While I’ve always enjoyed historical mysteries (my favourite series is the Matthew Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom, set in Tudor England) I don’t read them that often (too many books, too little time!). However, having recently enjoyed K.J. Charles’s Death in the Spires, I took a chance on another author who is published by the same company, Pam Lecky. Her series, The Lucy Lawrence Mysteries, is set in late Victorian England, and the first book, No Stone Unturned, caught my eye so I gave it a chance. It’s a solid start with an unlikely heroine, and while it didn’t have me on the edge of my seat, it intrigued me enough that I’ve gone and picked up the next two in the series, and the fourth book, A Pocketful of Diamonds, is due out in September 2024.

Lucy Lawrence’s life is in a shambles. Her troubled marriage has ended abruptly with the discovery that her husband Charlie has been murdered, and that he was leading a double life as an investor with dubious connections. He owes money to some nefarious characters who have decided she’s going to have to pay up. On top of that, on a recent visit to her brother’s estate to try to recover from her loss and figure out what to do next, her mother’s expensive necklace went missing, and her brother and mother are accusing her of having stolen it. While these two events seemingly have nothing in common, they both lead Lucy to an intriguing character, Phineas Stone. He’s an insurance investigator whom she met first in the morgue over her dead husband’s body, and then again when she was being questioned over the theft of the necklace.

Back in London, it’s clear that Lucy is still in trouble. Her home has been broken into, she’s being followed, and only the presence of Phineas has given her some modicum of safety. When it’s discovered that Lucy’s brother was an investor alongside Lucy’s late husband, someone he’d always claimed to have hated, the ties to the two cases become ever tighter. Only with Phineas’s help will the mysteries be solved, and for Lucy, a chance to move on with perhaps a new beau at her side.

What’s interesting about this story is that Lucy is not an adventurous type. She is, in fact, quite staid and UNadventurous. She is, of course, horrified at her husband’s murder (which she has a hard time believing is real) even though she has admitted to herself that Charlie had been increasingly distant and remote. And discovering more of what he’d been up to in his ‘trips’ away just makes her realize how much of a fool she’d been.

Then with her brother and mother accusing her of theft, and being followed and, frankly, terrorized (her cat is murdered in her ransacked home) by whomever Charlie was in trouble with, she still doesn’t really step up to the plate. She relies heavily on Phineas to do the investigating and participates where necessary, but she doesn’t jump in wholeheartedly the way say, an Amanda Quick heroine would. Still she did grow on me. She’s pretty much what I would expect of a Victorian woman of the time and doesn’t stray outside of those character boundaries. She has an appropriate employer/employee relationship with her housemaid Mary (at one point she has to let her go for financial reasons, but does end up rehiring her). Her growing romantic relationship with Phineas is very controlled and circumspect. It’s the mystery and how it unfolds that really kept me reading, and I am quite satisfied with how the story ended. And I’m intrigued to see how Lucy’s character will develop in subsequent stories, which is why I plan on continuing the series. If you’re hoping for a Miss Scarlet and the Duke situation, you’ll be disappointed. But No Stone Unturned does feel like it’s quite authentic in character and setting and that’s enough to give it a qualified recommendation.