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Jul. 31st, 2010 09:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaHER HIGHNESS' FIRST MURDER, by Peg Herring
Cover copy: In London, several beautiful women are found dead, their heads missing and their blood-soaked corpses dressed as nuns. The first victims are prostitutes, but later murders demonstrate that high-born women are in danger too. As the body count rises, terror reigns. Henry VIII is anxious to end the crimes, which are not only horrible in themselves but also serve as reminders of two wives he sent to the execution block.
When one of her own ladies becomes a victim, the Princess Elizabeth decides to act. To bring the killer to justice she recruits Simon, a crippled young man who sometimes keeps her company, and Hugh, a captain of her father's trusted Welsh Guard. Since the king would be furious if he knew his daughter was aiding a murder investigation, Elizabeth's involvement is a secret among the three of them. Together they work to discover who is killing women and why.
Possibilities abound: is it one of the handsome courtiers in Henry's circle, the unsavory clerk who keeps financial accounts, the madman found inside the castle gates, or even Elizabeth's own castellan? As the princess, Simon, and Hugh close in on the depraved killer, he turns his focus on them. He's clever, cunning, and dangerous, and suddenly, unless three work together, two of them will not survive the chase. After all, death is no respecter of social class, and murder can visit even Her Highness...
Gender of the detective: one male, one female
The most recent fiction I've read about this era was, sadly, Phillipa Gregory, which means that I came into this with her highly sexed Elizabeth as my default. Thankfully, this Elizabeth (in addition to being, y'know, thirteen) isn't highly sexed at all: she's living off on her own with her ladies in waiting, treading the eternal tightrope of court politics. Her relationship with Mary is a plot point. So is her relationship with her father, and with her most recent stepmother. She takes up the mystery because one of her ladies dies (and doesn't even know about it until then, despite the cover copy's implications), but there's a feeling of relief: here's something she can do, something productive. Which in turn lends itself a little too easily to some heavy-handed foreshadowing of the You Will Be Queen Some Day variety, but any sort of dodging the subject would've been equally obvious. Eh.
Elizabeth is technically only one of the detectives. Hugh does a large part of the footwork (because this book, unlike some others I'll be discussing, recognizes the restrictions on women's public roles, and thus where and what Elizabeth could reasonably go and do), but he's less of a detective as such. Simon is actually the one who figures out who did it. On the other hand, Simon winds up needing to be rescued. On the other other hand, so does Elizabeth (or rather Elizabeth's servant who realized it was a trap in time to take Elizabeth's place), and it's Simon (having been rescued) who rescues Elizabeth's servant. I'm really not sure where this leaves me in regard to gender roles, detecting, and needing to be rescued.
Final thing of note: one of the key elements of the book, and indeed sometime suspect, is left out entirely from the cover copy -- Peto, a gentleman rogue sort who befriends Simon, and indeed is the one responsible for rescuing Simon when he needs it. I know that cover copy is a tricky thing to write, but speaking as someone with a weakness for gentleman rogues, it seems sort of odd to leave him off. Maybe they were afraid people would write slashfic with Peto and Simon. Sheesh.
*
Mariposa has emerged long enough to mew demandingly at my elbow. Attempts to explain that no, seriously, I'm typing, have met only with disdain. Meanwhile, Kris is reading in peace on the futon. How does this make sense?
Cover copy: In London, several beautiful women are found dead, their heads missing and their blood-soaked corpses dressed as nuns. The first victims are prostitutes, but later murders demonstrate that high-born women are in danger too. As the body count rises, terror reigns. Henry VIII is anxious to end the crimes, which are not only horrible in themselves but also serve as reminders of two wives he sent to the execution block.
When one of her own ladies becomes a victim, the Princess Elizabeth decides to act. To bring the killer to justice she recruits Simon, a crippled young man who sometimes keeps her company, and Hugh, a captain of her father's trusted Welsh Guard. Since the king would be furious if he knew his daughter was aiding a murder investigation, Elizabeth's involvement is a secret among the three of them. Together they work to discover who is killing women and why.
Possibilities abound: is it one of the handsome courtiers in Henry's circle, the unsavory clerk who keeps financial accounts, the madman found inside the castle gates, or even Elizabeth's own castellan? As the princess, Simon, and Hugh close in on the depraved killer, he turns his focus on them. He's clever, cunning, and dangerous, and suddenly, unless three work together, two of them will not survive the chase. After all, death is no respecter of social class, and murder can visit even Her Highness...
Gender of the detective: one male, one female
The most recent fiction I've read about this era was, sadly, Phillipa Gregory, which means that I came into this with her highly sexed Elizabeth as my default. Thankfully, this Elizabeth (in addition to being, y'know, thirteen) isn't highly sexed at all: she's living off on her own with her ladies in waiting, treading the eternal tightrope of court politics. Her relationship with Mary is a plot point. So is her relationship with her father, and with her most recent stepmother. She takes up the mystery because one of her ladies dies (and doesn't even know about it until then, despite the cover copy's implications), but there's a feeling of relief: here's something she can do, something productive. Which in turn lends itself a little too easily to some heavy-handed foreshadowing of the You Will Be Queen Some Day variety, but any sort of dodging the subject would've been equally obvious. Eh.
Elizabeth is technically only one of the detectives. Hugh does a large part of the footwork (because this book, unlike some others I'll be discussing, recognizes the restrictions on women's public roles, and thus where and what Elizabeth could reasonably go and do), but he's less of a detective as such. Simon is actually the one who figures out who did it. On the other hand, Simon winds up needing to be rescued. On the other other hand, so does Elizabeth (or rather Elizabeth's servant who realized it was a trap in time to take Elizabeth's place), and it's Simon (having been rescued) who rescues Elizabeth's servant. I'm really not sure where this leaves me in regard to gender roles, detecting, and needing to be rescued.
Final thing of note: one of the key elements of the book, and indeed sometime suspect, is left out entirely from the cover copy -- Peto, a gentleman rogue sort who befriends Simon, and indeed is the one responsible for rescuing Simon when he needs it. I know that cover copy is a tricky thing to write, but speaking as someone with a weakness for gentleman rogues, it seems sort of odd to leave him off. Maybe they were afraid people would write slashfic with Peto and Simon. Sheesh.
*
Mariposa has emerged long enough to mew demandingly at my elbow. Attempts to explain that no, seriously, I'm typing, have met only with disdain. Meanwhile, Kris is reading in peace on the futon. How does this make sense?