eyes.2c Reviews

Lady Knight  (The Diamonds #2) by Amalie Howard        ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A heart thumping beginning with our heroine and her friends holding up a coach on Hounslow Heath. Lady Zenobia Osborn is the daughter of a duke. She’s in her second season and her father, Duke of Harbridge has decided Zia must marry. Zia doesn’t want to marry. There’s no one who’s caught her interest except her brother’s rakish friend, Mr. Ravi Nasser. That was when Zia was younger. He had been very dismissive of her. That had hurt. Now Zia attends a finishing school where she and some fellow students secretly read and discuss the works of thinking women like Wolstencroft. Their latest read is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Zia and her friends have formed a secret gang called the Lady Knights. They support the orphanage and school that’s part of the same land their school stands on. The school and orphanage has been targeted by the slimy Viscount Heller (who’s Rafi’a uncle). The Viscount and his cro...

No Precious Truth  (Cathy Marsden Thriller #1) by Chris Nickson       ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Leeds during World War II, police sergeant Cathy Marsden has been seconded to Special Investigations Branch seeking criminal gangs and deserters. Now e spionage is added—a whole new game. They’ve been joined by an MI5 operative desperately seeking an escaped German agent who’s been passing himself off as a Dutchman. A man the MI5 committee, the Twenty or XX, had hoped to turn. The MI5 agent is Cathy’s brother Daniel. The only woman amongst a few men, most accept her, except for one recalcitrant colleague. Cathy  has proved herself time and again, able to question people, including women, who have little time for the authorities. Many know her from her time on the beat, and take heed. The group comes close to catching the agent Jan Minuit.  He’s joined forces with the head of a criminal gang. The criminal’s motive is straight up money, now he’s a traitor. Cathy has a close enco...

The Duke's Lance  (The Duke’s Guard #12) by C.H. Admirand   ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The girl whose gaze he locked onto and a voice whispered in  his heart, “Mine”, is the companion to Emily Montrose, heiress, and now wife to Aiden Garahan. Helen Langley has secrets and fears. When she’s abducted whilst returning from seeking a position as a companion to the Dower Duchess of Flemington (and that’s another “saved just in time” episode) it’s O’Malley who finds her and this time he’s not letting her go! Another episode in my guilty pleasures read of the Duke’s Guard series. A Dragonblade ARC via NetGalley.                                               Many thanks to the author and publisher.

The Whitechapel Widow  (Emma Langley Victorian Mystery #1) by Emily Organ         ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ When Emma Langley’s husband fails to get on the train, having hopped off to buy a newspaper, she’s alarmed. What has held him up? They have decided to move out of London and relocate in Suffolk close to where William’s aunt lives. When Emma reaches Lavenham she leaves her luggage at the station and catches a return train back to London hoping to find William. That doesn’t work out so she returns once more to Lavenham  only to find there is no aunt’s house. She stays at the local inn overnight.  Puzzled and distressed Emma journeys back to Liverpool Station, London once again and is taken in by her kindly previous landlady. Together they report her missing husband to the police who open up the possibility that William has deliberately planned his disappearance. More distressing news follows when William is found murdered. His death pushes  open the door to h...

The Secret Detective Agency  (Book 1) by Helena Dixon        ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ An unusual spinster, an asthmatic mathematical intellect and his quite efficient manservant end up working for a secret agency within Whitehall. It’s 1941. Jane Treen has been running agents for an important behind the lines operation. When the operation appears compromised they were withdrawn. Jane had installed one with a minder in a safe house in Devon only she knew about. Unfortunately that agent has turned up dead in a local pond found by  Arthur Cilento who’s just arrived home from his own highly secretive war work. He’s quite annoyed that the people his house had been rented out to were Jane’s agents and no one told him. We have here a somewhat different trio of people who are determined to solve the dilemma. Then there’s the questions. Who else has been compromised? Who’s behind this? I was very cross by the chain smoking Jane who seems to have no thought for the asthmatic Arthur...

Our Dear Miss H. Is on the Case  by Violet Marsh      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ What a perfect pair Georgina Harrington and Alexander Lovett are. Although they don’t know it of course They first meet when Georgie’s cousin Percy, Lord Pendergrast  brings Alexander to her pit site. An avid antiquarian / archaeologist, Georgina has a dig at a mound on a strip of land in Essex she’d inherited from her father, himself a famed antiquarian. Think cliffs and smugglers. Georgina has found a gold helmet. Percy pretends to have found her artefacts and presents them to the Antiquarians of England Society. Unfortunately that’s the last Georgina sees of Percy before she’s bundled off to London by her wicked step brother in a plot to marry her off to someone. In London Georgina looks everywhere for Percy but no-one’s seen him. She’s worried and turns to Alexander for help. That’s when Georgina discovers her people! Her group! They’re wonderful, quirky and supportive. There’s plots within plo...