Published by Kensington Books
Age Group: Adult
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Detective Characters, Scientist Characters, Historical Mystery, London, Mystery, Whodunnit, Regency History
Series: Wrexford & Sloane #1
My Rating:
Published on: 27th June 2017
Pages: 370
Buy this Book! Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Blackwells / Bookshop.org US / BookBeat Audio
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In Regency London, an unconventional scientist and a fearless female artist team up to trap a cold-hearted killer.
The Earl of Wrexford possesses a brilliant scientific mind, but boredom and pride lead him to reckless behavior. So when pompous, pious Reverend Josiah Holworthy publicly condemns him for debauchery, Wrexford unsheathes his rapier-sharp wit and strikes back. As their war of words escalates, London’s most popular satirical cartoonist, A.J. Quill, skewers them both. But then the clergyman is found slain in a church—his face burned by chemicals, his throat slashed ear to ear—and Wrexford finds himself the chief suspect.
An artist in her own right, Charlotte Sloane has secretly slipped into the persona of her late husband, using his nom de plume, A.J. Quill. When Wrexford discovers her true identity, she fears it will be her undoing. But he has a proposal—use her sources to unveil the clergyman’s clandestine involvement in questionable scientific practices, and unmask the real murderer. Soon Lord Wrexford and the mysterious Mrs. Sloane plunge into a dangerous shadow world hidden among London’s intellectual enclaves to trap a cunning adversary—before they fall victim to the next experiment in villainy.
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Murder on Black Swan Lane Review
One of the few non-fantasy/sci-fi types of books I read, and pretty much the only crime genre I read without any fantasy or supernatural elements in, is historical fiction, primarily Victorian or Regency era, like Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose. What can I say? I like Sherlock Holmes, I like Victorian fiction a lot and studied it as part of my English Literature degree. The problem with the classics, though, is that most of them were written by actual Victorians (funny that :P), and while there are some classic writers I appreciate and admire, they’re still confined by their society. And before someone says ‘well actually…’ and starts to lecture me about so and so being before their time, that’s all well and good, but they don’t write stories with female heroines, do they? Most of the books I read of this genre probably aren’t historically accurate in one way or another, and I’m ok with that because I’m reading for the pleasure of fiction. If I wanted to read something historically accurate, then I’d go read actual Victorian or Regency literature.
You might see where this is going; Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose isn’t historically accurate, but it is jolly good fun! What drew me to the book was the unique idea of a mystery novel with one of the crime-fighting duo being an artist. They’re always a Lord or Lady, and if failing that, a doctor, or a teacher – someone academic. But an artist? That was different, and I like different. I found the story to be quite interesting, and the characters to be well-developed and fleshed out, with the novel giving just enough information without giving everything away. This is, after all, just book one in a series, so I’m sure there are more secrets to unfold as the series goes on, and I’m definitely going to be checking out book two.
I read some complaints about the accents of the two young cockney boys, and as someone who hails from London and grew up in a house where cockney rhyming slang was normal, I wanted to talk a bit about them. Normally, ‘ye’ is used for Scottish accents in literature; however, in London, yes/yeah is pronounced as ‘yeh’. I just read the ‘ye’ as ‘yeh’ in my head automatically because I knew they were cockney, not Scottish. Other than the ‘ye’, everything else about their dialogue was spot on as far as I was concerned.
If any dialogue was a bit off, it was Wrexford’s, which felt a little too much like every Regency film/period drama I’d ever watched had been used to create his dialogue. But that was just a minor thing that I noticed, and honestly, if I hadn’t been looking at the language used by the characters, I’m not sure I’d have even noticed.
About Andrea Penrose
A graduate of Yale University with a B.A. in Art and an M.F.A. in Graphic Design, Andrea fell in love with Regency England after reading Pride and Prejudice and has maintained a fascination with the era’s swirling silks and radical new ideas throughout her writing career. She lives in Connecticut and blogs with a community of historical fiction authors at WordWenches.com.
Over to You
Thank you for reading my book review for Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose!
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