Why Kings Confess: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery
*Starred Review* The grisly murder of French physician Damion Pelletan—found with his heart removed in a disreputable London neighborhood in 1813—is a puzzle that Sebastian St. Cyr finds increasingly intriguing. Palletan, recently arrived in London as part of a secret mission seeking peace between England and France, is the son of the doctor who briefly attended the Lost Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, during the boy’s imprisonment after the revolution, and later autopsied the boy, removing and keeping his heart. Pelletan’s sister, the physician Alexi Sauvage, badly injured while accompanying her brother when he was killed, is being stalked by the vengeful relative of a former patient. Solving the murder becomes secondary to St. Cyr’s concern for his beloved wife, Hero, as her delivery date approaches with the probability of a breech birth, which both mother and child rarely survived in the early nineteenth century. And although Sauvage is an accomplished accoucheur, St. Cyr’s history with her prevents his trusting her with treating Hero. This ninth St. Cyr outing offers a winning combination of the political and the personal with a tangled plot deftly handled in Harris’ trademark brisk prose. A compellingly readable addition to a solidly researched historical mystery series. --Michele Leber