Genre: Historical, Romance, Mystery
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
About The Book
‘Lord Clearwater, the Larkspur Academy has forged a bond among its men that will last long after they have left us and made their own way in the world. You are to be commended for the enterprise, but you should not be surprised by it.’
Barbary Fleet, December 1891
Henry Hope lies in a coma, and Lord Clearwater’s hunt for his mother’s secret treasure is on hold. But when a new clue comes to light, Clearwater and the academy men resume their greatest adventure. It is also to be their most dangerous.
With murderous enemies behind, the unknown ahead, and a warrant out for Clearwater’s arrest, no-one is safe. Loyalties and friendships are tested as the men face harrowing confrontations, a war of attrition in the national newspapers, storms, gunfights and death.
Will love and friendship be enough to secure the lives and futures of Lord Clearwater and his crew? Can they solve the riddles in time, and will anyone ever know the meaning of the seemingly unlockable riddle? Behind four points ’neath gifted crook, the light awaits for those who look…
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The Larkspur Legacy follows on directly from ‘Starting with Secrets’ and is the culmination of both the Clearwater and Larkspur mystery series. It is not necessary to have read the Clearwater Mysteries, but to get the best from this ‘end of season finale,’ you’re advised to read both, the Larkspur Mysteries in particular, and to read them in order.
With themes of friendship, bromance, male love and revenge, the story combines historical fact with fiction. As with all of Jackson Marsh’s mysteries, the novel contains humour, love and action, while offering the reader the chance to solve the clues with the cast of disparate, well-drawn characters.
“This is a book that could have been written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dan Brown.”
The Review
Take a look at the cover of this one (even on an e-reader). There’s a boat sailing in rough seas. The boat is the Legacy, purchased with that name by Archer Clearwater to take himself and his crew on an adventure the likes of which none of them have ever experienced before. The boat and its crew also act as a metaphor for the larger legacy at stake in this book, the last of the Larkspur mysteries.
Archer’s late mother Emily and her best friend Dolly, engineered this voyage in order to give their beloved child and godchild the adventure denied him by his brutish father. What they don’t anticipate, however, is how many enemies the young Lord Clearwater has accumulated simply because he is young and rich and successful—successful at doing something of which many people disapprove. What we, the readers, see as heroic, others see as criminal. That dichotomy runs deep in this series, and it is the flashpoint for the final rush to save Archer and his crew from ignominy and failure.
The crew of the Legacy is symbolic, too. Other than Andrej, who is part of Archer’s original group of loyal brothers, they are all Larkspur men, part of the non-academic academy that Archer creates to give smart young men a chance that society took away from them for no good reason. Andrej himself has always been something of an anomaly in the Clearwater world. He is set to marry Lucy Roberts, cook at Larkspur Hall, and also to inherit an Austrian baronetcy from his father. His place in the legacy and on the Legacy is critical.
The adventure is hair-raising, and the enemies are sinister and totally bad men. The comparisons between Archer’s men and those that seek to destroy them are made more than once. Even that certitude doesn’t lessen the suspense at all. Jackson Marsh does a fantastic job working the emerging technology of the late 19th century into the plot. It brings the history to life, but it also highlights the gifts of the ragged boys that Archer’s school has rescued and transformed. In this book the social and cultural barriers are all tumbled down. Love and loyalty, courage and bravery are what will save the day.
Of course the secret and the hidden treasure are at the emotional heart of this tale. If you pay attention, you might figure it out before Lord Clearwater does.
Five stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
