No dull spots

Most stories, especially murder mysteries, have backstories. What happened before the murder, or as in Peter Heller's Celine, what has brought the hero to this point? How a writer handles backstory is one measure of that person's gifts as a storyteller.

Reading The Anatomist's Wife, Anna Lee Huber's first Lady Darby mystery (2012), on the strength of one very favorable review, I was most struck by how skillfully this author handles backstory. The murder happens on the very first page, so there is no prologue setting the stage for the murder. Nor, afterward, is there a long flashback, or even a short one. There are no interruptions in the narrative. Rather Huber fills in the blanks gradually, almost on a need-to-know basis.

Most of those blanks have to do with our title character, Lady Kiera Darby herself. She is a young widow whose husband, after an arranged marriage, was a man who dissected corpses and insisted that Kiera, because of her artistic ability, illustrate in detail those dissections. This came to light after his death. Even male participation in human dissection was controversial in the early 19th century, but the involvement of a woman was considered downright shocking, and after the murder of Lady Godwin at Kiera's sister's estate, Kiera is deemed by many of the houseguests to be the prime suspect.

Yet because of her knowledge of human anatomy, she is asked to assist a rakish Sebastian Gage in investigating the murder until the proper authorities can be brought to the scene. (The novel has an interesting discussion of the difference between a rake and rogue.) She detests the handsome, womanizing Gage at first (though we know she will eventually fall in love with him), but she agrees, and they make a good team. He possesses the charm for getting witnesses and suspects to reveal what they know, while Kiera has the ability to put pieces of the puzzle together.

Huber's story moves seamlessly along, the suspense building gradually. There are no lapses where the reader is tempted to cry out, "Get on with it, already!" The denouement goes on for four chapters, more than 40 pages, and this may seem excessive when we already know the murderer and that Kiera is saved. Yet there are still questions to be answered, and Huber makes these final pages fly by as quickly as any of the others in this novel.