The Complaint of the DoveAre you in the mood for a good Geor­gian mys­tery? I plucked this title off the shelf with no prior knowl­edge of this author’s work. This pur­chase was strictly for the cover.  Besides, it looked like a good read, too and lucky me, it was a good read indeed. The Com­plaint of the Dove by Han­nah March is a won­der­ful buried trea­sure read.

The pro­tag­o­nist of this won­der­ful his­tor­i­cal mys­tery is Mr. Robert Fair­fax. Robert is a pri­vate tutor employed by the Helmsley’s to edu­cate their son on the finer points of Lon­don life. The boy’s father wants to make sure that Matthew under­stands the power of hav­ing the right con­nec­tions. So as fate would have it,  Robert and Matthew travel to Lon­don to fur­ther Matthew’s education. It is there that they meet actress Lucy Dove through a mutual friend.  The job of an actress is not a respectable one. How­ever, Ms. Dove has her share of fans and is very pop­u­lar actress of the Lon­don stage. Robert is some­what wary of Matthew’s asso­ci­a­tion with the actress because Matthew’s father would highly dis­ap­prove of his son’s asso­ci­a­tion with such lowly folk. Unfor­tu­nately, Matthew is already smit­ten by Ms. Dove and it is this ill-fated attrac­tion that leads to his being accused of mur­der. Thus, Mr. Robert Fair­fax must don the hat of ama­teur sleuth in order to save his pupil from hang­ing. Oth­er­wise, he’ll be out of a job.

The author does an excel­lent job of recre­at­ing the Geor­gian time period. The story lacks good pac­ing but I was fully engaged in the story to not really care about it. I felt as if I was in a time por­tal and was sent back in time to 1700’s Lon­don. If your look­ing for a fast his­tor­i­cal read then this is not it. The author takes her time devel­op­ing her char­ac­ters and envelop­ing the reader firmly into this world with the his­tor­i­cal mark­ers of the time period. I enjoyed this novel quite a bit. Alas there isn’t a romance but there might be a hint of one to come in the next entry or so.

This is the first book in the Robert Fair­fax mys­tery series.  The first of  three books that are printed in the US. In the UK, I noticed that there are even more Robert Fair­fax mys­ter­ies to enjoy that are not cur­rently avail­able here. I own the other two books in the series and with every­thing in life, I have good inten­tions to read them. It’s find­ing the time to do so that is the prob­lem. The Com­plaint of the Dove is a wor­thy rec­om­men­da­tion to his­tor­i­cal mys­tery buffs every­where. My grade, B.