Deanna Raybourne has written a series of mystery novels in the Lady Julia Grey series.
The first three books of the series are pretty gripping: great language, imaginative plots- if slightly twisted, and great protagonists.
The suspense and plots fall a bit flat after the protagonists get married, but the books are still good for a lazy afternoon's read.
The series reminds me of Lindsey Davis' Marcus Falco series, with a few key changes:
The Falco series is written in the voice of Falco, a man and a detective who marries above his station and whose wife helps him with his work; the Grey series is written in the voice of Julia Grey, an aristocrat who falls in love with a detective and wants to help him with his work.
The Falco series is set in ancient Rome- a period that is not particularly well-known among most readers and as such, the author has a lot more freedom to play around with creating this world with regards to the place of women in that society, societal rules and constraints, descriptions of male-female interactions and so forth. So Davis endows the females of her books with relative freedom of speech and action, the right to inheritance and so forth.
The Grey series is set in England in the mid 1800s- a period that has been 'done to death' in hundreds of novels in multiple genres and is much better known to the average reader: females from this era are expected to conform to much more rigid rules and are not expected to question or challenge men; and ought to pay sufficient attention to clothing.
In that respect, the Grey series portrays an interesting evolution of Julia Grey, from a "Dresden shepherdess" (her description), meekly following, to one who struggles with and challenges the limits that society places on her and finally reaches for what she wants regardless of what is expected from a woman in her position. The man Julia loves and wants to marry, Nicholas Brisbane, is half-Gypsy, and poor and is "in trade" as a private investigator. Julia has to overcome the economic differences between herself and Brisbane, her family's horror of non-aristocrats and tradesmen, and the social consequences of being seen around a Gypsy.
As I mentioned before, once she does overcome all these struggles and gets married to Brisbane, the series goes downhill a bit. Frankly, one can't help feeling that they ought to get themselves to a marriage counselor pronto.
1 comment:
Now, I see why you picked the Raybourne novel for me :). It was good by the way.. It's a shame that it took me till June 26th to read it.. but I finally got to it!! :)) Thanks, Varsh!
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