While reading A Stroke of Malice, Anna Lee Huber’s eighth novel in the Lady Darby Mystery Series, I couldn’t help but laugh at a line spoken between characters to the point of “this isn’t like the events of the first book”. The reason being that the two books are very similar but alas, they are not the same.

The circumstances are similar – we have a large number of people coming together in celebration, a body is found, the guests want to leave but they shouldn’t as the investigation gets underway. We even have a few of the same core characters from The Anatomist’s Wife in attendance as well as some shared themes but I will refrain from spoiling too much. But in A Stroke of Malice, there are differences which make it both its own novel and a tricky one to place at that.

There’s a lot going on with this case and, simultaneously, nothing. We have circumstances surrounding the victim that mean they can’t be identified for a very long portion of the novel, so many characters keeping secrets and withholding information that the story goes in circles, the fact that Kiera and Gage are stuck in a large castle with these people while the investigation is ongoing and such a lack of evidence and information that they’re largely working on assumptions and conjecture all the while Kiera is around the six month mark of her pregnancy.

The main plot doesn’t seem to be the case at all, instead, it follows the Twelfth Night party (which does sound very fun and I would love to be a part of), a little excitement with the start of the investigation, an event occurring around the middle of the book which was very interesting, some sibling scraps and emotional outbursts, and then last 60 pages or so of actual progression in the case that brings us to the climax. When so much of the attention isn’t on the case, it seems safe to assume that the tension falls flat and the pacing is slow. While the latter is the case, the former isn’t so much. The emotional tension we get from Kiera in this book (unlike in An Artless Demise) keeps the story from falling flat. Her inner turmoil, and more-than-occasional external turmoil, paired with the wrought tension coming from the household, seems to be the combatant forces keeping us engaged until the answers arrive and tension floods to the actions of the key characters involved. It shouldn’t work, but I can’t help but think it does.

I certainly wouldn’t replicate it nor do I see this working a second time (third if we’re taking The Anatomist’s Wife as the first instance of such a plot structure). Not only does this only work because of Kiera’s emotional state at this stage in her pregnancy, but this family are so secretive and protective of each other yet so close to erupting that to echo this in a latter book would completely fail. The themes within this book are so closely tied to the overarching storyline too, giving it that support to stand, and themes can only be focused on every so often before they get overused and stale. Well done Anna Lee Huber for pulling this off but I hope I don’t see it again.