Garden of Lies
By Amanda Quick
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Ursula Kern, proprietor of the Kern Secretarial Agency,
refuses to accept the official conclusion that the death of her employee and
friend Anne Clifton was due to either suicide or natural causes. A note
clutched in the dead woman’s hand leads Ursula to believe that her friend was
murdered. Since the police won’t investigate, Ursula decides to conduct her own
investigation, and the logical place to begin, since Anne, like her employer,
was an unmarried woman with no family, is with Anne’s last clients, Lord and
Lady Fulbrooke. But first, Ursula must inform her own client, legendary
archaeologist Slater Roxton, that another client’s work takes priority over
cataloging antiquities for him.
Slater is not pleased with the news. The illegitimate son of
actress Lily Lafontaine and wealthy aristocrat Edward Roxton, Slater is a
legendary figure who miraculously survived being trapped in an ancient burial
chamber and thus became a media sensation. Abandoned by his companions who
thought he had been crushed to death beneath the falling stones, he lived for a
year on Fever Island, thought to be uninhabited. The island was actually
inhabited by a monastery belonging to the Order of the Three Paths, a
philosophical rather than a religious order, whose ideas and meditative
practices transformed Slater. Despite the fact that his father recognized him,
provided him with a gentleman’s education, and even made Slater sole trustee of
the Roxton fortune, Slater has never been at home in society. He senses in the
heavily veiled Ursula a kindred spirit. Unhappy with Ursula’s decision to play
detective and concerned about her safety, he insists on joining her
investigation.
Ursula has mixed feelings about Slater’s role as
co-investigator. She is aware that his background gives him access to his
mother’s theatrical connections and to his father’s upper-crust world, access
Ursula lacks. Also, she knows his experience recovering lost and stolen
treasures could prove useful. But she is jealous of her independence and fears
that he will not see her as an equal. Theirs is at times an uneasy alliance,
but each brings something unique to the partnership.
Although superficially different from one another, Ursula
and Slater are alike in fundamental ways. They are both proven survivors remade
by experience. Ursula recreated herself when a disastrous marriage, a
poverty-stricken widowhood, and an epic scandal made her former life
impossible. Although Slater did not change his name and he does have some close
family ties, he is a very different man from the young archaeologist who chased
a myth. As each observes independently of the other, Ursula’s veil and Slater’s
glasses serve the same purpose—to limit the view others have of them and to
keep the larger world at a distance.
It is Slater who discovers that Lord Fulbrooke is connected
to the Olympus Club, a mysterious private club that offers a hallucinogenic
drug and the companionship of high-class courtesans to its wealthy members.
Ursula uncovers a locked room in Lady Fulbrooke’s conservatory in which the
melodramatic poet is growing the plant from which the drug is made. Together Ursula
and Slater uncover a web of drug trafficking, blackmail, and murder that
stretches from London to New York. Can they find the evidence they need before
one of them becomes the next victim? Their courage to complete their quest is
unquestioned, but is their courage strong enough to open their lives and their
hearts to one another and to move beyond shared passion to commitment and love?
Garden of Lies is
vintage Amanda Quick, a winning combination of breath-catching mystery and
sigh-worthy romance with an independent, active, intelligent heroine and a hero
who is a bit of a misfit with definite quirks. He matches her intelligence and
is confident enough of his masculinity to support her independence, with
occasional lapses due to his need to protect where he loves. This one is set in
Victorian London at a time when advances in the typewriter were opening the
world of work to women at an increasing rate. Quick uses this setting in
interesting ways.
The early Amanda Quick novels such as Ravished, Mistress, and Dangerous
remain some of my all-time favorite historical romances, and although I don’t
rate this one quite on par with those classics, I did find it a solid read.
Quick (aka Jayne Ann Krentz) can be depended on to give readers smart,
unconventional characters, a real sense of period setting, and a balance of
mystery and romance in which neither genre overpowers the other. For me, that
is a winning combination. If you are a fan of Amanda Quick, I expect you will
find Garden of Lies a thoroughly
enjoyable read. If it has been a while since you read Quick or if you like historical
romantic suspense but have never read Amanda Quick, I recommend you give this
book a try. I think you will be glad you did.
~Janga
~Janga
I've always enjoyed her books and this sounds like another good one - thanks!
ReplyDeleteI'm a fan too, catslady. Looking forward to this one!
DeleteAmanda Quick books are an automatic read for me. I enjoy all of them very much.
ReplyDeleteMe too, knye! In fact, I enjoy Jayne Ann Krentz in all of her writing personae.
DeleteCan not wait for this one!! Love, love her books.
ReplyDeleteI love her books. I still have several in my TBR Mountain to catch up on.
ReplyDelete