Review: These are short stories, but still good for filling in the Captain Lacey picture.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 13, 2011
This Kindle download consists of two short stories written by Ashley Gardner concerning her series character Captain Lacey.  Both were published in 2000 in different publications.  The product description gives very good, detailed information as to the length of each story.The Gentleman's Walking Stick takes place in 1817, and finds Lacey in a jewelry store shopping for a gift for his lady friend.  An old acquaintance comes into the store, although not quite by chance, and asks Lacey to try to find the walking stick which he left behind the night before after visiting several places his fiancée and her family would not approve of.  What Lacey eventually finds changes his mind about several matters and shows a side of his personality that I would like to see the author focus on more often.  Sometimes Lacey's war disability takes away from his willingness to wreak vengeance on those who rightfully deserve it.  This was a very satisfying story.The Disappearance of Miss Sarah Oswald is also set in London in 1817.  Lacey's commanding officer, Colonel Brandon, has sent a father to Lacey to see if his missing daughter can be found.  Sarah Oswald has been missing for eight months with no word on her condition or whereabouts.  The Oswald family has given her up as being either dead or hopelessly lost to their strata of society.  This story shines a glaring spotlight on the moral strictures of the upper classes in society in this time.  As a reader I was left with a Hummm kind of feeling after this one was over.  Very well written, but not necessarily a satisfactory ending.  Probably very realistic, but not necessarily what we have come to expect with fiction.I did enjoy each of these stories and am very glad that I made the decision to download them.  Otherwise I might have never come across the stories and would have missed some of the small details about Lacey's life.  They seem to deal more with the social aspects of the times than with the actual solving of mysteries by Captain Lacey.  There is also an excerpt ofThe Hanover Square Affair: Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries (Volume 1)at the end of these two short stories.Completely separate from the writing of these stories was my irritation with the editing of the first story.  Twice (once would have been bad enough, but this happened twice) there is reference made to "sewing wild oats".  Now I don't know about you, but I don't think I've ever seen a needle small enough to sew wild or domesticated oats.  It simply is not good enough to put books into e-reader format.  Customers deserve to have the same attention to detail that we expect from a print book.  It took me less than an hour to read both these stories.  Any employee of a publishing house should have caught these and other mistakes in these stories.  Bad marks for that carelessness.Edit 10/20/11:  The author left a comment on this review saying the error with "sewing wild oats" has been corrected.  It was a very nice thing for her to take the time to read these reviews and then to care enough to make the change.