Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

Fans of mystery, historical fiction and romance will all find something to like in Deanna Raybourn's highly enjoyable Silent in the Grave (FIC RAYBOURN), the first title in the Lady Julia Grey series.

Raybourn plunges readers into the action from Page 1, where we find Lady Julia's husband, Edward Grey, in his death throes at a dinner party. After her husband's abrupt death, Lady Julia is approached by the enigmatic Nicholas Brisbane, a private inquiry agent recently hired by Edwards to look into a series of written threats he'd received. Brisbane suspects foul play in Edward Grey's death.

Widowhood proves a turning point for Lady Julia, until now a proper Victorian wife who's felt increasingly stifled in a passionless marriage. Although there was affection between her and her husband, their relationship has never gone much further than their childhood fondness for each other. She blossoms into her own as she investigates her husband's murder.

This development is further enlivened by her repartee with the obstinate Brisbane, a loner if there ever was one, who's extremely reluctant to work with Lady Julia. His anti-social tendencies, crankiness and mysterious past (not to mysterious abilities), coupled with Julia's growing self-confidence and her determination to find the killer make for extremely entertaining scenes.

Set in 1886, the story also introduces us to Lady Julia's family, the Marches, for whom eccentricity is a birthright just as much as their aristocracy is. We also meet many of the servants in Julia's household. Many of these people will play important and surprising roles in the secrets that Julia and Brisbane unearth in this story.

Silent in the Grave is a historical mystery with romantic elements. Although the sensuality in this book is mild, when Julia and Brisbane are in the same room together, Raybourn's writing makes their attraction crackle. I quite like the pace of their relationship as well; the author has opted for a slow but steady trickle of development rather than a torrent. This means there's much to look forward to in the four novels that follow in the series.

The Woman In White / by Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins was never quite as widely respected as his contemporaries in Victorian England. Despite the fact that his numerous novels and story collections sold exceptionally well and his fan base always held him in high regard, his work never carried the same intellectual distinction as, say, a George Eliot or Charles Dickens. He may have been ahead of his time. Suspense, as a genre, wasn't really en vogue in the 19th century and despite the fact that the Gothic and Romanticist movements paved the way for more intrigue and mystery in fiction, literature remained a relatively more even-paced medium with stories involving more sensational themes relegated to second tier status. The fact that Collins' books outsold many of those same authors wasn't altogether missed by the reading public though critics seemed to diminish the effect that public affection for his work garnered. Nevertheless, in real life, Collins got on well with his peers, Dickens in particular co-authored and edited several serial literary publications with him, and it never seemed to bother him in the slightest that his writing achieved more mainstream success than critical acclaim. Among his two most famous works are The Moonstone (1868), about a mysterious diamond brought from India to England, and The Woman in White (1860), a story of intrigue surrounding a mysterious lady of the night. Of the two, The Woman in White was undeniably Collins favorite.

On his travels one night, young drawing master Walter Hartright meets a mysterious woman dressed all in white, disheveled and apparently in deep distress, whom he helps find the road to London only to discover later that she's escaped from an asylum, not for the first time evidently. Thinking little of it, Hartright sets out for a job he's undertaken at Limmeridge House, an estate in the northern part of the country where he's been commissioned to teach two young wards of a Mr. Frederick Fairlie, an elderly, ailing man who seldom leaves his room. Laura Fairlie, Mr. Fairlie's niece, and Marian Holcombe, Laura's half-sister, are nothing like their reclusive uncle and Mr. Hartright takes great pleasure in their company, discovering them to be fond of art and amiable. And in what initially seems to be an alarming coincidence, Mr. Hartright finds that Laura bears an astonishing resemblance to the woman in white, so much so that he engages the topic in conversation only to find that the woman he met that night on the road is known by his pupil.

