lenox to have nothing to do with the investigation, which makes the investigation rather more difficult.
One of the things I love about historical mysteries is when they’re done well they transport me to another place and time. I’m not foolish enough to believe I would want to live in such a place and time–I like indoor plumbing and the right to vote–but the past is an interesting place to visit.
But I’m still not quite sure how I feel about Charles Lenox and A Beautiful Blue Death. Lenox is a dabbler and a man of leisure, which is how he can afford to investigate crime as a hobby. He also has some ideals that seem far more modern than seems likely for the Victorian era and a man of his class. Not that there weren’t people at that time who held what I would consider to be modern ideals, I just find it strange that historical mysteries are simply littered with open minded men and women. And of course the dislikable characters are those who actually hold the more that were common at the time.
Like I said, I enjoy living in modern times, but it seems to be that Victorian England of historical mysteries is populated with free thinking men and women who were far ahead of their times.
That’s not to say that Lenox is a complete outlier and would have been seen as an outcast rather than a gentleman, it’s simply that as a whole the attitudes of the characters felt far more modern than Victorian.
So how was the mystery? It wasn’t bad. I did like that Lenox was challenged in his ability to investigate the murder, but there was nothing that leaped out of the pages at me and pulled me in to the point where I was totally immersed in the story.
That doesn’t make this a bad book–and it isn’t a bad book. It’s just that for an Agatha Aware Nominee, I was expecting more.
On the other hand, I’m thinking Grandmom will love this book, so there is that.
Rating: 6/10
The September Society (2008)
Charles Lennox is visited by Lady Anabelle, a widow who is worried that something terrible has happened to her son. Lennox considered brushing her off politely until she tells him she found a murdered cat in her son’s rooms at Oxford.
Lennox is actually looking forward to taking on this case, as he himself went to school in Oxford, and would not minding the campus again. Unfortunately, the continued absence of George, and the strange circumstance of his disappearance are cause for concern, and a mysterious group called “The September Society” seems to be at the heart of the matter.
I remember liking the first book in this series… no, I take that back. I wasn’t enamored of the first book in this series, so apparently I purchased the second book for Grandmom to read.
Here’s something on page 12 that particularly annoyed me.
He looked back across the street towards his brightly lit house ad saw his carriage waiting, the horses occasionally stamping their feet and the driver huddled underneath a thick black coat to keep the rain off, with only a pipe protruding from the coat’s hood, its ember occasionally brightening to orange.
This didn’t strike me as bad, just careless. Why is the bowl of the pipe not filling up with water? And more importantly, how is Lennox seeing into the bowl of the pipe to see the ember burning anyway?
It’s not terrible, it just bothers me, and little things like this kept throwing me out of the story.
But, I do believe Grandmom will enjoy it at least, because although it wasn’t terrible, I didn’t care for it any better than the first book.
Rating: 6/10
Charles Lennox: A Beautiful Blue Death (2007), The September Society (2008)
