Taking a detour from my summer house reading project I purchased a book for my Kindle last week. This book by Karen Charlton is the second in a series of books about Inspector Lavender and his assistant, Constable Woods who live in Regency London. This case sees Lavender becoming involved with a beautiful Spanish emigre named Dona Magdelena who, somehow, gets into the middle of his investigation. The case revolves around the body of a young woman found under the floorboards of a derelict house which is being demolished. The doctor conducting the post mortem recognises her as April Clare, a young actress at the Sans Pareil Theatre in London, but all is not as straightforward as it may appear.
The descriptions of theatre life are interesting and there are references to the war at the time between Spain and France as the Napoleonic Wars loom. The author likes to present strong female characters and in this book, besides Dona Magdalena, we have Dorothy Jordan, mistress of the Duke of Clarence and Jane Shaw, owner of the Sans Pareil Theatre and some time writer of plays. I can see this as a television series with many more adventures of Lavender and Woods and it is an entertaining read.
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