Amazon.com Review
Lovers of Victorian-style mystery are no doubt familiar with Anne Perry's two series of novels set in 1880s London. These set the standards of the period piece genre, wooing readers with their precisely calibrated mixture of grubby urban realism (read murder) and the tea and gossip of refined drawing rooms. With
The Death of Colonel Mann, the first installment in her new Beacon Hill series, Cynthia Peale takes her own stab at that combination, but on the other side of the Atlantic.
When Colonel William D'Arcy Mann is found shot to death in his Boston hotel, few Brahmins mourn his passing. The Colonel had published far too many of Boston's highest caste's indiscretions in his gossip rag; those who had escaped such public ignominy had paid an equally high price, for Mann was not averse to a spot of genteel blackmail. The cast of suspects is large, and Peale's team of amateur sleuths is perfectly placed to ferret out the murderer. Addington Ames and his sister Caroline can trace their blue-blooded lineage back to the Ark, although their social standing teeters precariously when Addington is so gauche as to actually discover the Colonel's body. And unless Addington and Caroline can solve the crime, their beautiful young cousin Val's engagement (the ne plus ultra for a proper young Victorian woman) will be at risk---her future mama-in-law has a decided aversion to scandal.
Addington and Caroline are an amiable pair, as is their boarder, Dr. John MacKenzie, who plays Watson to Addington's Sherlock when he isn't wondering how to court his hostess. Peale falls short of Perry's narrative mastery, however: where Perry effortlessly blends historical detail, evocative descriptions of the London cityscape, and plot, Peale's setting seems awkwardly contrived; her Boston cobblestones do more to trip up the narrative than to smooth its passage. Despite these flaws, Victorian Boston may yet yield fans for Peale, currently at work on the second Beacon Hill mystery. --Kelly Flynn
From Publishers Weekly
Peale (the pseudonym of mainstream novelist Nancy Zaroulis) brings to life Gilded Age Boston in her first foray into the burgeoning field of historical mysteries. When, in 1891, Brahmin Addington Ames finds blackmailer Colonel William D'Arcy Mann shot to death in his hotel room, many Boston socialites are relieved, since Mann printed their misdeeds in his scandalous newspaper if they failed to pay up. Ames is bent on recovering a packet of indiscreet letters written by his young cousin Val, else her plans to marry a rich and eligible scion of one of Boston's most eminent families would be thwarted. Addington; his feisty sister, Caroline; and their Watson-like lodger, Dr. MacKenzie, must work fast to find the letters, as well as to solve the crime. Peale is particularly good at portraying the circumscribed lives of affluent Boston women of the Victorian age, and integrates this very lack of freedom nicely into the plot's development. Characters act and think like people of their class and period, even if they tend to the dull side. Indeed, the author's depiction of the manners and social codes of proper 19th-century Bostonians redeems what is otherwise a pedestrian mystery. Despite a strong setting, the story is less than riveting. (Mar.)
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