A Place of Confinement by Anna Dean

A Place of Confinement: The Investigations of Miss Dido Kent by Anna Dean --- 414 pages

The fourth in the entertaining series of Regency Period mysteries, featuring Miss Dido Kent, an intelligent, inquisitive and independent-minded gentlewoman of a certain age and limited means. Kirkus Reviews has observed, "If Jane Austen had written Miss Marple, she would have been Dido Kent."

In this the fourth volume in the series, Dido has been banished by her sister-in-law Margaret to act as an unpaid companion to their hypochondriac (and childless and wealthy) Aunt Manners on a visit to her relations at Charcombe Manor. It is Margaret's hope that time spent at her aunt's beck and call will make Dido reconsider her refusal of a marriage proposal from the sanctimonious Doctor Prowdlee. Of course Margaret is unaware that Dido harbors a secret attachment to Mr. William Lomax. But although Mr. Lomax reciprocates Dido's affection, he is not in a financial position to take on a wife, as he is burdened with the gambling debts of his ne-er-do-well son Tom.

Upon arrival at Charcombe Manor, Dido makes the acquaintance of her aunt's nephews, also her rivals for Aunt Manner's favor, and their families and friends. Mr. Lancelot Fenstanton's house party at Charcombe has been unsettled by the disappearance of Miss Letitia Verney, an heiress on the brink of contracting an engagement with Mr. Fenstanton. Much to her consternation, Dido discovers that Tom Lomax is being blamed for persuading Miss Verney to elope with him to Gretna Green. Yet Letitia's bosom friend, Miss Gibbs, says that Letitia would never have agreed to an elopement, and Tom Lomax himself, discovered at an inn nearby, avows that he had nothing to do with her disappearance. Indeed he insists he watched Miss Verney walk through the front door of Charcombe at 5 o'clock in the afternoon --- but all the people assembled in the hall that afternoon avow that Miss Verney never entered the house.

Then a Mr. Brodie arrives from the West Indies and writes to Mr. Fenstanton, saying he has information about the whereabouts of Miss Verney. But before Mr. Brodie can make his information known he is discovered murdered; and the last people to see him alive testify that he was engaged in a game of cards with Tom Lomax that led to a furious argument. When Tom is arrested and charged with murder, Dido knows she has only a limited time to find the truth, discover Miss Verney's whereabouts, exonerate Tom and save his father from a disgrace that would make it impossible for them to ever marry.

The Dido Kent series is designed for fans of Jane Austen and Regency Period romances. Dido herself is closely modeled upon Jane Austen. Stephanie Barron's Being Jane Austen Series with a fictionalized Jane herself serving as sleuth will also appeal to fans of Dido Kent.

Those who enjoy Jane Austen and Regency Period romances might also want to check out AustenProse, a Jane Austen fan blog.

A Woman of Consequence by Anna Dean

A Woman of Consequence: The Investigations of Miss Dido Kent by Anna Dean --- 384 pages

Third volume in the new series of Regency mystery-romances by English author Anna Dean, with a heroine obviously patterned on Jane Austen, and with plots that combine elements of Austen's life with elements drawn from Austen's books.

Dido Kent is an impoverished gentlewoman dependent on her brothers for her support and maintenance, too intelligent for her own comfort, and chafed by her dependency and the assumption that she is at the beck and call of everyone around her. At the age of six and thirty she is aware that her family and friends have consigned her to spinsterhood, but unknown to them, she has received a proposal of marriage from the very personable Mr. William Lomax. Unfortunately, Mr. Lomax, while powerfully attracted by Dido's intelligence and wit, is equally dismayed by her independence is exercising that intelligence, and her penchant for involving herself in situations that "no gentleman wishes to hear from a lady he respects and esteems."

The current situation to which Mr. Lomax objects, concerns Dido's efforts to uncover the truth behind the recent discovery of the remains of a woman, found when an ornamental lake was drained during improvements to the grounds of nearby Maddenstone Abbey. The remains are identified as those of Miss Elinor Fenn, a governess employed at Maddenstone, who walked out of the house fifteen years ago and was never seen again.  

The coroner's jury declares a verdict of suicide; but if this were the case, Dido reasons, why would some unknown person now go to great lengths to remove all remaining traces of the dead woman's history and connections at Maddenstone? And why is no one willing to admit who ordered the draining of the lake? What is causing the apparition of the "Grey Nun" to manifest itself in the Abbey ruins and even to appear in the Great House itself? Why is a gazetted fortune hunter like Captain James Laurence pursuing Penelope Lambe, a pretty but penniless orphan of unknown antecedents, while simultaneously persuading Miss Lucy Crankford to agree to an elopement and clandestine marriage?. Why should Lucy's elder sister Harriet be so adamantly opposed to their brother Silas' attachment to Penelope?

Despite Mr. Lomax's disapproval, Dido knows she cannot stop until she finds the answers to these and other questions, so that justice may be done, the dead laid to rest, and happiness restored to the living. But even in this, Dido finds to her dismay, there may be a vast and seeming unbridgeable gap between a woman's notion of justice and a man's.