Unmasking Sin
by Mary Lancaster
Dragonblade Publishing, 2021

Unmasking Sin, the third book on Mary Lancaster’s “Pleasure Gardens” series, opens, fittingly enough, on the Maida Pleasure Gardens. Masked couples dance on the lantern lit lawn and, alone, on a table with no other chairs, Lady Rebecca Cornish, also known as the Black Widow, watches them. She, in turn, is watched by Ludovic Dunne, a solicitor who has been hired by the relatives of her dead second husband to investigate her.

Lancaster wastes no time making us doubt Rebecca’s innocence: both of her abusive husbands died as a result of their own excesses and the rumors of her poisoning them were started by her second husband’s relatives, who want control of her young son Tom, along with his inheritance. Shunned by Regency London high society, cut off by her parents who disapproved of her second marriage, harassed by her in-laws, the lonely Lady Rebecca comes to the Maida Gardens “where she could be anonymous and part of society in a way she could control.”

However, it seems someone is trying to hurt more than just her reputation. She suffers two robbery attempts in the same night: the first as she is leaving the Gardens and two thugs try to steal her purse and the second in the middle of the night, when someone tries to rob her house. Luckily both fail: she fights off the first with her rock-filled purse and the help of Dunne, who had been following her, and the housebreaker is chased off by her loyal servants.

Dunne concludes his investigation and presents his report of her innocence to his employers, who are irate that he didn’t fabricate evidence to the contrary. He leaves the employ of these moustache-twirling villains and determined to help Rebecca, not only because of his love of justice, but also because of the obvious attraction between them - this being a romance novel after all.

At first she refuses his help: a very sensible thing to do, considering he had been working for her obviously-evil in-laws. But he enlists the help of a client, the Duke of Dearham, who, along with his sisters, helps to rehabilitate her reputation, and keeps watch over her house, looking for the burglar. Soon both endeavors are successful: the ton stops snubbing Lady Cornish and the reason for the persistent attempts at robbery is uncovered.

As expected, they fall in love and help each other. Not only Dunne helps Rebecca to get rid of her horrible in-laws, but she helps him to bring the man who framed his brother for treason to justice - a subplot that is introduced almost as late in the book as in this review.

Unmasking Sin is a fun Regency romance with some mystery thrown in. Its protagonists are really good and the antagonists truly monstrous, but the secondary characters add the necessary shades of gray to both the glamorous world of the upper class and the slightly seedy Pleasure Gardens. Fans of the genre will have a smile on their face through the whole thing.

—Carolina Siqueira is a young Brazilian living in Barcelona.