The second Sebastian St. Cyr mystery is a decent episode in the series, following up on Book 1 by giving us a nice juicy politically motivated murder–and a side helping of expounding upon the background of Sebastian, revealing all sorts of intriguing secrets about his mother. It seems that the lady did not in fact die when Sebastian was eleven, as he’d been told, and that furthermore, a certain necklace that’s cropped up in the case he’s trying to solve ties back to her. Meanwhile, we learn more of why Kat, the actress Sebastian loves, steadfastly refuses to marry him: she has political intrigue in her own background, a life she’s desperately trying to abandon.
All in all the murder’s fun enough, set up intriguingly and giving an interesting portrait of Englad at the time, and in particular the popular opinion of the Prince Regent. But what really drove the plot for me here more is the background on Sebastian’s mother as well as the background with Kat. I’ll be very interested to see how this progresses with Book 3. Four stars.
