By Amy Pollick
apollick@decaturdaily.com· 340-2433

As a veteran reader of Regency romance, I found “Jane and the Barque of Frailty,” a Regency mystery, to be familiar territory. I’m acquainted with the ton, the fashions and the prevailing culture. However, author Stephanie Barron does weave an interesting mystery into the Regency literary fabric, posing as author Jane Austen.

Barron writes the book diary-fashion, as though from Austen’s own diaries. The book is set in the heart of the Regency era, in 1811. Jane is visiting her brother Henry and his wife Eliza at their London home. When the body of a Russian princess is found at the doorstep of a notable British lord, Jane is soon embroiled in the mystery.

Jane and Eliza, without meaning to do so, become objects of notice from Bow Street Runner William Skroggs. It bears mentioning the Bow Street Runners were what passed for a police department in Regency London, and could be hired by private parties to arrest persons of interest. As a mercenary police force, they were much feared by nobility and commoner alike.

As Skroggs accuses Jane and Eliza as accomplices in the princess’ murder, they find themselves in the position of having to solve the crime. Jane uses her connections with the law and nobility to uncover treason and deceit at the highest levels of the British government, with her country fighting the Napoleonic Wars. The princess’ death is only a small part of the conspiracy she reveals.

In between her sleuthing expeditions, Jane also attends various social functions, giving the reader a glimpse into the lives of the rich and famous. The account of the inquest into the princess’s death is particularly good. However, Barron would have served her readers well to have offered a short glossary of some of the terms she uses.

She defines a few, but not enough to ease the path of a reader completely unfamiliar with Regency vernacular.

A “barque of frailty,” by the way, was a picturesque term for a courtesan. Respectable ladies were not even supposed to acknowledge their presence and gentlemen did not admit they knew of such women in front of respectable ladies.

However, Jane also finds herself making the acquaintance of one of these women in order to solve the murder mystery.

Barron uses Austen’s actual family history to add color and flesh to her version of Jane, and succeeds nicely. She does not really attempt to imitate Austen’s literary voice; rather, she writes how she feels Jane Austen might have written in her diary.

She portrays Jane as forthright and honest, as indeed, she probably was.

“Jane and the Barque of Frailty” is not a complex book. It is a good mystery with frequent flashes of humor. This is Barron’s eighth Jane Austen mystery and she has a good grasp on her genre. It’s a good book for a chilly fall evening, to be taken with a cup of cocoa and a helping of the suspension of disbelief.

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