As a dear friend says, Harris’s mystery series is the only one for which I’ll eagerly and gladly buy a hardback. Okay, my hardback was discounted this time around, but still. I can’t think of any other series other than my beloved Nelson and Ruth (thank you Elly Griffiths) where I read with such affection, pleasure, and interest (okay, also Montclair’s Sparks and Bainbridge).

I’ve thought about what makes for this reading experience: partly, it’s authors who write with such ease reading their books is like sinking into quiet waters, no matter their content of murder and mayhem; it’s also they’ve created main characters one loves to be with. Their main characters are ethical and smart, share a wry humour and yet look on the world with an eye to making it fair and just. At the heart of Harris’s Regency world is Sebastian St. Cyr and his family, his beloved wife Hero and son Simon and adopted son, Patrick; his powerful, realpolitik father-in-love Jarvis; his father Hendon; his friend, the brilliant surgeon and “coroner” Paul Gibson and midwife-doctor lover, Alexi Sauvage; his friend and former mistress Kat Boleyn and world of Regency London with its dissipated prince and arch enemy Napoleon, whose warring ways have scarred so many of his native French-men and women and English, including our sleuthing hero Sebastian.

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