The mentally disadvantaged lady is called Anne Catherick and had lived for a time as a child at Limmeridge. She'd been devoted to Laura's mother, a lady who'd also dressed in all white, and had been taken away from the family under somewhat mysterious circumstances after the matron's death. Walter meanwhile has fallen in love with Laura despite the fact that she's already betrothed to a bullish member of the nobility named Sir Percival Glyde, whose engagement to Laura is more a matter of course owing to an agreement between Laura and her uncle. Upon meeting Glyde, Hartright becomes convinced through a series of conversations and correspondences that he was responsible for shutting up Anne Catherick, "the woman in white," inside the asylum, unjustly as it were, to keep her from revealing secrets concerning Glyde's own dubious past and ill-conceived plans for marrying Laura and inheriting Limmeridge House.

With as many plot twists as mysteries involved in the story, Collins weaves one of the more spellbinding novels of the 19th century. It's not all that easy to follow in places and characters like Marian Holcombe and the conniving Count Fosco (appearing later on in the narrative), both of whom can seem marginalized at first, can't be discounted as they end up holding key elements to the plot's development. Keeping track of the various settings--Limmeridge House, Glyde's own estate, Hartright's travels in Honduras, Italy, London and the English countryside--can get confusing as well. But the overall intrigue of the opening sequences, the dramatic conflict escalating with each chapter, the serious undertones of tragedy and impending doom as well as the climactic conclusion are rewarding enough to supersede any of the book's many plotboilers and accommodate its complex structure. (FIC COLLINS)

The Portrait of a Lady / by Henry James

If ever an author marginalized his homeland in favor of other, more fashionable places, it was American Henry James (1843-1916). Any slight was largely unintended however. With regard to his lifestyle, it seems only practical that James would concentrate his literary efforts on the settings and subjects at hand. Born to a wealthy New York City family already well-regarded for their intellectual prowess--James' father Henry Sr. and his brother William were both accomplished philosophers and his sister Alice's posthumous diary would influence later feminists--James received a classical (if informal) education . For much of his early life, he lived abroad traveling extensively with private tutors through England, France, Italy and Switzerland. It was during this formative period that James garnered a great appreciation for the art and culture of some of Europe's most cosmopolitan settings. His only sustained residence in the United States came when he briefly attended Harvard Law School after which he resumed a semi-permanent home abroad in England for the remainder of his life. His novels, short stories and varied prose, much of it heralded as classic 'American' Literature, is predominately set in Britain and continental Europe where it almost exclusively depicts a society and class of people who could well-afford to devote themselves to the refinements of life. Consequently, critics of James have said his fiction is unrealistic and have derided the author as an unapologetic anglophile with eurocentric tendencies. His 1881 serialised novel The Portrait of a Lady follows a young American girl as she takes up a residence with relatives in England and subsequently grows into womanhood.

American Isabel Archer is only 19 when her father dies and her Aunt Touchett comes from England intending, upon request from Isabel's late father, to take the girl back with her to the Touchett estate of Gardencourt. It is settled that a life lived here in proximity to a more sophisticated social element can give Isabel a better chance to "blossom" into a well-refined, cultured woman. Almost instantly upon her arrival, Isabel is courted by several suitors, among them an older, well-off gentleman named Lord Warburton and a younger American man, Caspar Goodwood, whose been in love with Isabel previously and has followed her from America. Though both men are of able means and come well-recommended, neither can win Isabel's hand in marriage and each graciously depart from her company. It is also during this time that Isabel forms a close attachment with the Touchett's son, Ralph, whose terminal illness both prevents and dissuades him from pursuing Isabel romantically. But Ralph is a kindhearted, affectionate man and while it's never explicitly stated, it is he who perhaps loves Isabel in the purest, most unselfish way. As the elder Mr. Touchett, stricken with a similar illness, lies dying it is Ralph who persuades him (anonymously) to bequeath a legacy to Isabel, an inheritance large enough so that the girl may have the means to cultivate her higher faculties through travel and association with European society's more sophisticated set.

