Lady Odelia’s Secret (Lady Helena Investigates)
It will aid the reader to have read Lady Helena Investigates, the first book introducing Lady Helena—sister to the Earl of Broadmere and widow of a wealthy Sussex baronet—as a successful solver of mysteries with the help of her lady’s maid, Guttridge, and an attractive physician, Armand Fortier. In this installment, Helena’s older sister Odelia, an artist living in London, persuades her to refurbish her drawing room with an ambitious set of paintings by the famed Sir Geraint Dorrian-Knowles. As she meets the artist to discuss his commission, Helena is fascinated by his forceful wife, Millie. This leads to conflicting loyalties when Helena learns that Odelia has been Geraint’s lover for years.
Drawn by concern for scandal and love for her sister into finding out who is sending harassing and increasingly foul messages to Odelia, Helena enlists Fortier’s help, and in so doing learns of his mysterious past. But scandal is unavoidable when a shocking murder puts Helena at the center of a police investigation, and her loyalties as well as her cool-headedness are tested when the danger draws too close to her own family.
Demanding more patience than the usual cozy, Steen’s novel revels in appreciation for the pre-Raphaelite artists and their sensualized medieval subjects and bohemian views. A love of literature, including fairy tales, weaves through the tale as well. With no real stakes for Lady Helena, the hint of attraction with Fortier, the pleasant rounds of an aristocratic lady’s life in 1880s England, and engaging secondary characters provide much of the action as pieces of the mystery eventually unfold. With polished prose and plenty of artistic Easter eggs for fans of the period, Lady Helena’s adventures can appeal to literary readers as well as mystery buffs.
