Book Review - The Agency

I was lucky enough to score an ARC of Y. S. Lee's second book in The Agency series (The Body at the Tower) last Fall.  Shame on me for not reviewing it here.  When I saw the third book, (The Traitor in the Tunnel), I scarfed it up.  Now all I have to do is read the first book.

Fans of Victorian England will eat this series up. The period details are well drawn and in the third book the readers even get to meet Victoria herself!!  Here's the set-up.  Mary Quinn is a half-Chinese, half- Irish orphan who is rescued from a life of crime by The Agency, London's only all female private investigation operation.  Mary gets a good education, room and board and training in detective skills.  In The Body at the Tower,  she investigates a scam at an expensive building site and meets James Easton, a dashing engineer.

In The Traitor in the Tunnel, Mary is assigned to Buckingham Palace to solve the mystery of small thefts from the Blue Room.  While she is on assignment in the palace, a drinking buddy of the Prince of Wales is murdered in an opium den and the suspect just may be Mary's long-lost father.  Mary discovers a secret tunnel - not on any of the palace maps - that leads to the new sewer tunnels and a project overseen by....James Easton!  Romance, intrigue, an attempt on the Queen's life and an attempt to find and save her father keep Mary very busy in this third outing.  And there is a promise of more to come and very interesting developments at the end of this book.