Though surprised at her good fortune, Isabel suspects that Ralph may have had a hand in it. And as anticipated, the young woman does indeed flourish with aid from her newfound wealth, first in the salons of Paris then the courts of Italy where along the way she procures the friendship of one Madame Merle, a thoroughly "complete" woman polished in every sort of way and a person Isabel hopes to emulate. Consequently, it is Madame Merle who introduces Isabel to her "friend" Gilbert Osmond, a man as impressed with Isabel as she is with him. Before long the two are in love and, despite the warnings of others that Gilbert is a fortune hunter, Isabel agrees to marry him. But what she doesn't know, what she doesn't even fear as she succombs to the affable and gallant wiles of Mr. Osmond is that dangerous secrets have been witheld from her concerning Gilbert and his charming daughter Pansy, a girl much in the same strangely limited situation as Isabel formerly had been.

The Portrait of a Lady is popularly considered to James best novel. It could also be said that it is his most 'Jamesian' novel, the author portraying a world, his own little microcosm of parlors, drawing rooms and galleries, where his brand of literary realism is given room to thrive. Of course no one who regards this James novel (and many of his others) would say that his mode of portrayal, a realm absent of anything but the wealthy elite stiffly going about their lives, is in any way realistic. And it's not, at least in the sense that the 'real world' and the cross-section of society contained within it are not only disregarded, but that any activity relegated to the mundane aspects of life are ever within the scope of the story. Much of it does seem like pomp and circumstance. But that's just it. James' "realism" is never intended to encompass such aspects which he feels, perhaps justifiably, aren't necessary to elucidate the ideas, themes and 'realities' he aims to render. For his is the kind of style, very acutely rendered within context, which strives to engage the most intimately authentic portions of human life, the conditions, choices and consequences enmeshed therein. An understanding of this concept isn't without contradictions. It is perhaps a bit hard to accept Jame's realism--a motif in which he firmly insisted was intended to oppose romanticist elements in fiction--when such a flourishing type of life as Isabel aspires to carries such exclusive, largely unobtainable means. (FIC JAMES)

Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero / by William Makepeace Thackeray

Overshadowed for much of his relatively short writing tenure by others, W.M. Thackeray (1811-1863) was nonetheless a notable scribe, satirist and observer of human nature, particularly well-regarded for his fiction and editorial anecdotes by the reading public as well as the very same members of the British upper-class which he so cleverly caricatured. Born in India, Thackeray was brought to England permanently in 1815 after the death of his father. During the passage, his ship was shortly detained on the island of St. Helena where the then exiled Napoleon Bonaparte was pointed out to him. The emperor's permanent deposition, brought about as a result of the Battle at Waterloo, was an event which indirectly forms the backdrop for his 1848 serially published book Vanity Fair, the author's most celebrated novel and a prized work of Victorian literature.
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"Revenge may be wicked. But it's natural".

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Becky Sharp is a sly, artful woman always scheming towards a better deal in life. Orphaned as a girl after the deaths of her artist father and opera singer mother, Becky was kept at a privately run finishing school until she came of age and inherited a moderate income, though not one guaranteeing her financial independence. With her beauty, wit and devilishly clever charms of which few women can match, eligible bachelors and married men alike routinely fall prey to her wiles, exemplified when her hasty marriage to the easily manipulated Rawdon Crawley, done solely for want of financial security, is brought about without the consent or blessing of any of the man's relations. With Rawdon now her willing pawn, Becky feels no less limited to tampering with those in her immediate circle. She routinely intermingles herself into the company of men in high standing such as General Tufto and Lord Steyne, both fashionable aristocrats, while still finding time to aid Rawdon in cheating at cards and fleecing wealthy members of the ruling class out of their money.
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Though her flirtatious cocquetry is always winning her new male friends, Becky's shrewd, self-promoting lifestyle, enacted without conscience, has essentially eliminated the potential for female companionship. Amelia Sedley is the exception to the rule. A benevolent and compassionate though naievely ignorant and, in her own way, vainly fanciful girl brought down in society by her family's financial ruin, Amelia has remained Becky's loyal ally ever since their days at finishing school together, even spurning rumours that her own beloved husband Capt. George Osborne has been lured in by Becky's arts. But when the captain is killed in the war with Napoleon, Amelia's misfortune seems to only increase as her own father's spendthrift ways and misuse of her meager widow's legacy plunge Amelia and her newborn son into further destitution and misery while Becky's amoral behavior, often executed at Amelia's expense, seems to only elevate her financial status and social standing. Yet, tragically, such is the lot of those in 'Vanity Fair', where "the general impression is forever one more melancholy than mirthful".
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The title Vanity Fair is a direct homage to the term's original inception in John Bunyan's seventeenth century Christian allegorical treatise, The Pilgrim's Progress, in which a town called Vanity holds a year-round fair devoted to worldly novelties, tawdry attractions and all kinds of "licentious, fleshly" activities--"moreover at this Fair there is at all times to be seen juggling, cheats, games, plays, fools, knaves, and rogues, and that of all sorts." (Bunyan, 96)*. Thackeray's novel is in parts full-on parody while at other times soliciting solemnly stern lessons. Yet the narrative is always whimsical, the author's personal running commentary on the "upraised curtain" of life routinely conjecturing, as if a casual member of the audience, about the stage on which the world and its actors tread, their lives driven by pretentious yearnings and carnal desires perpetually leading to greivous, lamentable and often absurdly cruel consequences. The character of Becky Sharp, one of the most popular female literary figures ever since, was one of the first prominently featured anti-heroines to appear within an English novel.
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*Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim's Progress. Eastbourne: Kingsway Publications, 1972.

