This is James’ darkest hour, and there’s only one person he can turn to help. If James can’t prove his innocence, he’s done for, condemned to either hang or live forever in exile for crimes he didn’t commit. By the end of the first chapter, James gets his opals, but also is thoroughly implicated in the gruesome murders. This being a KJ Charles book, there’s a murder, or rather a double murder. James’ judgment is further clouded because his quarry is a gorgeous opal necklace, and he is obsessed with opals. He is not at the top of his game, though, rattled by seeing Susan recently and feeling left out now that Jerry is happy with Alec and trying to go on the straight and narrow. James is a bit of a black sheep among the staid and titled Vanes, to say the least.Īt the start of the book, set in late fall of 1895 and a couple of months after the end of Any Old Diamonds, James is going solo on a jewel theft. We also get to hear echoes of the lives of Richard and David, the heroes in A Gentleman’s Position, reverberating in James’ life. I was happy to catch up Jerry and Alec, though, and with many of the Sins of the Cities characters, especially Justin, Susan’s adoptive father, and other members of Susan’s found family.

It is not strictly necessary to have read any of the previous books I mentioned as Gilded Cage works very well as a standalone. Thus, Gilded Cage is set in the same universe as the other two series, and connects them both. Templeton’s real name is James Vane, and he is the great-nephew of Richard Vane, the leader of the “Ricardians” in the author’s Society of Gentlemen series. Gilded Cage is their story, past and present, and one that I was very much looking forward to reading. Susan was the engine of the riveting plot twist in that book, which is the first in the Lilywhite Boys series and features a duke’s son, Alec Pyne, and a jewel thief, Jerry Crozier, as the two heroes.īy the end of Any Old Diamonds, it was evident that Susan and Templeton Lane, Crozier’s partner in crime, had a long and fraught history. Susan “Sukey” Lazarus has been a favorite character of mine since I first met her as the sharp-eyed 12-year-old “medium” apprentice in An Unnatural Vice, the second book in the author’s Sins of the Cities series.Īdult Susan, who is bisexual, reappeared nearly two decades later as the friend of one of the heroes in Any Old Diamonds, bent on revenge and just as perceptive.

Heroine going through a miscarriage, mostly off page.

An Unnatural Vice by K.J. Charles