An Infamous Betrayal: A Regency Cozy
Series: Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries, Book 3
By: Lynn Messina / Narrated By: Jill Smith
Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
Bea just keeps getting better and better!
Let’s see now… In Book 1, Beatrice gets whonked over the head and stuffed into a dilapidated shed; in Book 2, she gets too close to the truth of something and ends the book sporting a pair of shiners and a split lip.
NATURALLY, the Duke of Kesgrave, Bea’s partner in sleuthing, has suggested, nay: DEMANDED that she no longer engage in murder-solving. Bea acquiesces, but see, she’s haggled her vow to be that she won’t solve any murders she stumbles upon (Keep that in mind; it comes up in a bit…!). This is too bad as she’s just realized she’s been foolish enough to fall in love with the endearing rake but is clever enough to know that it’s never gonna happen for a plain spinster from the margins of society, such as she is. So, what she could really use to get her mind off the man is, what’s that? A muuuuurder, perhaps?
Bea is quite fortunate because after weeks of scouring the papers for murders that demand justice and finding only one drunken sailor who drowned after flopping overboard, the man who whonked her over the head in Book 1 turns up, handing her a death that needs to be looked into.
Well… she didn’t stuuuumble upon it; rather, the murder came to her, did it not?
And so we have An Infamous Betrayal, Book 3 of a 4 book series (Which I’m going to miss so much!!!). Here Beatrice teams up with everyone from a dandy to Lady Abercrombie. She visits gaming hells to interrogate men who are quite foxed indeed; she leaps counters in a single bound to memorize names (She MUST have those names, and if dressing like a freaked out French maid doesn’t make someone come to her rescue, she’ll just have to don her cousin Russell’s clothes again and jump like the wily man she knows she can be!).
Then too, the Duke of Kesgrave has begun squiring the incomparable Lady Victoria around town, and it’s only a matter of time before they announce their engagement, so Bea NEEEEDS to do all this because damned if she’s not completely in love (And the Lady Abercrombie points out in one wise and poignant scene: It’s not Love if it’s never been returned…). So we also see Bea fall apart in this book because she’s only human, a plain woman who is nothing like the stunner on the Duke’s arm. Beatrice is strong, but not THAT strong.
But Kesgrave can’t help himself—he’s just naturally drawn into Bea’s plotting and planning and sleuthing galore and he too finds himself doing stuff like trying to divert a shopkeeper’s attention with clever ploys. And he finds himself asking his valet to acquire for him a false mustache so that he too might go undercover, a non-Duke on the streets.
Jill Smith does her usual magnificent job, but here she has richer material to work with as Bea’s emotional life comes to the fore, her hopes, her devastating losses. Plus, she gets to do voices for drunken men and dandies on their way to the Opera.
There’re sleuthing, and twists. And of COURSE Bea has noooo problem taking on her suspect on her own cuz that’s the kinda lady she is. And if you think she and her dress are coming outta that unscathed, well, you quite simply haven’t been paying attention.
Go into the book for some cozy mystery material, and stay for the banter and the touch o’ romance.
And come back soon to see how Book 4 goes. Because me with Bea? Well, I just can’t stay away!!!
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