Grace Burrowes - A Gentleman in Pursuit of Truth

A dogged investigation... Lord Julian Caldicott is summoned to the country home of a family friend to search for a prize foxhound who’s gone missing. The purloined canine turns out to be only the tail of a series of puzzles involving family secrets, slander, blackmail, and fraud. Matters grow more baffling when Julian is told to drop the investigation, though suspects abound, motives are multiplying, and a large sum of money has come into play.

Hounded by lies...Julian survives an attempt on his life, and endures slights to his honor rather than give up on his objective. Before the truth is revealed–and the hound brought safely home–he will have to choose between protecting his only surviving brother from ruin, or allowing a scoundrel to get away with the next thing to murder.

Comment: This is book #4 in the Lord Julian series by Grace Burrowes, which I'm in the process of reading throughout this year.

In this new adventure, Lord Julian is investigating the disappearance of Thales, the well beloved hound of the Silforth family. Lizzie Silforth is an old friend of Osgood Banter, who has plans to travel to the continent with Julian's brother and he wishes to see this solved before he departs. Julian believes this to be a relatively simple task, but the more he investigates, the more intrigue he finds and it also seems as if all the neighbors have something bad to say about Lizzie's husband, who might be trying to gain money through fraud.... but how to prove this, and where is the prized dog hidden?

This was another thrilling adventure Julian gets himself into while recovering from his war injuries and the repercussions. As it happened with the previous ones, I thought that surely looking into the disappearance of a dog, prized or not, would not be very hard to accomplish, but the more information we got on the secondary characters and the situation, the more the author's cleverness in setting up everything shined.

Things really seem simple but it all sets on Lizzie's husband. Anaxamander Silforth (what a weird name even for historical novels) is an arrogant and malicious man who is bent on blackmail or pressure those who can give him what he wants and he doesn't care who is hurt in the process. In the middle of all this, Julian suspects he is trying to obtain money out of committing fraud but how to prove it? I will say I have felt a lot of frustration as things kept developing and a solution seemed more and more unlikely to happen. Thankfully, Julian managed to connect the dots...

I do like these light mysteries, and what a pity no contemporary devices can be used, for surely some things would be incredible easy to be explained. This also means we need to rely a lot on Julian's thought process and how he listens to some things, which might seem pointless, but that actually fit in a puzzle. Added to this tactic of developing the plot we have the author's writing style, which is very appealing to me in this series - it did not work as well in other books - and the slow pace and almost unimportant elements make for a very satisfying moment of learning how things can be solved.

This is also a very interesting study in character development because a lot is inferred by conversations and comments made by the characters as Julian investigates. Some things certainly would seem they don't matter and it turns out that they do. I like this sense that I need to pay attention, as if something necessary is being shared and I like the feeling of remembering when something was said or done and I can recognize it later.

It also feels unfair that some things Silforth blackmails the others with should not have to be a case in the first place. Again, it would be so easy to defeat him right away if he weren't preying on guilt and fear over things the characters are not really doing wrong. Or, to be more specific, that the law should not consider as being a crime. Thus, why I really liked it when the "good guys" won for it did feel special to see the way Julian and those who also wanted to see Silforth loose face make a plan to win him with unity.

I also liked how some issues pertaining to Julian's personal life seemed to have improved, in the sense that perhaps his situation will not be as difficult to overcome. Another great element of these books is to see the family interactions and how affectionate they are, even under all those polite company rules and so on.

I'm quite eager for the next book in the series.

Grade: 8/10