Book Report - Lady Darby Series

I just started the fourth book in the Lady Darby historical mystery series, A Study In Death. I'm reading this on my Kindle instead of listening to the audiobook as I did for the first three installments. I miss the charming British accent of the narrator though caught myself trying to sound British in my head as I clicked through the pages. Ha!

This series includes many of the desirable traits I'm clamoring to find in reading material lately. As usual, I've dug my claws into a rather specific genre and don't appear to be giving up anytime soon. Not just historical fiction. Not just historical mystery. Not just historical mysteries set in England anywhere from 1800-1950. Not just British mysteries depicting this time period that are series. They also need to include a thread of romance between main characters that continues from book to book. 

Which brings us back to Lady Darby. We meet Kiera after her miserable marriage to Sir Anthony ends as a result of his death. He was an anatomist who married her for her artistic ability then forced her to draw his dissections. As a result, she's shunned from society (didn't take much to get the cut direct back then!). In the first installment, she's working alongside handsome investigator Lord Sebastian Gage to prove her own innocence in a murder. They continue to dig around darker and darker cases side by side in each subsequent book. 

With the exception of #2, Mortal Arts, I've been in the dark about the culprit until the bitter end. These are well-written and seemingly historically accurate novels that provide a glimpse of life in Edinburgh in the mid 19th century as well as intriguing cases and nice character development of Kiera, Sebastian, and other minor players.

All in all, there are 5 published novels in the series (and a novella) with a sixth due out in early 2018. If you like murder, history, and all things British-y, I highly recommend you dive in!