AND ONLY TO DECEIVE
By: Tasha Alexander
Harper: New York
2006 (pb)
Lady Emily Ashton (nee Bromley) finds herself a very
young widow, barely acquainted with her very wealthy, big game-hunting
husband before he dies of fever in darkest Africa. So begins Tasha
Alexander’s first Lady Emily mystery and it is a fascinating debut.
Well-crafted from a literary standpoint, And Only to Deceive portrays
the latter days of late Victorian English gentry in historically accurate
detail, while at the same time spinning a mystery yarn involving the shady
world of antiquities forgers and black marketers.
The novel is also a biographical study of Lady Emily as
she finds herself in a constant state of becoming. She is at first a
widow who barely cares about her recently deceased husband, Philip Ashton,
but who, with the help of his best friend, Colin Hargreave, and through his
journals, learns to love him and his memory with deep and abiding passion.
She is at first a rather conventional Victorian daughter of the aristocracy
who becomes an independent, free-thinking and very strong-willed young woman
who foreshadows the coming of the 20th Century and all of its
social upheavals. At the same time, author Alexander portrays the very
restrictive and circumspect world of Victorian manners and mores in a most
enjoyable and non-pedantic fashion.
The story of Emily’s “liberation” is in truth the
reflection of her growing knowledge and understanding of the husband she
never knew. He was witty and intellectual and more romantic than she had
ever, or could ever, have imagined-- he commissioned an impressionist
portrait of her by Pierre-Auguste Renoir as a gift of which she was unaware
until after his death! His love of all things Classical, particularly the
art and antiquities of ancient Greece, informed his intellectual life—and
plunged Emily into unforeseen danger. She finds warnings of “grave danger”
among her husband’s private papers; this danger seems to be transferred to
her person as a mysterious scar-faced man shadows her in both London and
Paris and then her Paris suite is burgled and left in total disarray. Her
investigations take her to the British Museum, the Louvre, and Philip’s
estate, Ashton Hall, in Derbyshire. Circumstantial evidence begins to build
up and it soon becomes not only possible, but quite likely that Philip and
his friend Colin have been involved in the elicit forging of antiquities and
subsequent thefts of the real artifacts from some of the world’s great
collections. Compounding Emily’s agony is the discovery of evidence that
Philip might not have died but is still alive in Africa!
Tasha Alexander’s novel of Victorian manners and
mystery is a delight to read and savor; if she can maintain this quality of
writing and plot, the subsequent adventures of Lady Emily (there are two
more that have been published thus far), I look forward to years of very
entertaining reading. Three trowels for this initial entry in a new mystery
series.
Back to Review Page
|
