Deadly Affair

2012 Australian Romance Readers Awards Finalist: Favorite Historical RomanceCareer diplomat Alec Halsey has been elevated to a marquessate he doesn't want and Polite Society believes he doesn't deserve; his lover has decided she won't marry him after all and the suspicion he murdered his brother still lingers in London drawing rooms. So returning to London after seven months' seclusion may have been a mistake. Alec's foreboding deepens when a nobody vicar drops dead at a party-political dinner; he witnesses the very public humiliation of an up-and-coming portrait painter, and his rabble-rousing uncle Plantagenet is bashed and left for dead in a laneway. When the vicar's true identity is revealed, Alec suspects the man was poisoned. But who would want a seemingly harmless man of God murdered, and why?ALEC HALSEY MYSTERY series book 2Character-driven amateur sleuthNon explicit (mild violence)Story length 102,000 wordsREVIEWSLucinda Brant is the queen of Georgian Historical Mystery just as Georgette Heyer was the queen of Regency Romance. What these two authors have in common, besides being superb writers, is their ability to weave historical information into the plot so that the reader is transported effortlessly to another time and place. Lucinda Brant gets 5 stars from me, and I can't wait to read the other books in the Alec Halsey series! Anne B for Readers' FavoriteLucinda Brant has a beautiful writing style and a careful grasp on the social mores, political environment and tangled affairs of the aristocracy of Georgian England. Her characterizations are layered and complex. The mystery is intricately woven into an absorbing plot. Lucinda Brant is a gifted writer and Deadly Affair is highly and enthusiastically recommended for lovers of historical mysteries! Jill MacKenzie InD'Tale magazine