Southampton Row / by Anne Perry

Investigator Thomas Pitt may no longer be an ‘official’ police detective on staff at London’s Bow Street station, but he’s no less uninformed about goings on within his sector, having insider access to oft-concealed capital murder cases through his ties with Special Branch. Only slightly worse for wear after being relegated to remote investigative duties following some treacherous dealings in head office, Pitt and his razor-sharp wife, Charlotte, have kept busy trapsing after the city’s abundance of crooks, deviants and layed-low criminals, not to mention coming in contact with some bizarre society circles.

His penchant for intrigue withstanding, even Pitt is more than a little unsettled when he and Charlotte’s much-needed vacation is put off after a murder tied to the recent Parliament election falls into their hands. On the upside the case is no less a prestigious one, involving several inner circle politicians--most notably the pompous Charles Voisey--in the mysterious death of a well-known society spiritualist. Early leads turn out to be less than clairvoyant, however, as clients of the dead medium, Voisey’s opponent’s wife to be specific, are revealed as largely ambiguous—if not altogether unreliable—sources of information. With Charlotte sent north of the city to search for background details on the deceased, Thomas and his sister-in-law Emily must wade through the foggy streets of London’s Southampton Row (and an even foggier political climate) to try and pin down the real reason behind the “séance murder”.

For years Anne Perry has entertained mystery fans with her own interpretations of life, love and crime in one of history’s most fascinating periods and places—Victorian England. Her recent Thomas and Charlotte Pitt novels, depicting a husband and wife detective team trailing cases closely-linked to issues of the day have been her most well-received with the pair’s engaging—often perilous—investigations never failing to dazzle readers. Though a bit further along in the series this story’s not hard to follow as the context provides enough background info for anyone to pick up on preceding events. This book's police procedural aspects will attract readers who'll like how the case weaves its way through high-profile intrigue and entreaty, ultimately tagging the real culprit behind the glamorous medium's death. (MYS PERRY)

The Forsyte Saga (The Forsyte Chronicles – 1st Trilogy) by John Galsworthy

My colleague Daniel’s review of the first book in this trilogy about the Forsyte family inspired me to read it and continue with the full trilogy, the books entitled “In Chancery” and “To Let”. Galsworthy, the author, takes you into his story gradually. The opening scene in the first book, “The Man of Property”, is of a Forsyte family gathering. As you meet the members, the family tree (provided in the front of the book) comes in handy, but the range of people across generations is a bit overwhelming at first. One has to remember that when Galsworthy wrote, people had a little more time to spare when they read a novel! But the book is so well-written and the characterization so subtle, that you are soon under its spell. No matter that some of the characters are proud and arrogant (Soames) and others inscrutable (Irene) - among the cast there is always someone whose plight touches your heart, and whose actions perfectly portray their random thoughts and intentions. The author sees the human desire to own something as cause for great folly, and beauty as its antidote, to be reveled in for its own sake, without trying to hold or possess it.