It is hard to believe, that when the broadcasters of the BBC or ITV begin their next scheduled plundering of historical literature for conversion to the ever-popular costume drama, they will not pay close attention to Deanna Raybourn's Lady Julia Grey mysteries.
As recent regulars to this blog will know, I became a huge fan of the Texan writer's work when I read her debut novel, Silent in the Grave, last year. The buttoned up Victorians might not quite offer the same scope for social gaiety as the Jane Austen era, but there is plenty here for the Sunday night bodice and carriage slot - a compelling mystery story and a witty comedy of manners set in visual splendour.
(And if anything is missing then, well, television can fill in the gaps (since when has that media been shy about playing fast and loose with history).
The second novel might have a reputation for being tricky, but Raybourn doesn't miss a beat in Lady Julia's new outing. We find our heroine in Italy, recuperating from her run in with mortality at the close of the previous novel with her two brothers, Plum the artist and Lysander, the newly-wed, who has his hands too full with his tempestuous bride to be anything other than a full time groom. Also on hand is Alessandro Fornacci, a handsome young Italian count who marks his card early as a potential suitor to the wealthy widow Lady Julia.
The idyllic Italian life suits all, but when the Earl March, their father, recalls all three to the Sussex seat - a gigantic former monastery, fully-equipped with ghosts, secret passages and aged retainers with a fondness for claret - for a Christmas house party it is clear that trouble is coming.
Lady Julia arrives to find her eccentric family assembled in all its glory: the sapphic sister Portia, a ghastly aunt that Bertram Wilberforce Wooster would have admired, the jolly uncle cum local dean, two poor-relation cousins and an assortment of hangers-on.
And of course, Nicholas Brisbane (now Lord Wargrave), Lady Julia's partner in sleuthery and the man with the key to her heart, who shockingly has arrived with his bride-to-be.
A corpse, of course, is not far away, and one turns up in the form of Lucien Snow, the local vicar's curate, framed by Lady Julia's cousin Lucy clutching a candelabrum dripping with warm, fresh blood.
The mystery story is concise, controlled and compelling, keeping the reader guessing as the brooding Brisbane and the bumbling Lady Julia undertake the investigation while the body sits in a game larder, kept in the house by a winter snowstorm that buries all chance of movement either in our out of the abbey.
But as good as the mystery story is, it is the ensemble that is the key to Raybourn's success: a ribald, diverse collection whose emotions are only kept in check by social convention and then only (and only just) in public.
Back stage there is all sorts going on. And it is funny, enlightening and thoroughly charming, and brings great momentum to a series that is developing beautifully and should find a find place in the top tier of historical mystery fiction quickly.
I have it on reasonably good authority that a third novel, Silent on the Moor, has just been completed and will be published in 2009. I can't wait.
