Grave Intentions (Zebra Regency Romance)

Rating:
Summary: a fun 3 1/2 star read
Review: "Grave Intentions" is the second book in the Lady Priscilla Flanders/Sir Neville Hathaway romance-mystery adventures, and follows closely on the heels of first installment, "A Rather Necessary End." In this episode, Lady Priscilla has succumbed to the pleas of her eldest daughter, and has taken her family to London in order to enjoy a bit of the London Season. The last thing she expected was to find herself in the middle of another baffling and dangerous murder investigation!

Someone seems to be killing the servants at Bedford Square. The body count is up to three, with the latest victim being that of Mr. Lampman's coachee has upset Lady Priscilla servants no end. And so, in order to try and alleviate some of their anxiety, Lady Priscilla decides to try and discover what's going on. Her attempts at gleaning any new information comes to naught, except to serve to introduce to the very odd and insufferable Cecil Burtrum, who manages to anger Lady Priscilla with his total lack of concern about the murderous goings-on at the square. Little does Lady Priscilla expect, however, that the next time she sees Cecil, he will be dead -- also murdered, like the others before him. Now, Lady Priscilla, along with her good friend, Sir Neville Hathaway, are determined to get to the bottom of what's going on at Bedford Square...

"Grave Intentions" proved to be an entertaining read. The mystery was interesting and intriguing one, even if it did take a while to unwind, and one was left a little in the dark as to what was really going on and why. (Also, there was a dearth of viable suspects). This time around, however, the potential romance that was bubbling between Lady Priscilla and Sir Neville was much more in the fore, than it was in "A Rather Necessary End." However, while, on the whole "Grave Intentions" proved to make for good lighthearted reading, I did find myself feeling a little troubled with the relative ease with which Lady Priscilla and her children seem to have recovered from the their grief over Lazarus Flanders's (Lady Priscilla husband) death. The man's been dead for barely a year, but except for a mention here and there to show how binding the ties are between Sir Neville and the Flanders family are, hardly anyone talks about missing him! I also found it troubling that Sir Neville, who was supposed to be Flanders's best friend would attempt to start a flirtation-romance so soon after his friend's death. I think I would have preferred it if all these mystery-adventures had taken place a few years after Flanders's death. But that's just me -- and not everyone is going to find this particular plot development troubling.

On the whole though, "Grave Intentions" proved to be a rather good Regency romance (Jo Ann Ferguson does a truly good job of keeping the romance between Lady Priscilla and Sir Neville humming at a tentative sizzle) novel with an interesting mystery plot.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable but not much romance
Review: This was an entertaing regency mystery but the romance between the heroine and the hero moves achingly slow. Unlike the previous reviewer, I was not bothered by the timing of the romance between Lady Priscilla Flanders and Sir Neville Hathaway. Lady Priscilla's husband has been dead over a year and she seems to miss him very much, in my opinion, because she mentions him constantly. Sir Neville doesn't even kiss her until the end of this book, the second in the series, so I hardly believe he is rushing things.

I found many of the characters rather unlikeable though, including, at times, the heroine, who seems rather rigid and barely is attracted to the hero.

The mystery moved slowly at first but did reach a satisfying conclusion by the end of the book.