Murder on Black Swan Lane

Set in Regency England, this competent series launch from the pseudonymous Penrose (Too Wicked to Wed, as Cara Elliott) opens dramatically in a deserted London church, where a man later identified as the Rev. Josiah Holworthy hands a man referred to as the Golden One a book. “You are holding delicate parchment and pen strokes that will soon change the world,” Holworthy declares. After he boasts that he knows the true identity of the man he’s meeting with, the Golden One blinds him with a corrosive chemical, then slits his throat. The Earl of Wrexford, who was on bad terms with the deceased, becomes a suspect, and eventually partners with Charlotte Sloane, a cartoonist who sketched the dead man before retrieving a scrap of paper from his body, to solve the crime. A female 19th-century cartoonist as an amateur sleuth is a welcome innovation, but the period details and characterizations fall short of the standard set by such other authors of Regency-era mysteries as C.S. Harris. Agent: Gail Fortune, Fortune Talbot Agency. (July)