The English Wife

The English Wife (#749) is full of elegant twists right up to the last page of Lauren Willig's latest stand-alone novel.  I've been a fan ever since my librarian introduced me to Ms. Willig's fabulous Pink Carnation spy series.  Shades of the Scarlet Pimpernel!

Here the setting is a murder at an imposing Hudson River mansion during an elaborate costume ball in 1899.  The master of the house is found dying by his sister and cousin.  Janie Van Duyvil thinks she hears Bay murmur "George..." as he is dying. But who is George, and where is Bay's wife Annabelle?  Janie's mother is content to sweep everything but the fact of Bay's death under the rug; it's scandal enough that a scion of a prominent old New York Society family managed to get himself killed in such a flamboyant fashion.

But Janie, a cipher to most of that same society, is not.  She wants to get to the truth of the murder both for Bay's sake and that of his twin children, still in the nursery.  To that end, she recruits the help of a prominent journalist from The World newspaper.  James Burke has a reputation for digging deep and exposing the truth in his stories.  While this unlikely duo work to find who and what are responsible for the untimely death, Bay and Annabelle's story unfolds in alternating chapters.  Nothing is as it seems on the surface.

This book was so entertaining, I really hated to see it end.  But that's the point here, too.  Not everything is tied up neatly in a bow at the end.  There are still some questions out there, allowing the reader to imagine a possibly happier ending for some of the characters than appears here.  It was completely satisfying in its own way.  How many writers can perform that kind of magic?