What Cannot Be Said

March 1, 2024
A 14-year-old British murder is duplicated in chilling detail. Back in 1801, the wife and daughter of Bow Street Magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy were shot dead and posed in Richmond Park. Now Lady Laura McInnis and her daughter Emma are discovered in the same spot by two young men who heard shots fired. Sir Henry has worked before with Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, son of the Earl of Hendon and husband to Hero, whose own father, Lord Jarvis, is cousin and powerful adviser to the king. At the time of the first murders, a man was arrested and hanged. But this new outrage tells Lovejoy and Devlin that they're dealing with either a miscarriage of justice or a copycat. Lady McInnis' traumatized young niece and nephew, Arabella and Percy, had been playing nearby but say they saw nothing. Her widower, Sir Ivo McInnis, is a wealthy, evil-tempered man, a noted sportsman who's far from the best husband or father. With some help from Hero, who was a friend of Lady McInnis, Devlin digs into her life in hope of finding a motive for what can hardly be a random killing. The dissolute Prince Regent is hated by the people, Napoleon has just been captured, and the economy is in shambles, the difference between the wealthy few and the rest of the country never more apparent. Powerful forces hoping to blame the murders on anyone but the aristocrats involved are arrayed against Devlin, who nevertheless pushes on to reveal the horrifying truth. Far from the charming world of Regency romances, this thorny mystery is a powerful expos� of privilege and inequality.

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Starred review from March 25, 2024
Harris returns with a refreshingly fast-paced Regency-era whodunit featuring sleuth Sebastian St. Cyr (after Who Cries for the Lost). In the summer of 1815, two brothers hear gunshots and discover the corpses of Lady McInnis and her daughter, Emma, in London’s Richmond Park. When Bow Street magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy arrives on the scene, the women’s strange poses—like “the stone effigies one often saw atop medieval tombs”—immediately reminds him of the murders of his wife and teenage daughter 14 years earlier. They were killed in the same spot, with their bodies arranged in the same manner, and Lovejoy’s investigation led to the arrest and execution of a disturbed former soldier. Fearing he may have hanged an innocent man while the real killer remained at large, Lovejoy taps Sebastian to launch his own probe into the recent deaths. As Sebastian digs into Lady McInnis’s potential infidelity and her conflicts with a beloved local man named Basil Rhodes, two more bodies turn up. Harris manages to keep even the most savvy readers in the dark throughout, while offering up vivid historical color and satisfying twists. This installment ranks with the series’ best. Agent: Helen Breitwieser, Cornerstone Literary.

April 1, 2024
Napoleon has surrendered, the prince regent is planning a massive celebration, and Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscout Devlin, is investigating another murder. Lady McInnes and her teenage daughter have been shot in Richmond Park and positioned in a way that recalls murders committed 14 years ago, those of Sir Henry Lovejoy's family, the case that caused Lovejoy to devote his life to Bow Street. After the coroner finds bruises on Lady McInnes' body, Sebastian suspects her husband, but her good works, many of which overlapped with those of Sebastian's wife, Hero, may have earned her an enemy, a bitter master chimney sweep. When a chocolatier's apprentice is killed in the same way, it seems that Lady McInnes' investigations into the horrifying conditions of working children may have gotten her killed. But the truth is even more unfathomable; Sebastian just has to prove it. In her nineteenth Sebastian St. Cyr mystery, after Who Cries for the Lost (2023), Harris again deeply ensconces a compelling mystery in period details of class divisions and political machinations to thrilling effect.

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