I'm not sure anyone has been keeping statistics, but it's clear from the increasing number of various books—as well as the TV shows like Spartacus and The Tudors and movies like Poe and The Eagle—that historical fiction is a hot genre right now. Two historical novels related to crime fiction/mystery crossed my desk in the past few weeks: City of Ash by Megan Chance and Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss.
City of Ash is set against the backdrop of 1889 Seattle when the Great Fire nearly burned the young city to the ground. It alternates POV chapters between its two heroines, Geneva Stratford Langley, a spirited Chicago mining heiress and arts patron, and Beatrice Wilkes, an actress yearning to be her theatrical troupe's leading lady at the Regal Theater. When Geneva poses nude for a sculptor, bringing shame on her family, she's whisked away to Seattle where her jealous, scheming, ambitious husband, Nathan, hopes to establish himself in politics.
Geneva and Beatrice cross paths when Beatrice has an affair with Nathan, and Geneva unwittingly dashes Beatrice's dreams by being given the starring role in the latest theatrical production written by an up-and-coming playwright with whom Bea is falling in love. The chaos and tragedy of the Great Fire force the two women together as they forge an unlikely alliance to cross class and gender boundaries and fight against Nathan—who has betrayed them both—by enacting a truly wicked plan.
Megan Chance evokes the period and raw circumstances of turn-of-the-century Seattle with her descriptions: "a town knee-deep in mud and tidal stink...puddles beneath pilings, sagging awnings, streets paved with wooden planks that sank into the mud." She also creates sympathetic characters in the two women, one trapped in a loveless marriage and a virtual prisoner in her home in an unfamiliar town that has shunned her, and the other unwilling to trust anyone after living by her wits since the age of 15 and seeing her chance at stardom stolen from her time and time again.
David Liss got his start as an author of historical thrillers with A Conspiracy of Papers, which won Barry, Macavity, and Edgar best first novel honors, but with The Twelfth Enchantment, he turns his hand to the supernatural. The novel likewise takes place in the 19th century and features a heroine who, as with Geneva in City of Ash, also had a youthful indiscretion that tainted her in the eyes of society. The story is set in the world of Regency England and follows Lucy Derrick, a young woman with good breeding and no money who is forced to take refuge with an unpleasant uncle after the death of her father. She's also trying to avoid marriage to Mr. Olson, the local owner of a mill with brutal working conditions, her one and only matrimonial prospect.
Everything changes when a man collapses on her doorstep just after he begs her not to marry Olson. The mystery man turns out to be none other than poet and notorious rake Lord Byron, who has been stricken with a curse and draws Lucy into a dangerous conspiracy. Luddites are pitted against the Industrial Revolution and the secret Rosicrucian society also figures in, as Lucy tries to fight an inheritance fraud, solve the puzzle of Byron's curse and find the missing pages of alchemical manuscript that contains the key to creating and destroying evil magical beings called revenants. Lucy seeks out the help of others, including poet/engraver William Blake, but she's not sure who she can trust when her infant niece is abducted, and she uncovers life-changing secrets about her own family.
Like Geneva in City of Ash, Lucy is a woman pushed to the edge by the restrictions placed on women in her day, who finds a way to be a resourceful heroine and form new allegiances and question old ones in order to find redemption. Liss's writing has been referred to as "unusual and diverting," a description which definitely applies to Enchantment, a sort of Jane Austen meets Wilkie Collins by way of Charlaine Harris. In both books, a young woman who feels trapped by her circumstances and society uses bravery, determination and perceptive sleuthing to avenge the crimes against her and, in so doing, finds empowerment through helping others.
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