The Glass House

The Glass House (2004/2011) Ashley Gardner

London, January 1817

The third Captain Lacey mystery finds him again embroiled in mystery, when a young blonde is found in the river, and the Bow Street runner called to the scene wants Lacey to see if she is his upstairs neighbor.

Again, I cannot decide if I like Captain Lacey or not. He is brusque and picks fights where he needn’t, but he is also in almost constant pain, and suffers melancholia from the war. So it’s hard not to excuse him for his temper, since he mostly manages to control it.

I had seen more than one corpse of a suicide in the Army; once, of a man in my own company. Most of us in the Army had been very stoic about the fact that every time we rode into battle, we would likely not return. We agreed that death fighting the pesky French was more honorable than death by the infections that regularly swept through the camps. We even joked about it.

But there were those for whom the horrors of war had come as a shock. Some men could not face shooting and killing others and were terrified by the thought of death by bayonet or musket ball. In the quiet hours of dawn, these gentlemen would creep away by themselves and end their lives quickly with a bullet in the head, as I described.

No one stopped them. A man had to find honor where he could. We buried them, sent their effects back to their families, and marched on.

I (of course) liked the elements reminding us what life was really like in the past.

“I’ve been wondering why she married Chapman at all,” I said. “Lord Barbury gave her money and gifts and loved her desperately. She seemed equally besotted with him. Surely she was happy, even without marriage.”

Marianne gave me a dark look. “You are a man, Lacey. You cannot begin to understand. A gentleman who is not your husband can be wild about you one day, weary of you the next. And, once he is weary . . .” She opened her hand, as though dropping something to the carpet. “If the lady has saved no money, if he takes back everything he has given her, she is destitute, her character ruined. Marriage is much safer by far for a woman, even if it is not the happiest state.”

Quite fascinating was the description of “magical gas” or what we’d refer to as laughing gas. When Lacey first experiences it, I thought he might be likely to return to it, after it eased the pain of his knee, but luckily, he’s made of sterner stuff, and recognized that the come down wasn’t worth the relief.

I was also glad to see that the Derwent’s were back. They’re quite lovely, and it’s nice to remember that such people do exist. I also liked that Grenville is complicated.

It’s an interesting series, and at $2.99 a book, I’ll keep reading.
Rating: 7/10

Published by JA / AG Publishing

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