Where I Go On About the Theme

Why Kill the Innocent by C.S. Harris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

These mysteries are always awesome--I've said it 12 times before--and they're always entertaining. This 13th book is no exception. The same great characters, always revealed just a bit more; the same great setting, always addressed with the same care for historical accuracy; the same balance of action and intrigue and character development, all with impeccable pacing. Great stuff. But more than that, these books do a terrific job of analyzing the socioeconomic issues of the time, which always reveal something of our time, too. Obviously it's done intentionally, but it's always attacked in a way that's perfectly in keeping with the tone of the story and is organic to the plot.

Much of the social critique in the last several books in the series comes from Sebastian's wife, Hero, who is researching various issues that concern her--the life of chimney sweeps, homeless kids, flower sellers, and the like. In this book, it's the families left behind when men are forcibly taken by the navy that Hero's concerned with. Men are practically kidnapped by press gangs and taken on board ship as crew, while the women left behind have to try to survive on their own and care for their families. Since there are few ways that women can earn money, this leaves them very vulnerable, and not all of them survived. This injustice and the tragedies stemming from it are eventually connected to other restrictions on women that we see in the plot--the murdered woman, who worked as a piano teacher but was secretly [sorry, this is a small spoiler] writing the music her composer husband got credit for; the princess who was kept from her mother by a despotic father, the Regent; the French woman who was a doctor but wasn't allowed to practice in England; the talented woman painter who could just survive by painting miniatures; and more.

You can't read a book like this and not be enraged at the harm done by the misogyny and paternalism that gripped so much of western society at the time (not just England), the same cluster of attitudes beliefs that we're only gradually emerging from (in fits and starts) in the US in the 21st century. (My own mother, teaching in the 1940s in a one-room schoolhouse, was not supposed to date or marry if she wanted to keep her job. My brothers and sisters and I all owe our lives to my parents breaking this rule, which eventually was swept away.) You can't watch the news a single day without seeing echoes and vestiges of this coercive mentality still fighting to control women--to everyone's detriment.

Anyway, it's not a political tract. It's a mystery, and a very good one. Five stars. But it'll get you thinking if you're not careful.

Recommended.

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