This installment finds Jane admitting to herself the depth of her feeling for Lord Trowbridge. Nice! The murder was particularly disturbing because it was revealed to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of corruption of soul. There was the interesting aspect of the various remedies that were sprinkled about the book - a new facet of the world of Jane Austen. ( )

Regency mystery, with fewer historical distractions
July 2001

Barron's fictional Jane continues her surprisingly dangerous career by stumbling upon a particularly grisly corpse -- a young man, she thinks, shot in the head and eviscerated. As it comes out that the deceased was a stillroom maid, in charge of remedies and preserves, and a vicious rumor implicating the Freemasons spreads throughout the village, Jane once again becomes enmeshed with a murder investigation. There are plenty of false leads to follow, plenty of scandals to uncover, and all in the company of Lord Harold Trowbridge, who is in Derbyshire to pay a visit of morning for the Duchess of Devonshire.

Of the Jane Austen Mystery series so far, this is the one most distilled - fewer side issues for Jane to consider, fewer forays into the politics and the culture of the day. There is, of course, the aristocratic name-dropping; we are treated to the leading people of the Whig movement in Parliament. Also, there is a small mention of Freemasonry, but it passes quickly. The chapters are interspersed with recipes for folk remedies, in sure opposition to the "more modern" apothecary and doctor, who prefer their bleeding cures to tinctures and poultices (Warning: do not try these remedies at home. Stick to our "modern" remedies of St. John's Wort and saw palmetto). However, there are far fewer footnotes in this book than the previous novels and far fewer reveries on Jane's part. Barron seems to have decided to make this a murder mystery, with few distracting elements. Once again, an enjoyable read, like the rest of the series, but no tedious bits as some of the previous novels suffered from. ( )

But I found this one altogether too predictable. I had the murderer figured out about 1/3 of the way through the book. I still enjoy Ms. Barron's Jane Austen and I love the Regency setting, but I was a bit disappointed with this book. Jane is in Derbeyshire for a week in August of 1806 for the setting of this story. You can see how she loved the country, and why she used this as her setting for Pride and Prejudice. Jane stumbles across the horribly mutilated body of a young "genteleman" when she is out with her cousin on an angling expedition. It is determined that Jane's young "gentleman" is in fact a woman servant from a neighbouring manor house. Why was she killed in this lonely place and so horribly mutilated? Jane and the dapper Lord Harold set out to unmask a killer. While doing so, they uncover long buried and also rather recent family secrets. Ms. Barron has an uncanny ability to write the way it appears that the actual Miss Austen would have and that is what makes this series so enjoyable. ( )