With this review, I’m pleased to introduce a new writer to the website, Jean Martorana, who will contribute occasional historical fiction reviews. She is a retired English teacher and avid reader.
London, 1812 and the aristocracy is involved in an international intrigue that’s described with sensory details and language to delight the history-oriented reader. In Where Shadows Dance, C.S. Harris writes a thriller with no fewer than five possibilities for the murder of Alexander Ross.
“He could see nothing but high, rough stone walls and a refuse-choked muddy lane curving away into the mist.” Throughout the novel, finely-done descriptions add to the mysterious plot. When the surgeon Paul Gibson pays for a body to be dissected by his medical students no one thinks for a moment the young man had been murdered. When Sebastian St. Cyr is called upon to investigate, he quickly figures out there are political reasons behind the murder of the young nobleman.
When Madame Champagne gives Sebastian St. Cyr some information about the bizarre death and tells him that men may hide their faces but they cannot hide their accents, he suspects she knows more than she is letting on. But, despite the clues she gives him, the list of suspects in this international intrigue only grows.
Engaged to the daughter of his worst enemy, Sebastian St. Cyr continues taking chances and finds even more bodies. And then we wonder, is even his fiancée involved? The death count mounts, but neither St. Cyr nor the reader can determine the killer. The non-stop action and suspense make this book difficult to put down and the clues keep you guessing to the very end.
This looks like a great read for a long train journey or flight. Thanks for posting.
There are a number of books in CS Harris Sebastian St. Cyr series so you should be able to fill a number of flights very happily.
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