Barbara Dawson Smith The Duchess Diaries

The Duchess Diaries

Barbara Dawson Smith

St. Martin's, Nov 2005, $6.99, 384 pp.

ISBN: 0312932383

Grant Chandler was stealing the Devil's Eye in Constantinople when his friend Robert Ramsey begged him to come home insisting someone close to him was killing him. Thus in 1816 after a decade away from England, Grant returns to his homeland to learn that Robert is dead and he is the guardian to his friend's young son Lucien. Grant believes Robert's wife Sophie poisoned him and plans to seduce her while finding the proof.

However, to his chagrin Grant finds upon first seeing Sophie he still desires her. As he watches her care for her son, he begins to feel she could not have killed Robert especially when Lucien is poisoned. Grant and Sophie work together to find a killer who has no seeming motive for homicide. Once they ruled out Robert's gay lover, he soon learns other family secrets that shake and please him to his core. However, first identifying the killer remains the mission though the answer lies buried in a century old bloodline.

THE DUCHESS DIARIES is a terrific Regency amateur sleuth romance that readers will fully enjoy while wondering which relative is the killer (no one but Grant will believe that Sophie did the deed). Sophie is a fabulous protagonist grieving the loss of her husband who ironically was more and less than a spouse to her (read the book) while keeping her nine year old safe and hiding truths from the man she loves: Grant. He is a jewel thief who logically assumes Sophie killed Robert based on loose circumstantial evidence. Finding the killer while falling in love make for a fine time for historical readers.

Harriet Klausner