The Paris Winter by Imogen Robertson

The Paris Winter: A Novel by Imogen Robertson --- 360 pages including historical notes

With a background in film and television before she turned to writing, Imogen Robertson is the well-established author of a historical mystery series set in Georgian England featuring Harriet Westerman and Gabriel Crowther.

The Paris Winter is her first "stand alone" novel, but it is also has a historical setting. Devious doings and a dark revenge figure largely in this suspenseful tale set amid the artistic and social ferment of Belle Epoque Paris and the 1910 winter flood that devastated that city.

Inspired by family documents that revealed how her own grandmother and other young English women traveled, studied and worked abroad in the years leading up to the First World War, Robertson continued her usual meticulous research into the period so that her characters' lives continually intersect with real people and events. I particularly enjoyed the strong female characters who do not passively wait to be rescued, but band together to pursue the lives and happiness they desire.

Click HERE to read Imogen Robertson's description of writing The Paris Winter.

Click HERE and HERE to read reviews of The Paris Winter
     

Circle of Shadows by Imogen Robertson

Circle of Shadows: A Novel by Imogen Robertson --- 373 pages

The fourth novel in Robertson's series of historical mysteries featuring Mrs. Harriet Westerman and anatomist Gabriel Crowther, which one critic has likened to "CSI: Georgian England."

Set in 1784, at a masked ball in the duchy of Maulberg in Germany, the Duke's mistress is found murdered in a locked room. The body exhibits no sign that the victim resisted. And crouched in the same room as the corpse, bleeding from slashed wrists and completely incoherent, is Mr. Daniel Clode, Harriet's new brother-in-law. Clode and his bride, Harriet's younger sister Rachel, are in Maulberg on their wedding journey, combining business with pleasure.

Rushing to their support, Harriet enlists the assistance of several friends including Crowther, and travels to Maulberg, where she and Crowther begin by searching for evidence to prove Daniel's innocence. But soon they are drawn into the larger investigation: if not Daniel, then who is responsible for what they begin to suspect is a whole series of cunning murders targeting prominent members of the Duke's inner circle of advisors.

A gripping tale of political intrigue, deceit and vengeance that lives up to the standard Robertson has set in her three previous volumes: Instruments of Darkness, Anatomy of Murder and Island of Bones. Elegant and pithy, these are the kinds of stories you might expect if Jane Austen had turned her hand to murder mysteries. Fans of Stephanie Barron's series featuring Jane as sleuth will enjoy these too. Note: As each tale builds upon the last, it helps to read them in sequence.  

Island of Bones by Imogen Robertson

Island of Bones by Imogen Robertson --- 367 pages

The third book in the mystery series featuring Mrs. Harriet Westerman and the irascible Gabriel Crowther, set in 18th century England.

Mrs. Westerman and Crowther are summoned to Cumbria in the Lake District to investigate when an extra body is found in the crypt of the first Earl of Greta and his wife on the Isle of Bones. Who was the man and how did he die? And how did he get into the three hundred year old tomb?

These questions are of more than academic interest to Crowther, for his own bloody past is caught up in the mystery. Crowther's father bought the Greta land when the last Earl of Greta fled the country with a price on his head for supporting the cause of the last Stuart pretender. His father was awarded the title of Baron Keswick for unspecified services to the government not long after the last Earl's brother was captured and hanged as a traitor --- and rumor says he was betrayed by someone who coveted the Greta wealth and holdings. When his feckless elder brother was hanged in his turn for murdering their father, Crowther renounced his tainted heritage, sold the land and made a new life for himself under an assumed name. Now thirty years later, he finds himself drawn back into the twisted fate of his family.

Well plotted and rich with local history and folklore, this series will appeal to fans of Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen mysteries, combining the novel of manners with the sensibility and mysticism of the early Romantics.