Ashley Gardner, The Glass House

The Glass House

Ashley Gardner

Berkley, Dec 2004, $5.99, 256 pp.

ISBN: 0425199436

Injured during the Peninsular Campaign, Captain Gabriel Lacey returns to England where he solved two murder cases due to curiosity. A Bow Street runner, his former sergeant, calls upon Lacey to identify the body who he thinks is his neighbor Marianne; Lacey rushes to the Thames River where the corpse was found, but she is not his neighbor although she wears a ring given to her by an aristocrat. Lacey takes the ring to his friend Grenville who knows everyone important and learns from the man that the ring belongs to Lord Barbury.

Since Lord Barbury is a visitor at Grenville's home, he introduces the two men to one another. Barbury admits that he gave the ring to his lover Mrs. Chapman, wife of a barrister. Lacey's curiosity keeps him investigating Mrs. Chapman's death with the trail leading to the GLASS HOUSE, a vile, bawdy place where anything is for sale. Apparently the victim had a room there where she met Barbury; they also had trysts at the home of another man. As Lacey continues to search for clues, two more homicides connected to his case occur and now even he could become the next victim.

When one thinks of honor, Captain Lacey comes to mind as he helps a child escape the horrors of the Glass House and stubbornly seeks to find a killer of a woman he never met. The villain is innocuous and unassuming so that the audience will never guess, though afterward would nod in agreement that the culprit was obvious. That and the hero is why this is an exciting Regency mystery that also captures the ambience of the era.

Harriet Klausner