What Angels Fearby C.S. Harris
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9781741753653
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #1
Publication Date: January 1, 1970
Pages: 421
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
It’s 1811, and the threat of revolution haunts the upper classes of King George III’s England. Then the body of a beautiful young woman is found savagely murdered on the altar steps of an ancient church near Westminster Abbey. A dueling pistol discovered at the scene and the damning testimony of a witness both point to one man: Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, a brilliant young nobleman shattered by his experiences in the Napoleonic Wars.
Now a fugitive running for his life, Sebastian calls upon his skill as an officer during the war to catch the killer and prove his own innocence. In the process, he accumulates a band of unlikely allies, including the enigmatic beauty Kat Boleyn, who broke Sebastian’s heart years ago. In Sebastian’s world of intrigue and espionage, nothing is as it seems, yet the truth may hold the key to the future of the British monarchy, as well as to Sebastian’s own salvation….
This series has been popping up on my radar for years and years, and I always thought I need to try those, and then something shiny would distract me. When Jennifer’s books posted about one of the more recent books in the series, it was the motivation I needed to check out the first one from my library.
At 400+ pages, I was wary of what I was getting into, but the pace is fast enough to make the pages fly by. They flew even faster when I started skimming some of the more descriptively verbose sections, the kind you’re either in the mood for, or you aren’t. I really liked Sebastian and was disappointed that his friend (Sir Christopher?) wasn’t around more – I liked the dynamic between them best for its light-hearted banter. I’m reserving judgement about Kat and the rest of the cast as there was an element of … not melodrama, but Very Serious, to the tone of this book that I’m hoping is a natural result of the plot, rather than the series’ permanent tone.
The one thing I categorically did not like was the graphicness. Harris seemed to take particular delight in trying to sicken the reader with the perverseness of the crime, bring it up again, and again, and dwelling on details View Spoiler ». I have speculations about what drove her to write like this, but I’ll keep them to myself, as they aren’t very generous, but suffice it to say I didn’t care for the heavy handedness.
I did like everything else though; the multi-threaded approach to the investigation, with multiple POVs handled gracefully, the intricateness of the plotting and the confidence of the characters. I am definitely interested in reading the next book in what is a very long series. If the heavy handed graphicness continues, well, they’re library loans. God bless libraries!