A review by halffast
The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse: An Extraordinary Edwardian Case of Deception and Intrigue by Piu Marie Eatwell

4.0

I really liked the writing style of this book which blended semi-fictional, narrative scenes with an incredible amount of factual, painstakingly researched information. The first chapter really threw me off because it starts out with a narrative of a duke (not the one mentioned in the title) travelling to his inherited home, and I thought perhaps the book was actually fiction and I'd misread the synopsis. But then after a page or so it launched into an extremely detailed breakdown of the duke's entire family and the circumstances of his inheritance.

The book continues in this cycle of starting each chapter with a character (sometimes real, sometimes fictional) who is somehow connected to the mystery of the duke. The first two-thirds of the book is well paced and each chapter reveals a different twist to the story that kept Victorian England enthralled for years.

Sometimes the book delves into tangents that aren't directly relevant to the main storyline, such as extensive histories of minor characters, which got to be a little exhausting at times. I also felt the last third of the book, while it did a great job of wrapping up (most of) the mystery, to drag on a bit compared to the rest of the story.