Review: "When Gods Die," C.S. Harris

 

By Paul Carrier

It’s 1811, and George, Prince of Wales, is taking the helm of the British government as regent because his father, King George III, is too badly incapacitated by mental illness to govern the realm.

The prince is a dissolute, shallow, self-indulgent man in his late 40s. When Gods Die opens with him ensconced in the seaside resort of Brighton, where he plans to seduce Guinevere Anglessey, the young and beautiful wife of the elderly marquis of Anglessey.

Guinevere has joined George in a private “cabinet,” but she is unresponsive to his advances. This angers the prince, who resents being rejected by  Guinevere, until he eventually realizes a key fact that changes everything. Guinevere is dead. Murdered. Stabbed in the back with a dagger. A dagger that belongs to the Prince of Wales.

Suspicion quickly falls on the prince, who denies wrongdoing. And he’s telling the truth. An autopsy reveals that the stabbing did not kill Guinevere. She was poisoned in London several hours before the prince entered his “cabinet” in Brighton, stabbed after she was dead, and then transported to Brighton, where her lifeless body was placed in the prince's room in a pose that initially led him to believe she was alive.

Presumably, the murderer(s) goal was to further discredit the already unpopular prince.

Enter Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin and the protagonist of C.S. Harris’ mystery series, which includes some 20 novels. (When Gods Die is the second one.) St. Cyr solved two heinous murders in the previous novel, and a political fixer in the regent’s circle entices him to investigate this one as well.

St. Cyr has a compelling reason to take on the case. At the time of her death, Guinevere was wearing an ancient necklace that once belonged to St. Cyr’s mother, Sophie, who, St. Cyr believes, drowned while he was a child. Neither the body nor the necklace was ever recovered, so how did the necklace end up on Guinevere so many years later?

The nobleman turned amateur detective is not flying solo as he digs into the murder. His lover, a successful London actress named Kat Boleyn, is supportive and helpful, although she has a dark secret that she has not shared with St. Cyr. Paul Gibson, a surgeon and “anatomist” who, like St. Cyr, served in the Napoleonic Wars, is on hand too, to offer medical advice and conduct the occasional autopsy.

The viscount also gets invaluable help from 12-year-old Tom, a former pickpocket who is adept a ferreting out useful information from the city’s seamier quarters — until he is imprisoned after he gets caught spying on men who are storing kegs of gunpowder in the cellar of a London inn. In light of widespread hostility toward Prince George, is a plot afoot to undermine the monarchy?

As she did in the series debut, What Angels Fear, Harris cooked up a page turner in When Gods Die, as St. Cyr searches for clues, dodges the bad guys (or tries to) and weighs the evidence against various potential suspects. Eventually, he races to rescue Tom, to prevent the lad from possibly being hanged for allegedly stealing a watch, which he did not do.

The main appeal of the St. Cyr mysteries, at least in the case of the two I’ve read so far, is watching the intrepid viscount solve dastardly crimes without getting himself too badly banged up. A side benefit is that Harris peppers her plots with plenty of period detail, including unusual or archaic terms that will send curious readers reaching for (or clicking on) a dictionary.

A "Friday face," for example? It’s a dismal facial expression (in use since before the Reformation). And an "abigail"? That’s a lady’s personal maid (dating back to the 17th century). Not terms that are likely to crop up in day-to-day conversations, but it never hurts to expand our vocabulary.