When Deceit Becomes An Art Form

The Art of a Lie

by Laura Shepherd-Robinson 

A great many mystery novels start with a newly widowed person finding out the secrets of their deceased spouse. This one stands out, and not only because it is set in 1749. 

The money that could save Hannah Cole’s confectionery shop on Piccadilly is tied up in probate because the magistrate, Sir Henry Fielding, suspects that her dead husband came by his surprisingly large savings in some illegal way. With debts rising and every supplier determined to take advantage of a lone woman trying to run a business, it is very much in the widow’s interest to clear up the matter quickly. 

But Hannah has a secret to protect, especially from the handsome man who comes to her aid when she is at her most despairing. He finds her an Italian recipe for 'iced cream' that she can make with ingredients at hand. After some trial and error, Hannah's shop becomes a daily destination for the wealthy and noble citizens of London to try out the new delicacy. Her coffers are filling, her debt collectors learn patience, and she is flushed with success as much as from the attentions of this handsome, helpful gentleman.

But just as we've  becoming deeply engaged with the very sympathetic widow, there's a rather jarring switch of point of view, following which we learn that the helpful gentleman has his own secret, one equally perilous to his life as Hannah's is to hers. Yet he really would like to leave Hannah better off than when they met, and so he bends his skills to deflecting Sir Henry from seizing the money she should inherit. To do so, he must sniff out Fielding's secret weaknesses and exploit them.

Thus the dance of artful lies begins. Which of them will allow emotion to cloud their senses the most? Which will discover the other’s lies first? Will Sir Henry reach the truth about Hannah or her beau before he learns what the deceased was up to?

This is a novel thoroughly and believably embedded in 1749 London - in the accoutrements of daily living, such as carriages and urchins and lack of proper policing - and at the same time invoking the modern reader’s recognition of small-minded neighbours gossiping and the arrogant patriarchal attitudes of powerful men. Background characters and sidekicks abound, all easy to tell apart from each other where necessary .

One weakness is our helpful gentleman’s habit of spending pages regaling the reader with all his thoughts and intentions while not much action is happening. These we must take on faith as they do serve to deepen the character's background, and thus enhance his increasingly painful consciousness of having to to choose between his own best interests or Hannah's.

The stakes for both rise, the tension torques up, sometimes you root for one and sometimes the other. And soon you realize that every moment of respite, even of happiness, that our two protagonists snatch, together or separately, will have its full measure of payback. It's impossible to look away.

 

 Bonus content: a bit about iced cream as it was made and consumed in Georgian London

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