A Body in Berkeley Square (Mystery of Regency England) [Mass Market Paperback]

Ashley Gardner (Author)

Book Description

Series: Mystery of Regency England | Publication Date: December 6, 2005

When an opulent ball is marred by murder, Captain Lacey's insufferably upright former friend, Colonel Brandon, is the prime suspect. With the man's fate in his hands, Lacey finally has a chance to avenge the wrongs Brandon has done to him--but at what price?

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (December 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425207285
• ISBN-13: 978-0425207284
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #956,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Happy combination of history & mystery: One of the finest in a good series, April 25, 2006

By 

Elizabeth A. Root (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Body in Berkeley Square (Mystery of Regency England) (Mass Market Paperback)

This is one of the other sides of all those Regency novels I read: Captain Lacey is one of the half-pay officers that match-making mamas try to keep their daughters away from. He is also a man of great integrity, deep feeling, and an unfortunate tendency to lose his temper.

Ashley Gardner is succeeding at something very difficult here. Her character is flawed, in some ways more admirable than likeable. It's a very fine line that Gardner is walking successfully. Lacey often does things that are dumb, but they are so well handled as to be part of a full human being, not cheap plot devices. I was afraid that the character James Denis was going to ruin this book by turning it into a melodrama, but a this point, I think the author is up to the task on maintaining it as a side plot, without lurching into bathos.

Lacey has left the military after a dispute with his beloved and despised former mentor and commanding officer that resulted in a permanent injury to his leg. He has a respectable (but not noble) lineage, but no private income, so he has settled into cheap quarters. He has made friends with some of the ton, as well as lower class people such as an actress and his old sergeant, now a Bow Street Runner. This enables him to view society at many levels, as well as enlist the forces of the law, such as they were in those days, in his investigations.

The supporting cast contains many well-developed characters with idiosyncracies and lives outside of being his sidekicks. Their relationships with Lacey and one another are sometimes complex. I also like that Lacey's life develops: he makes new friends, takes jobs, romances women and worries about his long-eloped wife and daughter. So often, series characters get stuck in a rut of repeating circumstances, but that doesn't seem to be a danger here.

As a matter of taste, these novels are somewhat melancholy, but goodness triumphs often enough so that they don't get morbid. The victims and perpetrators vary as to how sympathetic they are.

I am keeping all my volumes in this series, because I know that I will want to go back and reread as I go along. The reader who likes these may like these other novels, similarly of people skirtng the boundry between the middle-class and the gentry:

T.F. Banks' Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner (beginning with The Thief-Taker: Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner) set in the same period;

Set in the last half of the 18th century are:

Hannah March's series about tutor Robert Fairfax, (I believe The Complaint of the Dove is first);

Bruce Alexander's Bow Street Magistrate Sir John Fielding series, from about the same time (Blind Justice (Sir John Fielding) is first);

Robert Lee Hall's American Agent Series, featuring Benjamin Franklin, (Benjamin Franklin Takes the Case (The Benjamin Franklin Mysteries) (Pine Street Books) is first).

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beter and better, December 10, 2005

By 

Lorraine Talbot (Winsted,, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Body in Berkeley Square (Mystery of Regency England) (Mass Market Paperback)

The books in this series have gotten better and better. This latest is particularly fine. There is tremendous growth in the characters. I don't want to give anything away, but we learn signifcant facts about the flighty Marianne, and there's a development in her relationship with Grenville. Lacey resolves some of his feelings for Louisa, and starts valuing the friends we've seen him make in the previous books of the series. The plot is fine. I'm an avid reader, couple of hundred mysteries every year and if I don't see the perpetrator before the end, it's a winner.
I confess I was worried. Because so many things were resolved, it read like a "wind-up" and I was afraid there'd be no more Lacey mysteries. I was pleased to find in an internet search that another of these books in coming out in 2006. Yeah!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fabulous Captain Lacy Regency police procedural, December 6, 2005

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Body in Berkeley Square (Mystery of Regency England) (Mass Market Paperback)

In 1817, former military Sergeant turned Bow St. runner Milton Pomeroy shows Captain Gabriel Lacey the corpse of Henry Turner stabbed to death with the knife in his chest. Milton explains that the body was removed from the crime scene in order to not interfere with the crème de crème ball hosted by Lord Gillis. Upon seeing the murder weapon Lacey knows it belongs to Colonel Aloysius Brandon, who won it from him in a Peninsular card game.

Lacey detests his former friend and superior officer Brandon, who previously told Pomeroy he has no idea how his knife ended up in Turner's chest. The sleuth is tempted to let the Colonel take the fall as he knows he could make a case since Brandon had the opportunity and the means, and a motive shortly surfaces too. Will Lacey "settle" on Brandon, who everyone from the Earl hosting the ball to Pomeroy assumes committed the homicide? By doing so Lacey would avenge several affronts Brandon did to him or will he seek justice by continuing his investigations? His traitorous gut tells him the Colonel is being framed with too much easily available proof for someone as diabolical as Brandon has become.

The latest Captain Lacy Regency police procedural, A BODY IN BERKELEY SQUARE, is a fabulous who-done-it starring an ethical hero who faces a moral dilemma as he finally has the opportunity, the means and the motive to get away with vengeance. The who-done-it is so cleverly devised that crime scene investigators would cherish working such a case. However, the key to this strong entry in one of the best historical mystery series in recent years remains how hard Lacey is trying to uncover the identity of the killer.

Harriet Klausner