Love—and Murder—Austrian Style

No one can accuse Tasha Alexander of resting on her past literary success. In fact, no one can accuse Alexander of resting at all. In the past three years she’s published four novels, including her latest, A Fatal Waltz: A Novel of Suspense. That’s a lot of writing, especially for an author of historical fiction known for its accuracy and close attention to detail.

The Franklin writer, though, is on a roll. With each successive work, her writing has become cleaner, tighter and sharper in both wit and tone. The third in Alexander’s highly successful series starring the Victorian beauty and sleuth Lady Emily Ashton, A Fatal Waltz comes less than a year after its predecessor, A Poisoned Season. (Plus there was that other book Alexander published last year, the movie-turned-novel Elizabeth: The Golden Age.) With A Fatal Waltz, Lady Emily Ashton is as independent as ever, and when the husband of her best friend is accused of murder, she promises to uncover the truth, even if it means traveling to Austria to do so.

Here, against the backdrop of a snow-covered Vienna, is where Alexander sets the majority of the story. The location proves ideal, in Emily’s words, “an ornately beautiful place.” The Ringstrasse, “a series of wide, circular boulevards lined with grand buildings,” appear to her as “prettily decorated cakes set among parks on a tree-lined cobbled street.” She visits its cafés, spends time drinking hot chocolate and conversing with poets and artists. She is taken with the city and its charms.

But Emily, like her creator, can’t rest either. Determined to exonerate her friend, she seeks the acquaintance of anarchists and empresses alike. She engages in battles of wit and subterfuge and bargains for key information. She finds that it isn’t only the life of her friend that’s in danger, but her own as well.

Then there’s the romance. Unlike other authors of the genre, Alexander doesn’t include a large dose of serious bodice-ripping along with her murder and intrigue. Long, deep kisses are about as far as she ventures, at least in what she’s willing to describe in detail, but that doesn’t mean there’s no love and sex at all. Because there is. A lot of it. In fact, along with solving mysteries, Lady Emily Ashton has a few questions about love she needs answered. Where does great passion come from? How can one simply quit loving another? What’s the proper reaction when meeting your fiancé’s ex-lover?

Her fiancé, Colin Hargreaves, is one of the most sought-after bachelors on the continent. Though he and Emily’s relationship is a passionate one, he is a man with secrets of his own. In Vienna, Emily is told by the Count Von Lange (the husband of Colin’s former mistress): “Everyone here has a lover, Lady Ashton. It may offend your English sensibilities, but there is no use in pretending otherwise.” Emily isn’t offended so much as surprised at such openness. But seeing her fiancé’s sophisticated and beautiful ex, the Countess von Lange, unnerves Emily all the same, shaking her normal confident manner. The woman is more than able to match wits with Emily, and she shares a past with Colin that Emily may never be able to understand. And she begins to wonder whether she can really trust Colin—something she has never questioned before.

One of Alexander’s strengths as a writer is dialogue. Her characters do battle with witty repartee, elevating their exchanges to the level of art. Love, though, requires more than flippancy and sharp retorts. As the painter Gustav Klimt tells Emily, “Love is not a static thing…. You have him now, and that should be enough. Don’t worry about what came before or what will come after.” But Emily does worry; she wants to know if love is something that can be contained, a force to turn off and on at will. “There’s no controlling love,” the painter says. “It comes when it comes and goes when it goes.” If she can’t accept its terms, he says, “Close your eyes, Fraulein. You’ll need to.”

Turning away—whether from a friend in need, a mystery to solve or a fiancé’s love—is not in Emily’s nature. She’s a woman bent on leading her own life on her own terms, and Vienna is a testing ground for her. There she faces real danger: Both her own life and Colin’s are threatened more than once. And in love, trust can be a tricky road to navigate. In the end, how she manages and what she learns along the way are just as much a part of the mystery as the murder she sets out to solve.