C. S. HARRIS – What Remains of Heaven. New American Library, hardcover, November 2009; trade paperback, August 2010. Signet-Obsidian, paperback, August 2011.

   If all you know of Regency England are rakes and ladies, duels and male vanity, Jane Austin and Georgette Heyer, then you may be surprised by this fairly dark mystery by C. S. Harris, a historian with an eye for the telling detail. There are no faughs or deuced clevers and no Scarlet Pimperneling, and our handsome hero is balanced by the attractive but annoyingly independent Miss Hero Jarvis who has a taste for women’s sufferance a good eighty years too early for Regency society. She isn’t the fainting type, and he’s a Regency rake with an annoying conscience.

   A former soldier, Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount of Devlin (a viscount is a cousin of royalty) was introduced along with Hero in What Angels Fear and this is their fifth outing. Here the controversial reformer the Bishop of London is found in a crypt murdered by the body of an unknown victim of of a murder decades earlier.

   St. Cyr is in no hurry to take up a case — his last one estranged him from his father for a year, and they are only now mending fences — but his aunt, the Duchess of Clairborne, shows up at his Brooks Street rooms with the Archbishop of Canterbury in tow wanting him to investigate, as his aunt snidely informs him: “Because your good at it, of course.”

   So St. Cyr is stuck joining forces with Bow Street magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy in digging around the crypts looking for clues while Paul Gibson, ex-army doctor with a surgery in Tower Street, examines the body since “nobody knows more about dead bodies …”

   Meanwhile St. Cyr’s father the Fifth Earl of Hendon, current Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been approached by the Regent to form a government, which will throw him again into conflict with a powerful enemy the king’s physically and politically powerful cousin Charles, Lord Jarvis.

   And all St. Cyr has to work with is Tom, his thirteen year old sharp faced protege and aide, and of course Hero, the daughter of Lord Jarvis and the Prince Regent’s greatest enemy. And just to complicate things, Hero is pregnant with St. Cyr’s child and heir.

   The stage set St. Cyr sets about some creditable detective work in a Sherlockian vein — St. Cyr, we are told, is tall, lean, and possessed of “feral yellow eyes” — as a not so simple murder winds back thirty years earlier to the days of Sir Francis Dashwood and the infamous Hellfire Club as well as to the government in contemporary Whitehall.

   Action, atmosphere, politics, genuine detective work, a historically accurate and beautifully drawn portrait of a fascinating era, smart likeable heroes, dangerous conspiratorial villains, and a desperate murderer driven by fear. What more could you ask for?

   Noble families, including St. Cyr’s own, prove to have desperate secrets to keep, the government may not want certain things brought to light, there is a ruthless killer on the loose, the romantic subplot spins out of control, and St. Cyr proves to be a likeable if reluctant and somewhat roguish swashbuckling sleuth perhaps just a little over-matched by Hero Jarvis, who is not looking to trade a father for a husband even if she is with child.

   Will Thomas, author of the Barker and Llewelyn novels, called Harris last a “ripping read,” and if you know his work he is no shirker at ripping reads himself. This has a little bit of everything, and I am certainly going to look into the other books in the series.

   Harris also writes contemporary thrillers as C.S. Graham, and I’ll be looking for those as well. While her plot and style are not Carrian and she eschews miracle problems, at her best the atmosphere, historical accuracy, mysteryfying, and well drawn characters true to their time — all remind me of John Dickson Carr’s better historical mysteries, no small praise from me.

   The highest recommendation I can personally give a book is ‘Damn good read.” What Remains of Heaven is a damn good read.

         The Sebastian St. Cyr series —

1. What Angels Fear (2005)

2. When Gods Die (2006)
3. Why Mermaids Sing (2007)
4. Where Serpents Sleep (2008)
5. What Remains of Heaven (2009)
6. Where Shadows Dance (2011)

7. When Maidens Mourn (2012)
8. What Darkness Brings (2013)
9. Why Kings Confess (2014)