Anna Lee Huber - As Death Draws Near (2024)

July 1831. In the midst of their idyllic honeymoon in England's Lake District, Kiera and Gage's seclusion is interrupted by a missive from Kiera's new father-in-law. A deadly incident involving a distant relative of the Duke of Wellington has taken place at an abbey south of Dublin, Ireland, and he insists that she and Gage look into the matter. Intent on discovering what kind of monster could murder a woman of the cloth, the couple travels to Rathfarnham Abbey school. Soon, a second nun is slain in broad daylight near a classroom full of young girls. With the sinful killer growing bolder, the mother superior would like to send the students home, but the growing civil unrest in Ireland would make the journey treacherous. Before long, Kiera starts to suspect that some of the girls may be hiding a sinister secret. With the killer poised to strike yet again, Kiera and Gage must make haste and unmask the fiend before their matrimonial bliss comes to an untimely end..

Comment: This is installment #5 in the Lady Darby series, a series I've been reading one book a month for the past months.

In this story, Kiera and Gage have been married for a short period of time and have been enjoying their honeymoon, but nothing in their life is as simple as that and they receive a letter from Gage's father requesting them to travel to Ireland. A cousin of the duke of Wellington has been murdered at the convent which she joined and the local police, due to the issues between protestants and catholics, has not investigated too deeply, and if they arrive with the authorization of higher powers, perhaps there is something they can do. Investigating the death of a future nun doesn't seem to be that tricky at first,except the conflicts aren't as easy to ignore as they were led to believe... what could have happened?

Having now read five books in this series, I can say it is like revisiting familiar characters and checking up on what they are doing. The mysteries are all independent, being the common continuous factor the personal lives of the protagonists and I'm quite happy to see where they are now.

Gage and Kiera have been married for a short period of time when this story begins (I know there is a novella between this and the previous installment, where the wedding is central stage, but I have not read it) and they are still enjoying each other, but of course "real life" cannot stop and they are given a new task. They travel to Ireland to investigate the death of miss Lennox, a cousin of the duke of Wellington, which is to say a young protestant lady who converted to Catholicism and who wished to become a nun, although she had not yet professed her vows.

I thought, from the start, that the author decided to add food for thought in this one by having the whole protestant/catholic issue and even more than that, a converted character. In fact, I imagined until a certain point that perhaps we would discover the death had been because of religious factors and that the plot would be focused on that but, I was proven wrong and the whole thing is more directly related to the conflicts than personal issues. Well, kind of... obviously, the reasons the killer had are personal...

It was quite interesting to see the conflict portrayed in this story, since it's something that has lasted until today and had many changes throughout the years, but I can imagine how meticulous the author's research was, since there is a very obvious dichotomy between those who are catholic and protestant in this story and some even mention the prejudice against the others with expressions not as used nowadays, but it's always interesting to think abut this while reading a fictional story whose main goal isn't to study/analyze historical facts or something like that.

Even better is how the author found a way to insert this into the plot and, as always, how even some red herrings were played on purpose to distract the reader from other issues, namely the really important ones which are directly related to the murder. I say this because while the religious conflicts play a certain part, the reason why miss Lennox was killed was a little secondary to them, and done in such a way that I could only guess closer to the end. Well, as if this is that special, to be honest I don't usually find who the killers are in these types of stories, unless it's too obvious.

Gage and Kiera also must deal with one more layer they find out about one another, small things that can only be discussed after something happens that makes us think about it. They married because they are in love but mainly because they respect each other, and that respects needs nurture and needs them to be honest, so of course we have some scenes where they talk about their expectations and thoughts in regards to this and that, and it makes me feel that their relationship is in constant evolution and it's a work in progress, with them finding some new each day.