Jane and the Barque of Frailty ends and begins some Series-ous Reading for me

As some of you may know, I’ve been trying to liven up my Series-ous Reading challenge this year by finishing three books from a series in a row, calling it Triple Play. 

Well, that event is over but SR is not, as I will explain by the end of this post. First things first, my last entry in Triple Play is Jane and the Barque of Frailty by Stephanie Barron, which catches me throughly up with the Jane Austen Mystery books (at least until the finale is released this fall).

Here, we stay with Jane in London as she is proofreading her about to be published first novel, Sense and Sensibility. She is the guest of her banker brother Henry and his wife Eliza, a former French countess who is rather ditzy at times but very loving towards her sister in law.

During her visit, Jane goes to the theatre where a recently notorious figure is noticeable in the audience. A Russian princess sitting alone, whose secret love letters to powerful and married nobleman Lord Castlereagh were published in a major newspaper causing all sorts of scandalous talk.

Despite such shocking news, Jane cannot help but feel a touch of sympathy towards this young woman who was perhaps lead astray in love, much like Marianne Dashwood in her nearly ready for publication novel:

It is even more shocking to learn the next morning that the Princess has been discovered dead on the doorstep of her supposed paramour, her throat slashed. Since Lord Castlereagh’s residence is within the section of town where Henry and Eliza live, this gruesome demise feels too close for comfort.

Jane becomes more involved in this case than expected as Eliza enlists her aid in selling some jewels for one of her friends who expects her husband to divorce her in favor of a much younger woman. 

As it turns out, those jewels were the property of the late Princess and the Austen house is visited by the infamous Bow Street Runners, an unofficial police force whose capture rate is rather steady regardless of the true guilt or innocence of the parties in question.

In order to save Eliza and herself from serious criminal suspicion, Jane must mount her own investigation before the week is out or the two of them could face some deadly consequences to be sure:

While seeking answers, Jane endeavors to keep Henry fully out of this particular loop but must include a few others into this situation such as Sylvester Chizzlewit, a young lawyer who is protecting her inheritance of papers from the late Lord Harold and Julia Radcliffe, who is the Barque of the title.

Julia ‘s status as a popular mistress (to which the lengthy title term refers to) is seen in a slightly more charitable light as she is known to be to disgraced daughter of a noble family. Yet she may know much more than she is willing to say regarding the jewels which are said to be in her possession at one point.

Barron does have quite the flavor of Austen’s Regency world firmly brewed in her tea cup of storytelling here and much like Miss Austen, properly points out the hypocrisy of those folks who consider themselves “respectable “ and those deemed to not be so by society yet have more honorable notions in their dealings with others.

There’s also a bit more lively interaction in this London adventure as Jane and Eliza go undercover to the Cyprian’s Ball(sort of an underground masquerade for barques and their beaus) where Eliza gets a little too caught up in the moment there!

All in all, this story is suitably bittersweet and I am happy to be completely caught up with this series. Jane and the Final Mystery is set to be published in October and that swan song for this engaging reimagining of Our Dear Jane will be well worth the wait:

So as I was going over my next set of books for this challenge, I realized that there were five titles in Rhys Bowen’s Her Royal Spyness series on my TBR that needed to be read and deserved their own separate listing.

Therefore my Triple Plat is now being replaced by the 5 Point Page Turning Plan, beginning with Crowned and Dangerous , where Lady Georgiana‘s plan to  secretly wed her sweetheart Darcy O’Mara are put on hold due to his father being accused of murder.

The victim is a rich American who bought Darcy’s family estate and kept his father on as a horse trainer. With no love lost between the two, the elder O’Mara is the prime suspect so as his future daughter in law, Lady Georgiana accompanies Darcy to Ireland to use her sleuthing skills on his behalf.

I do enjoy this series quite a bit and it will be nice to get more caught up on these books as well. They’re just the right amount of historical fiction, humor and drama like a good season of Downton Abbey used to be: