Review: Duke of Midnight

Duke of Midnight by Elizabeth Hoyt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

By day Maximus Batten is the stern young Duke of Wakefield, but by night he's the Ghost of St Giles desperately looking for the man who murdered his parents twenty years ago. He has spent his life trying to live up to what he imagines are his father's expectations of the Duke of Wakefield and doing everything within his power to remove the scourge of gin from London's streets. He needs a suitably genteel member of the aristocracy to marry and Lady Penelope Chadwicke fits the bill, no matter that he has nothing in common with her.

Artemis Greaves had an unusual but happy childhood until her twin brother Apollo was accused of murdering four friends and was bundled off to Bedlam rather than face a trial. Four years later Artemis is tarnished by her family's history of madness and is lucky to have a job as her remote cousin Lady Penelope Chadwicke's companion. Unfortunately Lady Penelope is rather shallow and thoughtless, she is determined that a beautiful wealthy heiress such as herself should marry a Duke, no lesser peers for her, and has set her cap at the Duke of Wakefield as he is young, handsome and wealthy as well as being a Duke. When challenged to go into St Giles and drink a glass of gin by an equally thoughtless young man she has no hesitation in wandering into one of the most dangerous areas of London, accompanied only by Artemis. When they are about to be attacked by a group of men they are rescued by a masked man in a harlequin costume - the infamous Ghost of St Giles.

Maximus has always overlooked the mousy companion that follows Lady Penelope around, but after finding the two of them wandering St Giles in the middle of the night he was astonished to see that Artemis was carrying a knife in her boot, the more he gets to know her the more fascinating he finds her, but marriage to a woman with insanity in the family is out of the question.

I liked this but I didn't love it. I hated the fact that Maximus called Artemis 'Diana' ALL THE TIME, I feel if you are naked with someone they should at least call you by your real name once. Also, I thought it was morally wrong for Maximus to ruin a young woman of quality that he had no intention of marrying and to continue an affair regardless.

Also I didn't quite understand why the man who murdered Maximus' parents suddenly reappeared (maybe I skimmed over that point and didn't realise what I'd missed), nor did I quite understand why he killed them in the first place. But maybe these issues are with me not reading closely enough.


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