3.5 stars ( )

I was intrigued by the blurb on the back of this novel - 'A beautiful woman. An unrequited love. An excuse to murder' - and so borrowed a copy from the library, even though I hadn't even heard of Edward Marston's Redmayne mysteries, let alone read any of them. Well, I won't be bothering with the rest after this.

Set in seventeenth century London after the Restoration, The Painted Lady, about a beautiful and much sought after young woman who sits for a portrait to please her new husband, only for said husband to be murdered in his own garden, could have been a colourful and clever mystery. It isn't. I was expecting the lady of the title, the preposterously named Araminta Jewell, to be strong and enigmatic, perhaps hiding a secret past or a flawed personality, but she is described throughout by vapid adjectives like 'serene' and 'spiritual', and turns out to be exactly that. Modest, sensible, pure, good natured, and in love with her old and dull husband. No hidden layers there, then. Even the detective, an architect named Christopher Redmayne, is straight up and down, with 'an elegance, respectability and air of wholesomeness' that even impresses the murderer! And Redmayne's assistant, the local constable, is so much the puritan that he practically qualifies for sainthood, objecting to everything from nude paintings to marital infidelity and gratuitous displays of wealth. Boring!

But not only are the characters bland and lacking in shades of grey, the mystery is also conventional and the solution decidedly obvious. I kept reading in the hope that perhaps Araminta would turn out to be less - or more - than the virtuous maiden everyone thinks she is, but no. The murderer was indeed one of the 'villains', the motive had been discussed at length throughout the story by the real killer and the red herrings, and justice prevailed in the end. Yawn.

The moral of the story? Never judge a book by its blurb. ( )