More backlog clearing: the Julian Kestrel series, four mystery novels set in 1820s England written by Kate Ross: Cut to the Quick, A Broken Vessel, Whom the Gods Love, and The Devil in Music. (Ross died young, so sadly these are the only Kestrel novels there will be.)
Kestrel is set on the path of a detective in Cut to the Quick, when he must clear his servant of suspicion in a murder (having otherwise spent his time in the feverishly pointless life of a Regency man of fashion). This is a well-constructed and engaging countryhouse murder mystery, seething with family secrets and suppressed passions. It does have its rough spots. For one, getting Kestrel to the murder, and giving him the very last piece of the solution, both feel a bit forced. For another, Ross has some point-of-view issues that grate a bit: it’s not apparent at first that it’s in an omniscient retrospective, and regardless of that, it’s never a good idea to have three consecutive paragraphs of this form:
X thought: [stuff]
Y thought: [other stuff]
Z thought: [still other stuff]
Those nitpicks aside, I was interested enough in Kestrel to keep reading the series (and also interested in the very suggestively-named Phillipa, the younger daughter of the family, who Kestrel befriends and corresponds with in future books).
I didn’t think that the second volume, A Broken Vessel, was as good. There’s a new viewpoint character who we spend a lot of time with, and I just didn’t find her as appealing as I was apparently supposed to. Relatedly, the story didn’t feel as tight as the first. However, it was an interesting shift from a countryhouse mystery to an investigation into the high- and low-life of London.
I liked the third volume, Whom the Gods Love, very much. It is perhaps a touch over the top, but I found very effective its slow, inexorable descent into revelations of duplicity and doubles. (I could say it reminded me a bit of two other books, but I think to name any of them would be to spoil all.)
The last is The Devil in Music, and the only one not set in England. It’s an Italy novel, political and passionate; I think it feels a bit long, and I’m not entirely sure it doesn’t cheat here and there. We also see a lot of a doctor sidekick that Kestrel picked up in the first novel, who I just don’t find that interesting either as a character or a sidekick.
Kestrel is an interesting detective, and I’m very sorry that Ross wasn’t able to take his career up to the founding of an English professional police force as she planned (and that I didn’t get to see what she had in store for Phillipa).
(Edited the next day to add: I meant to say something about the Regency setting. My principal associations with the time period are Heyer and Sorcery and Cecelia, so I tend to expect wit and archness with my Regency-era novels. I would say that this isn’t my principal impression of the Kestrel novels; there’s some witty dialogue, because that’s what a man of fashion does, but I remember the narration and the general tone as more serious. Also, they do spend time in settings other than the social life of the Ton or countryhouse parties.)
Thanks for introducing me to Julian Kestrel; and it’s a pity there will be no more. I would have liked to see what Kestrel was going to do in England – run for Parliament, like Disraeli? It’s plain that Ross was not willing to repeat herself, and have him dwindle into the Famous Gentleman Detective, like Philo Vance. I was more interested in them as novels than as mysteries, so I thought Cut to the Quick was much the weakest. She began writing a “classic English” country-house murder, and the characters are clue-bearing cardboard until halfway through (I would say until the scene in which Sir Robert thinks about manipulative women). It also shows a curious gap in her imaginative sympathies, which otherwise stretch from an Austrianizing nobleman to a prostitute. But she was plainly Catholic, and her pictures of the Church of England (and the dissenting conscience) are caricatures. Is the list of songs she offers (in the note to Devil in Music) online anywhere?
Paul, did you start reading them because of this entry? Cool! I’m afraid that I no longer recall the characters of _Cut to the Quick_ that well, so I don’t feel qualified to comment on the religious aspects. But if I re-read, I will keep that in mind. I don’t know what long-term plans Ross had for Kestrel. I strongly suspect that an adult Phillipa would figure prominently (because of resonances with Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond series that *had* to be intentional), and seeing him interact with a police force would have been interesting. I would worry that Parliament would interfere with mystery plots, though–he certainly wouldn’t be able to move between classes as easily, for starters.