A Vengeful King Rises (House of Croft) by
Sophie Barnes Format: eARC Source: author Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Genres: historical fiction,
historical mystery,
historical romance Series: House of Croft #1 Pages: 492
Published by Sophie Barnes on July 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website,
Amazon,
Barnes & Noble,
Kobo,
Bookshop.org,
Better World Books Goodreads The only thing more lethal than his need for revenge, is the woman who's tasked with bringing him down.
Adrian Croft dreams of quitting the shady business he stands to inherit, of settling down, and of raising a family free from a life of crime. But when tragedy strikes, this fanciful dream is destroyed. All he wants now is revenge. His anger, however, threatens to cloud his judgment, making it harder for him to recognize danger when it approaches in the form of a beautiful woman.
Trained for covert operations as part of a secret government program, Samantha Carmichael's mission is to give British law enforcement a reason to prosecute the most powerful man in the country. But when common sense and duty begin to blur, can she remain steadfast in her goal, or will her loyalties shift as she gradually loses her heart to the one man she cannot afford to love?
One series, one couple, and the brutal challenges they must face
If you like What Angels Fear, Silent in the Grave, and Murder on Black Swan Lake, you’ll devour Sophie Barnes’ thrilling new series.
Buy A Vengeful King Rises and start this adventure today!
My Review:
The vengeful king that rises in this first book in the House of Croft series is Adrian Croft, the new ‘King of Portman Square’. It’s a position that Adrian never wanted, but has now been thrust upon him – willing or not.
The ‘King of Portman Square’ – at least when that powerful but unofficial title was held by his father or any of the Crofts who came before him, is a title of ill and dangerous repute. A repute that Adrian vowed to set aside after the death of his father.
The Crofts have controlled most of the criminal underbelly of London – if not all of Britain – for generations. During his father’s lifetime Adrian Croft became all too acquainted with everything dirty and dangerous that his father owned – because he was the one who visited each and every establishment to mete out his father’s justice.
Adrian wants to walk the straight and narrow, and for the family to make and maintain its fortunes through legal enterprises instead of gambling, prostitution, and blackmail.
But there are forces raised against his plan in all quarters. There’s a serial killer targeting young women of the aristocracy, killing any that he believes are only pretending to be chaste and virginal. He leaves his victims with a slit throat and a note attached to their corpses with one word – WHORE.
Scotland Yard can’t seem to find the killer, the pressure from above is mounting, and a decision is made to go after Croft – not because he’s the guilty party in THIS crime but because bringing down the vast Croft criminal empire will divert attention away from their inability to stop the gruesome murders.
The government sends in one of their best and most covert agents, Samantha Carmichael, part of a cadre of young female orphans trained as spies in case Napoleon had managed to invade Britain. Her job is to get close to Adrian Croft by any means necessary, find where he keeps his secret blackmail files, and procure rock-solid evidence of his criminal activities.
Even if she has to bed him and/or wed him to make it happen. Even if they both manage to take leave of their senses and lose their hearts in the process.
Escape Rating A: I picked this up because the author is one that I read whenever she has something new – and this book is very new indeed. Meaning that if you are expecting one of her signature frothy Regency romances you’re going to be surprised. A lot. And be utterly captivated and compelled.
This series opener worked well for this reader, because the House of Croft series is what you’d get if two of my favorite historical mystery series, C.S. Harris’ Sebastian St. Cyr and Andrea Penrose’s Wrexford & Sloane, had a book baby – possibly midwifed by Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series. St. Cyr and Wrexford & Sloane expose the gritty, grimy underbelly of the glittering Regency, take place in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, all of their heroes are dark and brooding, and all of the relationships begin on a knife edge of secrets and lies, distrust and betrayal. While Maiden Lane, although set a century earlier, dives deeply into the same mean streets where the House of Croft holds sway.
But St. Cyr, Wrexford & Sloane and the House of Croft work from different positions. Sebastian St. Cyr is an aristocrat who operates in the halls of power, of which he is not a member, quite, at least not yet., but certainly will be upon the eventual death of his father the powerful and well-connected Earl of Hendon. Wrexford focuses more on scientific advancement and the kind of technical and industrial espionage that leads to grandiose promises and economic crashes. Although both began their secondary interests in investigation after being falsely accused of crimes, they are otherwise completely legit.
Adrian Croft is none of the above. He has no title, but has a great deal of mostly illegally obtained wealth. He has power but seemingly no check on it. He doesn’t merely expose the Regency’s dark underbelly – he has the ability to control it.
Which means that each of these series may be set in the same time and place but they are not looking at it from the same direction.
Adrian comes to his investigation of the serial killer from the perspective of a victim. His young unmarried sister was one of the murderer’s kills. Not because she actually had sullied her reputation but rather because someone put her in the frame in order to force Adrian to take back the reins of the Croft criminal empire in order to hunt down her killer.
That nefarious person is still hiding in the shadows. Although now that he has achieved his objective I can’t help but wonder when we’ll see him again so that loose thread can be tied off – possibly into a hangman’s noose – in a later book in this series.
On the other side of this book’s equation there’s Samantha Carmichael. Because she is not, by any means, a typical Regency heroine. And yet, she’s not anachronistic. That Britain might create a spy program for undercover agents who can hide in plain sight is not implausible. It’s a bit early, historically, but if it were top secret enough we wouldn’t know, would we?
Just as this case is a test for Adrian, it’s also a test for Samantha. Her government handlers expect her to obey orders and yet are forced to give her considerable autonomy in order to carry out her mission. And in that autonomy, and the training to think for herself that it requires, Samantha starts to see the truth about her circumstances and begins to wonder if Adrian Croft is even a quarter as bad as he’s painted.
It’s clearly all going to end in tears and betrayals. The question that will hopefully be explored in the next books in the series, A Tainted Heart Bleeds (October) and A Ruthless Angel Weeps (January) is the question of whether they can find a way past the events that brought them together, or whether they will shatter, separately, together and with shrapnel flying all around.
I’ll be waiting with the proverbial bated breath for the next book, but in the meantime there’s a prequel novella, A Wounded Bird Sings, to tide me over.
About the Author
USA TODAY bestselling author Sophie Barnes writes historical romance novels
in which the characters break away from social expectations in their quest
for happiness and love. Having written for Avon, an imprint of Harper
Collins, her books have been published internationally in eight languages.
With a fondness for travel, Sophie has lived in six countries, on three
continents, and speaks English, Danish, French, Spanish, and Romanian with
varying degrees of fluency. Ever the romantic, she married the same man
three times—in three different countries and in three different
dresses.
When she’s not busy dreaming up her next swoon worthy romance novel,
Sophie enjoys spending time with her family, practicing yoga, baking,
gardening, watching romantic comedies and, of course, reading.
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