Book: What Angels Fear (Sebastian St. Cyr Mysteries Book 1)
Author: C.S. Harris
Release Date: October 2006
Source: Bought
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

After reading The Body in the Garden by Katharine Schellman last week, I still had both Regency England and mysteries on the brain, and I needed desperately to scratch that itch. I thought about re-reading Mairelon the Magician for the millionth time, but then I remembered that I had bought this book, What Angels Fear, a year ago (at local mystery bookstore Murder by the Book, on Indie Bookstore Day in fact!) and never got around to reading it. It is a murder mystery novel that is set in Regency England, and its the first in the series, so if I liked it, I had plenty more where that came from!

I will fully admit that when I first saw this book at the bookstore, my main impetus for picking it up was because of the main character’s name: Sebastian. Sebastian was the name of my cat, my baby boy, who died at the age of 18 a few years ago. (I had him since he was 6 weeks old, when I was in 7th grade. I named him after Bastian from The Neverending Story and St. Sebastian – I was a a very devout Catholic obsessed with hagiography at the time… and just because I love the name). Anyway… I picked up the book because of the name. But the description quickly grabbed me too: Regency England, murder mystery, brilliant dashing troubled hero? This is my jam!

I’m embarrassed it took me so long to get around to actually reading it, but boy did I enjoy it!

Here’s the basic plot synopsis: Sebastian St. Cyr, Lord Devlin, has returned to London from the wars against Napoleon in France, where he worked as an intelligence operative because of his particular skills. He has been getting into trouble for dueling (outlawed quite awhile ago) and is generally considered by his father, his sister, and most of society to be a libertine and a layabout. He’s actually an honorable man – his duels have mostly been in defense of innocent people, and he doesn’t sleep around nearly as much as people assume he does. The real problem comes in when a beautiful young actress is brutally raped and murdered late at night in a church, and the evidence points to Sebastian St. Cyr, despite his insistence he is innocent. Bad luck and a general disdain for the Bow Street Runners leads to a series of incidents that make Sebastian look even more guilty, and he is forced to go on the run, avoiding capture so that he may have a chance to clear his name. Along the way he gains the help of a young street waif, an old friend from the war, and Kat Boleyn – an actress and acquaintance of the murdered actress, who broke Sebastian’s heart six years ago, and who has plenty of secrets of her own. As Sebastian investigates the murder, he discovers that the truths he may found could have profound consequences not just for him, but for the entire country.

This novel was a tightly-plotted twisty exciting ride of a mystery. I was following along carefully, trying to solve the murder with (or ahead of) Sebastian, but I did NOT see the ending coming until it was just about right in front of my face. There are quite a few characters to keep track of, and as the novel is told in omniscient third-person, you get the chance to be right in the heads of quite a few of those characters. Even so, I did not guess the culprit until Sebastian had. And then I was like: “oooooh! I get it!”

Sebastian is in some ways your typical Regency hero (mystery novel or otherwise): he’s brilliant, handsome, honorable, much more forward-thinking than most of the other men around him, and of course an excellent lover. He has the added benefit of better-than-usual eyesight, hearing, and reflexes. Is he a little TOO perfect? Yeah, probably. But I honestly don’t mind that when I’m reading this kind of book. Despite that, C.S. Harris does a good job of fleshing the character out, giving him some depth and nuance. I think it is safe to assume that will continue in the next books.

The other characters all vary in dimension and depth, of course. Kat Boleyn, the heart-breaking actress, is fairly well-written. She is, to an extent, also a typical Regency heroine – beautiful, intelligent, willful, etc. The secret to her motives are a little too obvious and stereotypical. But she has a secondary secret that gives her more interest and keeps her from being too one-dimensional. And I liked her even if she was a tad cliche at times. I also assume she will get more fleshing out in later books, and I look forward to seeing how that turns out.

I felt that the historical elements of the novel were well-considered and deeply researched. Some Regency novels just kind of toss in an archaic word or place name here or there and then don’t worry about it much. This narrative felt nicely grounded in its time and place, with characters drawn from real historical reference, and a great use of the language of the time. The prose is also wonderful: descriptive and intriguing without being too florid.

Overall, I really really enjoyed this book. So much so that I got online and ordered books 2 and 3 before I had even quite finished it. I imagine they should arrive sometime next week and I look forward to seeing how Sebastian gets into trouble next time.

Also, apparently book #15 (!!) of this series is coming out on April 7th, so I have a lot of catching up to do!

For links to this book, What Angels Fear: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound
***Under the current circumstances, please try to buy from an indie bookstore if at all possible. Indiebound is a great way to find one near you that delivers. Or, if you want, you can order from MY favorite local indie bookstore: Murder by the Book

And here is the Goodreads page with a list of all the books in the series