A Question of Guilt

Intrigue. Mary Queen of Scots. Murder. Scandal. Oh my.

I read A Question of Guilt earlier this year thinking that this was going to be another royalty book that was more lackluster than excitement. Not to say that books with old royalty storylines do not hold my attention, but eventually they lose their steam with me. This added a little bit of variety to me.

First off, the narrator is someone who is not even connected to the court of Mary Queen of Scots. Janet de Ros is the wife of a wealthy merchant who is a bit too curious for her own good. Janet begins to ask questions regarding Mary’s trial and execution, taking it with her on a business trip from England to her native Scotland. The issue is still fresh, resulting in a tension between nations. Through Janet’s meddling, and lucky breaks in finding people who were associated with Mary and are willing to talk about what had happened, we get flashbacks to when Mary was alive. I liked the fresh take with this investigative plot. I feel like it was appropriate to have Janet be someone of high social standing in the regard of making it easier to find those sources via networking, and Julianne Lee is then able to create a different of danger and intrigue. By Janet investigating someone she should not, it adds societal pressure on her husband and her, as well as his business. I think there were moments as well, though, where I feel like it was an “of course” moment by having a woman investigate and meddle because that is so unsuspecting. “Of course” Janet has the marriage dynamic where she has more freedoms than other married women in that time period to be able to even take the investigating as far as she did. Within that dynamic, her husband allows her in as a teammate in his business where her thoughts and ideas have helped push the business forward, therefore she has those freedoms. It makes it more relatable to a more modern marriage way of thinking, where couples are a team who work together and depend on each other to get through life.

This was my book where the storyline is centered on Mary Queen of Scots, so I do not have something to compare it to for validity, or quality of characters in the flashbacks. She was portrayed as an innocent person in the whole scheme of things with only being guilty of falling for manipulative assholes, probably because the people Janet spoke to were Scottish, so there is a bias, but at the same time all of the flashbacks occurred in Scotland, so in the end it makes sense.

A Question of Guilt put a nice spring in my step. It was a quick read, entertaining, and it was a new topic for me, so all of those components created a more active reader in me. I would read this again, fer sure. If you want to check out A Question of Guilt, you can find it here.

8/10