A Crimson Warning (Lady Emily Series #6)

From the Publisher

"At the start of Alexander’s enchanting sixth late Victorian novel of suspense (after 2010’s Dangerous to Know), news of a fire in Southwark prompts British intelligence agent Colin Hargreaves to leave Lady Londonderry’s ball, to his wife Emily’s dismay. Colin returns home to Mayfair that night to announce that Michael Dillman, who ran a successful export business, has been cruelly burned alive in his warehouse by an unknown perpetrator. The week before, according to Michael’s fiancée, someone threw red paint on his front door. The Sanders family receives similar treatment shortly before the rumor breaks that daughter Polly’s mother was, in fact, a maid impregnated by her father. Subsequently, other respectable London families find red paint splashed on their houses, presaging some scandalous revelation in each case. Can Emily help Colin solve the crimes without risking her reputation—or becoming a target herself? Alexander keeps readers guessing to the very end."-Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly

At the start of Alexander’s enchanting sixth late Victorian novel of suspense (after 2010’s Dangerous to Know), news of a fire in Southwark prompts British intelligence agent Colin Hargreaves to leave Lady Londonderry’s ball, to his wife Emily’s dismay. Colin returns home to Mayfair that night to announce that Michael Dillman, who ran a successful export business, has been cruelly burned alive in his warehouse by an unknown perpetrator. The week before, according to Michael’s fiancée, someone threw red paint on his front door. The Sanders family receives similar treatment shortly before the rumor breaks that daughter Polly’s mother was, in fact, a maid impregnated by her father. Subsequently, other respectable London families find red paint splashed on their houses, presaging some scandalous revelation in each case. Can Emily help Colin solve the crimes without risking her reputation—or becoming a target herself? Alexander keeps readers guessing to the very end. (Nov.)

Library Journal

In early summer 1893, someone is splashing red paint on the doorsteps of prominent London citizens, a warning that their most scandalous secrets are about to be exposed. One of the first targets is Mr. Dillman, an industrialist promoting social justice. When he is killed in a warehouse fire, Colin Hargreaves, an agent of the Crown, is requested to investigate. Colin and his wife, Lady Emily, begin their work as a team to find the connection among the paint, the secrets, and the murder. After a detour to Normandy in Dangerous To Know, Alexander returns to the familiar setting of London society; this time she has a more solid foundation on which to build her characters and crime. Emily remains strong willed and focused in her desire to find the culprit before Colin, but their sincere affection and happy marriage act as pleasant counterweights to Emily's competitive nature. VERDICT The mystery and the solution are clever, with the addition of commentary on the dark side of a class-driven society for extra oomph. Fans will be excited to spend more quality time with such appealing and intelligent characters. [See Prepub Alert, 4/21/11.]—Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH

Kirkus Reviews

In Alexander's sixth Lady Emily mystery, our port-tippling heroine tracks a villain who's threatening London's best families with scandal—and worse. Lady Emily, now married to dashing Colin Hargreaves (who occasionally acts as an undercover agent in service to Queen Victoria), is still courting social opprobrium with her slightly outré predilections, such as consuming unladylike after-dinner drinks, studying Latin and Greek and advocating women's suffrage. However, soon more pressing challenges loom: Someone is defacing the facades of fashionable London townhouses with red paint, only, shortly thereafter, to disclose the deepest, darkest secrets of their occupants. Emily's best friend Ivy, fearing exposure of some unnamed wrongdoing, confides only in her diary. Tied in, somehow, with the paint-spattering, fatalities mount. A prosperous businessman, Mr. Dillman, is found burnt to death in the warehouse he owns, and shortly thereafter his fiancée, Cordelia, is kidnapped and murdered. The miscreants taunt Scotland Yard with their misdeeds and with missives sealed with distinctive yellow wax. Colin, who has accepted Emily's assistance with his investigations in the past, won't tell her everything he knows of the ongoing manhunt, thus prompting her to embark on her own sleuthing in the company of Jeremy, Duke of Bainbridge, a recurring character who provides welcome comic relief from all the polite posturing and faux-Victorian parlance. Jeremy, a self-described rakish cad, is actually upset that the red paint vandals find him unworthy of smearing. When Lady Glover, a flamboyant former music-hall star never really accepted by Society, is kidnapped, the domestic tranquility of several highborn husbands hangs in the balance. Suspects proliferate at a dizzying rate, among them a politician who backs votes for women, his West Indian best friend, a shrewish London hostess who knows where all the bodies are buried and, well, half of the West End. Although, we can be assured, all will end with port and cigars in Emily's library, this installment is encumbered by an impossibly convoluted plot and a lorry-load of scarlet herrings.