A Wicked Conceit - Anna Lee Huber

Written by Anna Lee Huber
Read by Heather Wilds
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Lady Darby Mystery Series, Book 9
Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc.
Release date: April 6, 2021
Duration: 11:09:05

Edinburgh, Scotland. March 1832.

Kiera and Gage have been eagerly awaiting their bundle of joy but trouble has been brewing in the form of the roguish criminal Bonnie Brock Kincaid.

A new book and subsequent play features some of Kincaid’s daringly heinous exploits, although he swears he had nothing to do with it or the characters which are obvious representations of Kiera and Gage. While the scoundrel’s fury seems genuine, as well as his determined quest to uncover the real identity of the author, the Gages still hold doubts about his innocence. A rash of crimes break out across the city, seemingly inspired by the play and book.

When the publisher is found brutally murdered-in an imitation of a gruesome scene-the finger not only points to Bonnie Brock as the possible culprit, but also the Gages, who have been outspoken in their condemnation of the tale. Now, the Gages are on a hunt to unmask the killer. Between the infamy garnered by the play, the cholera outbreak still wreaking havoc throughout the city, and the impending birth of their child, they will need all the resources they can garner.

Kirkus Reviews…”A detective duo battles to overcome a scandalous past. As a heavily pregnant Lady Kiera Darby and her husband, Sebastian Gage, await the birth of their child in Edinburgh, Kiera’s still crushed by the scandal of her abusive first husband’s association with body snatchers. Now someone has published an anonymous book about Bonnie Brock Kincaid, a hero to the poor, intimating that Kiera’s child is his.…. Kiera, meanwhile, is troubled by her sister’s insistence that she give up detecting and become respectable and by her own inability to tell her husband he has a half brother. The police think Kincaid is the killer, but Kiera and Gage continue to talk to publishers, printers, and theater managers in an attempt to discover the identity of the author, who obviously hates Kincaid for reasons far more personal than his lawlessness. Each time the pair visit the more insalubrious parts of the city, they put themselves in danger from the cholera epidemic ravaging the area. The fact that Gage has a formerly unknown half brother provides a surprising clue to the killer. Cholera may have nothing on Covid-19, but it still adds a sense of dread to a mystery both complex and romantic. “