Don't Look Back by Amanda Quick

When we last left Lavinia Lake and Tobias March, they had gone into the business of investigations together. But now, Lavinia's past as a mesmerist comes back to haunt her when a visit from an old friend intrudes on her peace at home.

Howard Hudson is also a mesmerist, returned from America to set up shop in London. With him is his new wife, Celeste, also a practitioner of mesmerism. But Lavinia takes a decided dislike to Celeste when she finds Celeste flirting with Tobias. Later on, however, Celeste is murdered, and her bracelet stolen, and this forces Lavinia back into her former world of mesmerism.

To begin with, Howard says she was having an affair, but that he did nothing, hoping it was merely a passing fling and that she would grow bored with her lover. On the night she was murdered, they were to attend a gathering given by another mesmerist, but she begged off because of a supposed indisposition and stayed home. It was while he was at the gathering that Celeste was murdered.

But more to the point, now that she is dead, Howard is assumed to hold a piece that Celeste had stolen, a Roman antiquity- a bracelet known as the Blue Medusa, set with a strange blue cameo carved with the head of Medusa. Celeste was supposedly involved in its theft, and now that she is dead, everyone believes that he has it from her. But he doesn't, and he is afraid that anyone looking to gain the bracelet will be coming after him, and assume that he has it when he doesn't know the slightest thing about it.

While Lavinia accepts Howard's story at face value, Tobias is more convinced that Howard is after the necklace that Celeste stole for himself- and he's just one of many after it. With the only clue to Celeste's killer the man's cravat around her neck that was used to strangle her, the two of them will have to trace Celeste's connections. and the discovery that she was building her own life and reputation in mesmerism... one that didn't include her husband. As Lavinia and Tobias's suspicions run counter to each other, their disagreements pull them further apart, only for the passion they share to pull them right back together almost immediately afterwards. But can they find the true killer, and the necklace, without coming to blows?

Another excellent romance with an associated mystery- and another series that presages the Arcane series of novels- only with a series of ongoing characters. Once again, we don't get the traditional Happily Ever After- but we're getting closer to it for the main characters, and their supporting characters as well. The story here is mainly the mystery, and the increasing separation between Lavinia and Tobias. Only their frequent physical connections (i.e. hot sex) bring them back together.

It's nice that both characters end up being both somewhat wrong as well as somewhat right about the solution to the mystery of the death of Celeste. I don't like it when the man is always right and the woman always wrong, nor vice versa- what better way to show they work better together rather than apart if each is somewhat wrong and must defend their ideas from their partner, who may end up being right?

Still, the ending may leave you wanting that Happily Ever After and wondering how long the two can go without sealing the deal and being married. But there is one more book in this trilogy. Sadly, this book and the third (Late for the Wedding), didn't hold me to my seat as much as Slightly Shady, though I'm not sure why- maybe that the characters are so familiar with each other that the wit and barbs don't have quite the same Zing. In any case, it sort of came off as weak tea compared to Slightly Shady. I'd recommend it, but don't buy it- read it from the library.