When Falcons Fall (Sebastian St. Cyr Series #11)

by C. S. Harris

Overview

Sebastian St. Cyr is drawn into a murder investigation in a deceptively peaceful English village in this gripping historical mystery from the national bestselling author of Why Kill the Innocent.

Ayleswick-on-Teme, 1813. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, and his wife, Hero, have come to this deceptively peaceful Shropshire village to honor a slain friend. But when the body of a young widow is found on the banks of the river Teme, the village’s inexperienced new magistrate turns to Sebastian for help. Sebastian soon realizes that Emma Chance was hiding her true identity, and she was not the first beautiful young woman in the village to be murdered. Also troubling are the machinations of Lucien Bonaparte, the estranged brother of the megalomaniac French Emperor Napoléon. Held captive under the British government’s watchful eye, Bonaparte is restless, ambitious, and treachero's.

Home to the eerie ruins of an ancient monastery, Ayleswick reveals itself to be a dark and dangerous place with a violent past that may be connected to Sebastian’s own unsettling origins. And as he faces his most diabolical opponent ever, he is forced to consider what malevolence he’s willing to embrace in order to destroy a killer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451471178
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Series:	Sebastian St. Cyr Series , #11
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	221,505
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.17(h) x 1.02(d)

About the Author

C. S. Harris is the national bestselling author of more than two dozen novels, including the Sebastian St. Cyr Mysteries; as C. S. Graham, a thriller series coauthored with former intelligence officer Steven Harris; and seven award-winning historical romances written under the name Candice Proctor. A respected scholar with a PhD in nineteenth-century Europe, she is also the author of a nonfiction historical study of the French Revolution. She lives with her husband in New Orleans and has two grown daughters.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for When Falcons Fall
 
“Harris’ talent for character development, polished prose, and accurate, Regency-era details makes this eleventh or any of the previous 10 an easy starting point for newcomers to the Sebastian St. Cyr series...Psychologically atmospheric like Imogen Robertson’s Westerman and Crowther mysteries, with the skewering social wit of Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, this is historical mystery at its best.”—Booklist (starred review)
 
“An engrossing tangled mystery and astonishing tale about a tragic search for identity. An excellent choice for St. Cyr fans and readers of historical mysteries.”—Library Journal
 
“Strong...[an] intricate murder puzzle.”—Publishers Weekly
 
Praise for the Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery Series
 
“This riveting historical tale of tragedy and triumph, with its sly nods to Jane Austen and her characters, will enthrall you.”—Sabrina Jeffries, New York Times bestselling author
 
“Sebastian St. Cyr is everything you could want in a Regency-era nobleman-turned–death investigator: uncannily clever, unwaveringly reserved, and irresistibly sexy. The entire series is simply elegant.”—Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author
 
“Thoroughly enjoyable . . . Moody and atmospheric, exposing the dark underside of Regency London.”—Deanna Raybourn, New York Times bestselling author

From the Publisher

01/11/2016
Harris’s strong 11th Regency whodunit (after 2015’s Who Buries the Dead) takes nobleman Sebastian St. Cyr to Shropshire in 1813. Two years earlier, Sebastian learned that he was a bastard. Recently, he met Jamie Knox, who may have been his half-brother, but Jamie was shot dead in London by someone who was aiming for Sebastian, and Sebastian has now taken it on himself to deliver a present to Jamie’s grandmother in the village of Ayleswick-sur-Teme. There he’s recruited by the callow local squire, Archie Rawlins, after a woman’s body is discovered in a meadow. The presence of an empty bottle of laudanum near the corpse leads the constable to consider the death self-inflicted, but Archie has his doubts, which Sebastian is able to validate. The victim is identified as Emma Chance, a widow who just arrived in the village. The presence in the area of Napoleon Bonaparte’s renegade brother Lucien enhances the intricate murder puzzle. Agent: Helen Breitwieser, Cornerstone Literary. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 02/15/2016
When Emily Chance's body is discovered near the Shropshire village of Ayleswick-on-Teme in 1813, the local squire calls on Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, to investigate the suspicious death. Sebastian soon discovers that the widow was not what she pretended to be and several people had motives for her murder. Emily's search for her mother's rapist might have upset the local aristocrats. Or she might have accidentally discovered local smugglers at work or French agents passing messages to an exiled Lucien Bonaparte. It is up to Sebastian and Hero, his intrepid wife, to figure out which secret killed Emily, before it destroys them, too. VERDICT Harris's 11th series installment (after Who Buries the Dead) is both an engrossing tangled mystery and astonishing tale about a tragic search for identity. An excellent choice for St. Cyr fans and readers of historical mysteries. [See Prepub Alert, 10/4/15.]—Marlene Harris, Reading Reality, LLC, Duluth, GA

Library Journal

2015-12-23
Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, takes on his 11th case when he and his wife investigate an apparent suicide. Emma Chance was a young widow who came to the quiet town of Ayleswick-on-Teme to sketch the local buildings. But when the son of Lucien Bonaparte, younger brother of the emperor, discovers Emma's body next to an empty bottle of laudanum, local magistrate Archibald Rawlins calls in Devlin. Rawlins is young and new to his position, and he knows that Devlin, who's in the neighborhood with his wife, Hero, has worked with Bow Street before (Who Buries the Dead, 2015, etc.). Devlin establishes that the young woman was smothered to death, but before he can figure out who did the deed, the murder of a government agent further complicates the case. While Devlin is investigating the two killings, he's also trying to solve the mystery of his own life by discovering who his father was. He passes as the son and heir of the Earl of Hendon, but he knows he's the issue of his mother's affair with another man. His search gives him something in common with Emma, who came to Ayleswick to learn about her own parentage. And her fate is eerily similar to that of two other young women who supposedly killed themselves. Devlin doesn't rule out the suspicious presence of Lucien Bonaparte, supposedly estranged from his more famous brother and a houseguest of the gracious Lady Seaton, whose son had fallen in love with Emma. While Hero is researching the devastating effects of the loss of the local communal land, she helps Devlin with his investigation, even at her own peril. A long-ago fire, a house party that led to tragedy, a missing sketchbook, a quotation from Hamlet ripped from the book of the parish vicar, and the sinister presence of a gibbet further entangle the couple and complicate Devlin's personal quest. Another complex, well-researched tale shows that the protagonist and his progressive wife don't suffer the boredom of everyday domesticity.

Kirkus Reviews