The Glass House by Ashley Gardner (Captain Gabriel Lacey Series)

The Glass House (2004) by Ash­ley Gard­ner, is the third book in the Cap­tain Gabriel Lacey series set in Regency, Eng­land. The story fol­lows cal­vary offi­cer, Gabriel Lacey as he tries to hunt down a killer of a young actress whose body was pulled from the Thames.

Name your vice because The Glass House pro­vides it to gen­tle­man of wealth and qual­ity. It is a gam­ing hell that most mag­is­trates have tried to shut down but for some odd rea­son, it has remained open for busi­ness. Retired cal­vary offi­cer, Cap­tain Gabriel Lacey is asked to inves­ti­gate the death of a barrister’s wife whose body was pulled from the Thames. Sus­pects abound from the hus­band on down to the owner of the gam­ing hell where she was hold­ing her secret trysts.

The vic­tim, Amelia Chap­man aka “Peaches”, was an actress who mar­ried a bar­ris­ter and was secretly hav­ing a pas­sion­ate affair with a baron. It is after her death that her life is exam­ined more closely as well as her move­ments up till the time of her death. Cap­tain Lacey is asked to look into this case by the Bow Street Run­ners magistrate’s office. Being handed the assign­ment, he goes search­ing dili­gently for this young woman’s killer.

The series is told from the nar­ra­tive view of Cap­tain Lacey. Lacey is a man of honor and dig­nity. He left the war in dis­grace and has a injury that requires his use of a walk­ing stick. Lacey has as he describes it “good lin­eage” but he is with­out money or prospects. He is just a poor cal­vary offi­cer liv­ing alone in Lon­don. To make up for the lack of his social stand­ing or wealth within soci­ety, he befriends Lucius Grenville, a gen­tle­man most pop­u­lar and sought after in the ton.

Grenville and Lacey became friends when Lacey thwarted a thief in Grenville’s home (The Hanover Square Affair). The two men are often found work­ing together to help the Bow Street Run­ners solve crimes. Greenville does so out of curios­ity since he is so often bored with the ton and Lacey does it because he has noth­ing else to do with his time and he is often sus­cep­ti­ble to melan­choly and lone­li­ness. He was mar­ried once but his estranged wife left him and took their young daugh­ter with her.

Amid this inves­ti­ga­tion, Lacey also has an ongo­ing feud with his for­mer com­mand­ing offi­cer, Aloy­sius Bran­son. The two men were in the same reg­i­ment in Spain but had a falling out. Bran­son sent Lacey off into a trap of French resis­tance and he wasn’t expected to come back out alive but he did. Along­side that, Bran­son was get­ting ready to leave his wife, Louisa, due to her fail­ure to give him a son but he changes his mind. How­ever, after his wife learns of his ini­tial deci­sion to leave her, she goes search­ing for com­fort in Lacey’s arms (not his bed) and the hus­band catches them together. The two men have never been friends since this inci­dent. This ill will causes much strife between the three friends and thus, Louisa is forced to make a choice that is dis­ad­van­ta­geous to Lacey.

The com­plex­ity of the mys­tery in here was mod­er­ate as there were a lot of sus­pects to sift through. I was more inter­ested in Lacey’s per­sonal life rather than his inves­ti­ga­tion in this entry even though the mys­tery in here was a solidly writ­ten one despite the many red her­rings. The Glass House and the world it inhab­its was inter­est­ing but it didn’t sus­tain the story or my inter­est. This ended up being just an aver­age read for me. I’ve enjoyed the pre­vi­ous books in this series so it must be my mood. I had just fin­ished another mys­tery before start­ing this one and I can’t help but com­pare the two books/styles.

Any­way, I like the cen­tral char­ac­ter in here but he lacks a dark side. I liked see­ing him inter­act within his time period and the author acknowl­edg­ing social stric­tures of the time. Per­fect, hon­or­able peo­ple are usu­ally bor­ing to me but Lacey has grown on me. He can han­dle his own and has shown anger and has moments of melan­choly but I like char­ac­ters who have flaws out­side of the phys­i­cal. It’s hard to assign a grade to a book that is well writ­ten but fails to insti­gate more than a luke­warm response. My grade, C+.

*****

This review is apart of the TBR Chal­lenge 2009 my fel­low read­ers and I are par­tic­i­pat­ing in this year. Please visit the other par­tic­i­pants in this chal­lenge and thank you for visiting!