Tasha Alexander. Behind the Shattered Glass. New York: Minotaur P, 2013. Print.
Behind the Shattered Glass is a traditional murder mystery set in Victorian England, which seems to be a popular time period for murder mysteries. It would be easy to see Hitchcock turning it into a film like Rebecca or Christie turning it into a play.
By page four the murder victim has crashed into a room through glass doors and immediately expires. So begins the mystery. The room is on the estate of Colin and Emily Hargreaves, and the victim is the Marquess of Montagu, the lord of a neighboring castle.
Much of the story is told from the first person perspective of Lady Emily, an amateur sleuth. (This is not the first volume of her stories). The third person portion of the mystery tells of what is going on “downstairs,” covering the staff at the marquess’s own estate.
It turns out that while the marquess was quite sociable and popular among his peers, he also had a dark side. He was a cad who ruined a number of women from lower classes. He had an affair with the daughter of the local vicar. He promised to marry her, of course, but had become engaged to a rich American heiress.
His cousin Lady Matilda grew up on the Montagu estate and appears to be the heir, but it is complicated. The marquess has told Matilda that he prefers London and Matilda can continue living at the Derbyshire estate, but that changes when his fiancee has big ideas for renovating the place.
Obviously, his death has put an end to those plans, so Matilda makes her own, keeping more with the family tradition. However, soon a male heir, a distant cousin, appears with the rights to inherit the place. Rodney comes with his own ideas and a valet who is an American Indian that prefers sleeping outdoors in a tent.
There is also an Oxford classmate of the late marquess who seemed to be his best friend at school until he double crossed him. Not only did he copy his friend’s paper for another class, but then he accused his friend of plagiarism. Because he was a marquess, his version was accepted and his friend was expelled from the university.
In other words, there are any number of suspects. More, in fact, than Lady Emily can keep track of.
It also turns out that although Rodney, the heir apparent to the title, has spent most of his life abroad in Asia and America with some side trips to Africa, he and the vicar’s daughter are acquainted.
There is also some downstairs drama as Earl Simon Flyte, who has been visiting the Hargreaves, has taken an interest in the artwork of one of the maids at the Montagu estate. One of the other maids is clearly jealous and does what she can to make life miserable for her. Will Lily fall prey to Flyte as a number of maids and others fell to the wiles of the late marquess, or are the earl’s interests more esthetic and honorable?
As a curious subplot, Lady Emily tries to help her friend Lady Matilda disprove Sir Rodney’s claim. In investigating the Montagu family tree, she discovers a tantalizing diary of an 18th century ancestor that may put the whole family’s status in doubt.
There is a lot going on in this rambling setting. It is late Victorian, about the time of many of the Sherlock Holmes stories: there are horses, not automobiles, but homes are beginning to install electric lights, and it is possible to make a phone call from England to Germany. Mystery fans who enjoy Downton Abbey, Upstairs Downstairs, or the novels of Anthony Trollope will get a kick out of this tale.