Review: A Murderous Relation (Veronica Speedwell #5)
My rating: 4.25 of 5 stars
When Lady Wellie asks a Veronica and Stoker to meet with HRH the Princess of Wales, Alexandra, they are asked to do a favor, to help save the honor of the family that, in theory, despises Veronica. Eddy, aka Prince Albert Victor, has got himself in a jam by gifting someone with something that could cause a scandal. And how ironic is it that Princess Alexandra is asking Veronica, of all people, to help her protect the family name? Veronica and Stoker initially refuse but then relent (of course), and decide to check out the situation. Little do they know that there are other plots afoot and that Veronica, trouble magnet that she is, is once again, in peril herself.
Set against the backdrop of the Whitechapel murders (that would be Jack the Ripper), Raybourn deftly shows the political instability that existed in Europe in the late 19th century, and that would later destabilize into great wars and revolutions. In many respects, this was my favorite installment of the Veronica Speedwell series because Raybourn manages to both put a human face on the royal family yet show us the struggles across various classes of society in a system that was, in many respects, rigged. However, the romance element of these novels always gets in the way a bit for me and I find the evolution of Stoker as a character to be rather uneven and dissatisfying. Written larger than life and angrier than a bee, he's tempered down in this installment in ways I'm not sure I'm comfortable with, namely that he's sort of turned into Veronica's human shield. While I find Veronica's fears of lapsing into relying on anyone other than herself to be quite relatable, I felt some genuine qualms about what Stoker is supposed to endure and found his rapid recovery from very serious injuries in this book to be unrealistic.
I received a Digital Review Copy, along with a paper review copy, of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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