A Worthy Debut for All | Silent In The Grave

Complex and intriguing.... | Silent In The Grave | Deanna Raybourn

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	• Silent In The Grave Deanna Raybourn Mira, 2007 - 544 pages average customer review:based on 105 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

pleasant surprise

Picked it up, expecting it to be a cheezy romance novel to while away 20-25 min. waiting at Walgreen's. While, yes, a romance develops after the death of the heroine's husband on p. 3., it wasn't a Regency-era bodice ripper, it was a rather witty murder mystery set in 1880, England.

It is very difficult to write well in the first person. Raybourn pulls it off very nicely. It's first person from the same person all the way through. The most enjoyable part was simply the heroine's style of explaining this part of her life. Desperately waiting for someone else in the family to drop dead so that her aunt will leave her alone and go haunt the next bereaved widow.

The murder in question is the husband, who is written off as 'natural causes'. Despite a plea from a business associate of her dead spouse about the un-naturalness of it, Julia blows him off, dreading the impending year of 'mourning'. Obviously, she comes around, and the rest of the novel is the investigation into the death/murder. It is almost completely based upon deduction and implied evidence, since they can't very well exhume the body.

The only thing that was really disjointed, and possibly just too-21 Century, is the social mores and attitudes of the main characters. Would a young woman really be so blase to discover her older sister's "companion" is actually her live-in (female) lover? Were condoms really so accessible? For all I know, the depiction is accurate - it just doesn't seem like it - but, as this is the backdrop of the story, it wasn't big problem.

Do they fall in love? Will it be fulfilled or leave them in their separate social castes? Do they find the murderer, and how in the world did the man drop dead so fast?

All in all, a pleasant afternoon's light reading with much more intellectual activity than "Highlander's Bride" or some such rot with gross looking long-haired, bald-chested men on the book cover.

I'm very much looking forward to her 2nd book, which I am pleased to note is already on the shelves.

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A Worthy Debut for All

Lady Julia Grey may have married into a family even more wealthy than her own, may have lived a sheltered life surrounded by servants, and may have been blind to the harsh world outside her front door but she carried the genes of her own eccentric family as well. The woman certainly had a sense of humor, and as first-person-narrator of Silent in the Grave she displays it immediately in the book's opening lines: "To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching on the floor."

Set in 1886 Victorian England, Deanna Raybourn's irreverent novel combines elements of mysteries, romance novels and historical fiction in such a way that the book will appeal to a wide audience. I am not at all a fan of romance fiction, for instance, but despite the novel's obvious appeal to fans of that genre, I never considered it to be a romance novel and enjoyed it for the historical detail and social observations in which Raybourn cloaked her story of Edward's mysterious death.

Lady Julia married a man she had known since they were just children playing together and she believed that she knew everything about him. She certainly understood the fragility caused by a heart condition from which so many males in her husband's bloodline suffered, including his cousin Simon who was dying in their home from that very illness. So when Edward suddenly dropped to the floor and died during a formal gathering at their home she was not much surprised.

What did surprise her was Brisbane's revelation that her husband had hired him to investigate the mysterious death threats that he had been receiving in the mail for some time. Lady Julia may not at first have believed that there was anything mysterious about her husband's sudden death, but she felt an obligation to her deceased husband to find out one way or the other. And if a crime had been committed she was determined that the criminal would pay a heavy price.

Nicholas Brisbane, expecting to use Lady Julia as just another source in his investigation, soon found himself forced to accept her as a full partner and, despite their series of adventures resulting from the investigation itself, it is their relationship that is really the heart of Silent in the Grave. And their mutual attraction means that they will be working together in the sequels that will follow this fist book in what promises to be a successful series.

Deanna Raybourn has written a first-rate Victorian mystery with an atmosphere and period details that have an authentic feel about them. Lady Grey's sense of humor and the antics of her eccentric family keep the reader from becoming bogged down in the rather dark details of the mystery itself, a story involving deceptions, hidden sexual appetites, and disease that she could never have imagined before the death of her husband. All in all, this is an excellent debut novel despite the fact that it seemed to take forever for Lady Julia to finally make up her mind to investigate her husband's death, a rather sluggish beginning that could potentially cause some readers to mistakenly give up on the book before it really hits its stride. At times I felt like shaking Lady Grey and telling her to get on with it. When she finally did, I found that it had been worth the wait.

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Complex and intriguing....

Sir Edward Grey has been sickly for a long time so it is not unexpected when he dies. What is unexpected is the suggestion by Nicholas Brisbane that Edward's death was actually murder. Lady Julia Grey refuses to believe him until evidence surfaces that makes her wonder if Nicholas may be right. How will Julia handle the ramifications of the ensuing investigation? Is Nicholas to be trusted? And what will she learn along the way?

Deanna Raybourn weaves a complex but very intriguing tale in SILENT IN THE GRAVE. Little clues are sprinkled throughout the storyline as the fiendishly clever plot unfolds. Some of the moments are so subtle that it is only later that you have those "ah ha" moments when all the pieces begin fitting neatly together.

The structure of SILENT IN THE GRAVE itself is very well done. Each chapter starts with a quote that in retrospect adds insight to the chapter. The opening lines are some of the catchiest I've ever read, as they guaranteed I would buy a book completely outside my normal genre. Deanna Raybourn also finishes each chapter in a manner that practically begs the reader to keep going; I lost an awful lot of sleep reading this one as there were moments I just couldn't stop, even as my poor eyelids were shutting.

Seeing the Victorian Age from Julia's perspective was both informative and emotional. Her family is known for its outrageousness, but she has remained calm and unadventurous... until now. Seeing her awaken to her own potential as well as the unfairness of the culture in which she lives is enlightening. Julia will see firsthand how the racism and class boundaries that exist during this time period affect real people.

SILENT IN THE GRAVE is a complex but very emotional and thought provoking read! Deanna Raybourn has only whetted my appetite for more books featuring Julia and Nicholas and I look forward to reading her next book, SILENT IN THE SANCTUARY.

COURTESY OF CK2S KWIPS AND KRITIQUES

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Big Career Ahead Here, Get Out of the Way

Met Deanna Raybourn at a book fair and got a signed copy because I was passing by, although I don't really enjoy historical romances, and had never heard of her. But the author was such a beautiful, elegant woman, and so gracious, that I instantly liked her, so once home I begrudgingly started to read. HOLY MACKEREL, CAN THIS KID WRITE! She creates characters and scenes with such quick, deft strokes of the keyboard, and with such masterly polish, she had me laughing with admiration and delight. And this goes on the whole book long, not just for the first 100 pages! This was a first novel? SERIOUSLY?

I don't mean to be superficial, but Vogue should check this author out and put her in a period fashion spread in the clothes she describes in such amusing detail in this book. Big career ahead here, get out of the way.

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