Summary:
Stoker & Bash #3
Sing a song of sixpence
A stage full of fright
One two-faced blackbird
Won't last the night
When a phantom presence lures Hieronymus Bash into a deadly game, threatening to kill one of the players at his beloved Gaiety Theater each day until famed actor Horace Beastly returns to the stage, London's premier consulting detective is on the case. The trouble? Horace Beastly is Hiero's alter ego and the true object of this murderous obsession. When the current star of the show is struck down, Hiero has no choice but to risk everything by stealing back the spotlight.
After a golden summer together, DI Tim Stoker would do everything in his power to protect the man he loves from this fanatic and the predatory press. But a specter from his own past proves an unexpected, and perhaps fatal, distraction.
Scheming prima donnas, grudge-fuelled critics, and an axe-wielding theater ghost are all out for blood. Will Hiero and Tim unmask this menace before the final curtain call, or are they past the point of no return?
At first I thought this entry completely missed my radar but when I went to purchase it this spring I realized I already had it sitting on my Kindle. As I saw the release date was late 2020, the year Covid hit and it hit hard on my reading mojo as I had turned more toward viewing entertainment for distraction than reading. 2021 followed with my mother in the hospital for nearly 4 months with little recovery to my reading mojo. By 2022 my reading need slowly returned but by then this book had completely slipped my mind until early this spring when someone posted about it on facebook. I start off with this explanation to help explain why it took me so long to read the latest entry in a series that I love and that it had nothing to do with the lack of want to read.
So onto Death Under the Dark Arches.
The mystery plot will go untouched as not to spoil it for others who like me came late to the party😉. I will say that in a rare happening for me I think I loved Dark Arches even more than The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree(book 2) which makes it even more of a rarity because I loved Poisonous Tree even more than The Fangs of Scavo(book 1). I find there is nothing better than the originality of a first entry and it's hard to replicate that adrenaline rush but Selina Kray not only did it once but twice! Some of which often falls down to character development and relationship growth but truth is Kip and Heiro's chemistry was so enflamed from the getgo that yes, they get better and better as their future evolves it really falls down to returning secondary characters growing that stood out for this reader.
Don't take the above sentiment to mean our heroes, Kip and Heiro, have grown stagnant, oh no their love gets stronger with every page it's just for me it was their friends and found family characters that really come into their own that helps make this entry the strongest of the series yet. So many characters in Dark Arches I'll freely admit I got brief moments of confusion as to who was who but then they'd say or do something and I was "Okay, there's the quality I know you for".
So often what I like to call the "snark and cuddle factor" is mostly attributed to the main characters but Selina Kray has given that element to multiple members of the cast which strengthens the humor side of the book. Dark Arches is a great blend of humor and macabre, romance and danger, heat and fear. All elements that make this a great read, a great series entry, and all around entertaining gem. The author has taken ingredients from rom-com, noir, melodrama, and a sprinkle of gothic to make a most delicious summertime treat that both satisfies the mystery genre hunger gnawing at your brain and leaves you gasping for more.
One final note: Stoker & Bash is a series that really should be read in order. The mysteries may be solved within their individual covers but the relationship journeys continue to grow and evolve. Would you be lost read out of order? No but the personal details and intricacies flow better which in turn makes the stories better.
The man who entered might not have been a king, but no noble in Hiero’s acquaintance possessed half his presence or suavity. Hiero immediately recognized a creature of like habits: his manners meticulous, his grooming soigné, his dress haute couture, his bearing leonine. His silver mane had been sculpted into a pompadour that would have turned Napoleon green. The force of his magnetism bulked up his withy frame and gained him a foot in height. Hiero nearly swooned over the blade-sharp edges of his sideburns and the curlicued tips of his moustache. Before him stood a one-man shrine to the Byronic ideal.
Hiero despised him on principle. He vowed that this man, this titan of fashion and class, would be kept far, far away from his Kip.
“Please forgive my sudden arrival," the Vicomte said. "Events have conspired such that I had no choice but to seek out your counsel and, I hope, your services.”
“It is my honor to receive you, monsieur.” Hiero gestured toward a pair of wingback chairs before the hearth. “Please.”
The Vicomte inhaled a deep breath. “Are you an amateur de théâtre, Monsieur Bash?”
“I enjoy the occasional sortie, yes. The same as any man of culture.”
“For me it has always been a grand passion. It began when I, like most young men, played escort to my mother. From there a fire took hold, and I have burned ever since. This led me to purchase the original Théâtre de la Gaîté—”
“Ah! On the Boulevard du Crime.” Hiero smiled. “What a pity they demolished it.”
“A tragedy of the highest order. And one from which we are still recovering.”
“I believe you were among the few to move house?”
“Oui, to rue Papin. But we struggled to recapture the magic. And so, two years ago, the cochons I invested with voted to turn managerial duties over to Monsieur Offenbach.”
Hiero fought not to let his feathers ruffle on the Vicomte’s behalf. “A similar case to the management shift at our own Gaiety.”
“And with this you have divined the very event that brought me across the Channel. The current owner of The Gaiety, Monsieur Gerry Tumnus, hastily assembled a skeleton troupe. Through an acquaintance I discovered that he had a theater without a company, and since I had a company without a theater, a deal was struck. The grand opening of our first double bill, a Don Juan burlesque and the melodrama Abelard and Heloise, was to occur this very evening.”
“How delightful,” Hiero said. “But I’m not clear on what role you mean for me to play?”
“For a month we have been settling into our new home. The troubles began almost at once. A mislaid prop. A ruined backdrop. One of our crew tripped on a suddenly wet floor and cracked his head. Several rehearsals delayed because furniture was glued to the storage room walls. Nuisances, at first. A period of adjustment to a new stage, I thought. Or perhaps the petty revenge of the few from the original company who had stayed on.”
“Or someone who does not care for foreigners.”
“Précisément.” Croÿ-Roeulx sighed. “Childish, but not unforeseeable. But then the rumors started among my own actors. A shadow, they claimed, pursuing them through the backstage. Strange gifts. The sensation of being watched, even when they were alone in their dressing rooms.” A slithery sense of dread coiled around Hiero’s spine. “I thought it nonsense, but the incidents kept piling up. Everyone in the company was buzzing, distracted, missing cues, dropping lines. And then today…”
Hiero felt his stomach drop. “Today?”
“A murder. Our leading man.”
Selina Kray is the nom de plume of an author and English editor. Professionally she has covered all the artsy-fartsy bases, having worked in a bookstore, at a cinema, in children’s television, and in television distribution, up to her latest incarnation as a subtitle editor and grammar nerd (though she may have always been a grammar nerd). A self-proclaimed geek and pop culture junkie who sometimes manages to pry herself away from the review sites and gossip blogs to write fiction of her own, she is a voracious consumer of art with both a capital and lowercase A.
Selina’s aim is to write genre-spanning romances with intricate plots, complex characters, and lots of heart. Whether she has achieved this goal is for you, gentle readers, to decide. At present she is hard at work on future novels at home in Montreal, Quebec, with her wee corgi serving as both foot warmer and in-house critic.
EMAIL: selinakray@hotmail.ca
No comments:
Post a Comment