by Faye Jones Everyone knows that the ideal Victorian woman was supposed to be the angel of the house, providing a calm, civilized oasis for her husband when he returned from the harsh world of business and intrigue. Contemporary critics have recently expanded this definition, arguing that the Victorian wife was more like the manager of a small business than a household ornament; still, life had to be particularly stifling for any woman whose interests lay outside the home. Consider the predicament of Emily Bromley, the heroine of Franklin author Tasha Alexander’s debut thriller, And Only to Deceive. Her mother is pressuring her to get married to the right sort of man (i.e, one with money and social standing). Mainly to get out of her mother’s house, Emily does marry the first acceptable suitor—Philip, the Viscount Ashton, a man with a title, money and property. Also, luckily for Emily, he’s a man who loves to hunt. Shortly after their honeymoon, he goes on safari in Africa with some friends. When he dies there, Emily, who barely knew her husband, is more relieved than saddened: a widow has much more freedom in Victorian England than a single woman. She decides to pursue her own intellectual interests for the first time in her life, leading her to the study of the ancient Greeks, a passion her late husband shared. Consider the predicament of Emily Bromley, the heroine of Franklin author Tasha Alexander’s debut thriller, And Only to Deceive. Her mother is pressuring her to get married to the right sort of man (i.e, one with money and social standing). Mainly to get out of her mother’s house, Emily does marry the first acceptable suitor—Philip, the Viscount Ashton, a man with a title, money and property. Also, luckily for Emily, he’s a man who loves to hunt. Shortly after their honeymoon, he goes on safari in Africa with some friends. When he dies there, Emily, who barely knew her husband, is more relieved than saddened: a widow has much more freedom in Victorian England than a single woman. She decides to pursue her own intellectual interests for the first time in her life, leading her to the study of the ancient Greeks, a passion her late husband shared. At this point Emily’s life takes several unexpected turns. First, as she reads The Iliad and studies the antiquities that Ashton donated to the British Museum, she finds herself belatedly falling in love with her own husband and grieving his loss. This love becomes more painful when she begins to suspect that Ashton was aware of—and perhaps even part of—a scheme to fake pieces in the British Museum. Her life becomes even more complicated as two of Ashton’s good friends enter her life: the mysterious Colin Hargreaves, whom she suspects is a participant in the forgery scheme but whom she also finds attractive, and Andrew Palmer, who asks her to marry him. She is also suddenly given hope that Ashton may still be alive. And Only to Deceive is an entertaining debut. Experienced mystery readers will probably find the plot fairly predictable and will easily discern which men should and should not be trusted much earlier than the protagonist does, though this predictability shouldn’t detract from the reader’s enjoyment. Alexander is particularly good with female characters. As the protagonist, Emily chafes against the strictures of Victorian society, which demand that a woman must go from her mother’s house to her husband’s with no life of her own. In fact, Emily is not long a widow when her mother begins to hint that she needs to start looking for her next husband, so she’ll be ready to marry when her mourning period is over. Though Emily’s mother is a bit of a stereotype, the female supporting characters are also entertaining and provide a spectrum of the options available for upper-class women in the Victorian period. Emily’s best friend Ivy is proud of her traditional role as a young wife, although it’s telling that she eagerly participates in helping Emily solve the mystery of Ashton. Emily’s new American friend, Margaret Seward, has radical ideas about women’s roles, has earned a college degree and outrages the stuffy British when she recommends that Emily learn to read ancient Greek. And Cécile du Lac, an older Frenchwoman, has a kind of freedom and worldliness that further cause Emily to chafe against her mother’s definition of womanhood. Cécile broadens her world by introducing her to salons and lunches with scandalous Impressionist painters. After learning more about her late husband, Emily imagines their evenings spent discussing and arguing over passages from Homer. Her realization, after reading her husband’s journal, that she may have missed the love of her life is quite moving: “I closed the book and placed it on the table beside me. For a moment, it felt as if I had been reading a particularly satisfactory novel in which the heroine had won the love of her hero. But I was the heroine, and the hero was dead, dead before I had even the remotest interest in him. I started to cry, softly at first, then with all-consuming sobs that I could hardly control.” But when she receives information that Ashton might be alive, her joy is mixed with trepidation: the husband she’s fallen in love with may be not be real, after all, but a product of her own desires. Though Emily’s mother is a bit of a stereotype, the female supporting characters are also entertaining and provide a spectrum of the options available for upper-class women in the Victorian period. Emily’s best friend Ivy is proud of her traditional role as a young wife, although it’s telling that she eagerly participates in helping Emily solve the mystery of Ashton. Emily’s new American friend, Margaret Seward, has radical ideas about women’s roles, has earned a college degree and outrages the stuffy British when she recommends that Emily learn to read ancient Greek. And Cécile du Lac, an older Frenchwoman, has a kind of freedom and worldliness that further cause Emily to chafe against her mother’s definition of womanhood. Cécile broadens her world by introducing her to salons and lunches with scandalous Impressionist painters. The ending of And Only to Deceive hints that this may be the beginning of a new series, and it would be a welcome addition to the subgenre of the Victorian mystery. Alexander has clearly done exhaustive research about the Victorian period, but she doesn’t overwhelm readers with details that detract from the plot or the characters. And Emily Bromley is such an appealing character that readers will want to follow her to new mysteries as she discovers new loves, and herself.