February 28, 2000
Peale (the pseudonym of mainstream novelist Nancy Zaroulis) brings to life Gilded Age Boston in her first foray into the burgeoning field of historical mysteries. When, in 1891, Brahmin Addington Ames finds blackmailer Colonel William D'Arcy Mann shot to death in his hotel room, many Boston socialites are relieved, since Mann printed their misdeeds in his scandalous newspaper if they failed to pay up. Ames is bent on recovering a packet of indiscreet letters written by his young cousin Val, else her plans to marry a rich and eligible scion of one of Boston's most eminent families would be thwarted. Addington; his feisty sister, Caroline; and their Watson-like lodger, Dr. MacKenzie, must work fast to find the letters, as well as to solve the crime. Peale is particularly good at portraying the circumscribed lives of affluent Boston women of the Victorian age, and integrates this very lack of freedom nicely into the plot's development. Characters act and think like people of their class and period, even if they tend to the dull side. Indeed, the author's depiction of the manners and social codes of proper 19th-century Bostonians redeems what is otherwise a pedestrian mystery. Despite a strong setting, the story is less than riveting.