When a peer of the realm is found beheaded at Bloody Bridge Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin is compelled to investigate. When this murder has ties to an enemy of Sebastian’s the memories dredged up make it difficult for Devlin to separate his wanting to pin this murder on Lord Oliphant and the truth behind who is the murderer. C.S. Harris weaves an intricate mystery to create a story that is very hard to put down.

I read the first few books in this series initially but then used a credit to pick up the audio book and never turned back. Narrated by Davina Porter whom some of you may know from narrating the Outlander books, she brings an award worthy performance to the reading of these mysteries. Fluidly voicing multiple characters she makes it easy for the reader to immerse themselves in the story.

Yes, the mysteries are thrilling but what really sets these novels apart is how the reader gets to know Sebastian, Hero and the other characters inhabiting these novels. The Sebastian from book 1 is not the same man as the first time father and husband to hero in book 10 and those nuances of his character and depth of feeling makes every clue revealed to have hidden meaning to both the reader and how what he finds out may reflect on his character. I, like Hero, find myself falling in love with this character. He’s flawed, but as with most great fictional characters, those flaws make the man.

One interesting thing of note in this novel is the introduction of Jane Austen and her brother as central characters in the mystery. Society is a twitter reading Jane’s anonymous novel at the same time as Sebastian is seeing similarities between her characters and the people he is investigating for this grisly murder. It adds an element of humor and interest to this very somber tale. It’s the first time this author has created this type of hook, and I really enjoyed how different it made the story feel.

This has been a series that I’ve slowly listened to over the past couple of years and I still have quite a few of these novels to go as there is currently 16 books in the series. I recommend them whole-heartedly but believe that in order to really enjoy the nuances of the story and these characters the reader would benefit from reading them from the start and in order. ❤️❤️❤️❤️