Death in the Floating City: A Lady Emily Mystery (Lady Emily Mysteries Book 7)

For fans of history and mystery, you’ll find the perfect mix in Tasha Alexander’s Death in The Floating City. This is the seventh book in her Lady Emily series and, I know, why am I reviewing the seventh book when you have to read six other books to get here? Because you should! Lady Emily is a feisty Victorian gal. She started with book one of the series, And Only to Deceive, where we first met Emily as a young widow on the trail of her husband’s killer. Of course, she got her man!But in that book, and since, she’s discovered the ancient Greeks, met a great guy (yep, there’s some romance in here too-just enough) and taken us on murder mystery adventures from Paris to Greece to Constantinople and now Venice. To visit these places in another era is fascinating enough, and my hat is off to Ms. Alexander, her research is impressive and well woven into the story. Trust me, you won’t feel like you are in a boring lecture hall—you’ll eat up every word.I won’t reveal all about this book, as some things you shouldn’t know yet, if you haven’t read the others. But I will tell you that Emily has come to Venice to help an old not-so-friendly friend whose husband has gone missing. As usual, she stays in the best places, visits the most opulent locations as well as the seediest. And along the way you get a feeling for the kind old vendettas that might have lead Shakespeare to pen Romeo and Juliet.Death in The Floating City is a multi-layered adventure, set in the book’s present and past, weaving the long forgotten lives of ancestors whose stories still affect their descendants. This is truly a page turner and, if you know what’s good for your reader’s soul, you’ll start on page one of book one, and race to catch up. What could be more fun?

Lady Emily and her husband, agent for the crown Colin Hargreaves, are in Venice at the desperate request of Emily's old schoolmate, a woman she admits to never having liked much, to find the woman's missing Italian husband, after finding his father dead in the family villa. Emma Callum's disposition hasn't improved much, but Emily agrees to help her nevertheless; however, solving the mystery will take more than tracking down the man.Alexander's writing makes Venice sound so yummy that you want to go visit (despite the modern truths of pollution and sinking foundations). However, a good deal of the story is involved with a forbidden "Romeo and Juliet" type love story that happened many centuries earlier, and there the novel bogs down. The machinations against the two lovers grow to a depressing degree, until you're ready just for Emily to solve the mystery so you can get away from this miserable twosome, and the tale itself it told in a stilted style, evidently to distinguish it from the main narrative and give it a historical feel, but it also makes it more difficult to slog through. Plus Emma's such a pill that you also wonder why Emily puts up with her. I hope Emily and Colin give up their travels and go home!

This is one of the saddest books I've read in a long time. Be sure to have your hanky available. It takes place in Venice-- an acquaintance of Lady Emily's calls on her to come and clear her husband's name after her father-in-law is killed. There is a story within a story here as Lady Emily tries to find the motive for murder and ends up in researching a real life Romeo and Juliet story. This was a very good book and was impossible to put down!

I believe that Tasha Alexanders' Lady Emily Mysteries just keep getting better and betterwith each new book. Don't get me wrong...she had me hooked from the very first book inthe series. LOL Death in the Floating City sounds like a lanquid, lazy ride on the river butthis book is more like a piece of lovely knitting that is quickly unravelled by merely droppingyour knitting needles and watching it come apart before your very eyes. The story quicklyhooks you in and doesn't let you go until you put the book down....and wish there was more!I would not be so foolish as to give away one ounce of Story Plot...just take my word for it...it will not dissappoint! And it will be like a mini-vacation in Venise. And who wouldn't love that!Always Happy to Recommend Great Readsto Book Lovers Everywhere,PeggyAnn Smith

I enjoyed this author

Great book to

Great!

Lots of mystery and romance and dead bodies - what more could you want for a good bedtime read. Excellent

Absolutely interesting series which I am enjoying following - Highly recommended.