The Agency: The Body at the Tower – A little Victorian indulgence

If everyone has a literary indulgence – a genre, author, or type of book that we are drawn to over and over again, I believe mine might be the Victorian mystery. Of course, I'm always good for some fantasy, ogres, witches, time travel, and adventure, but the Victorian era has been a weakness for as long as I can remember. Maybe there's something intriguing about the concept of hiding weapons or other clever devices in mounds and mounds of fruffy skirts?

The Body at the Tower, the second book in the Agency series by Y.S. Lee, was just the right kind of Victorian indulgence I needed a few weeks ago. The first book in the series, A Spy in the House, was a lovely treat that I listened to last summer. The series revolves around Mary Quinn, a woman in her late teens, now approaching 20, who lived on the London streets after her mother died and her father disappeared. Half white and half Chinese, the much younger Mary lived as a thief and often dressed as a boy in order to survive. She was smart, resourceful, and quick.... and sentenced to hang after she got caught breaking into a house.

After she was sentenced, she was spirited away before reaching the jail by a woman claiming to be a warden. In truth, this woman was one of the mistresses of an unusual school for girls. There, Mary received an excellent education and learned to be a lady. Then one day she was invited to work for the school, which she discovered was really a front for an agency of women spies. After her first job was an enormous success, she trained in other fields not necessarily associated with being a lady – martial arts, cryptology, and all the skills she would need to be a proper spy.

In this second book Mary is given a task that will test her physically, mentally, and emotionally as she goes undercover as a young boy on the site where they are building the new parliament and the tower that will eventually house Big Ben. A man has died in the tower, and there are rumours that the worksite is cursed or haunted. Mary's slight frame and experience pretending to be a boy make the job a bit easier, but the conditions make her confront her past and the wretched conditions she came from.

As expected, a little light romance ensues when James Easton, a young engineer who crossed paths with Mary in her first assignment, is contracted to provide an independent assessment of the worker's death and the problems on the site. Mary, or Mark as she is called in her disguise, is assigned to assist him.

Y.S. Lee brings Victorian England to light with original detail and description that comes from her education in Victorian studies. She captures the period perfectly and avoids the stereotypes we often see in favour of period details that few of us have encountered before.

This was a great book and a great listen. The style of the book is one that lends itself well to the audio format, making it easy and enjoyable to sit through. Reader Justine Eyre does an excellent job with this series. She refrains from emotional extremes, lacing her voice instead with a restrained urgency, which perfectly mirrors Mary's desire for control over her situation and the world around her.

I listened to The Body at the Tower on MP3 disc as it wasn't available from Library to Go. You can listen to a sample at Brilliance Audio here. The third book, The Traitor in the Tunnel, is due to be released this spring.

The Details:

The Agency: The Body at the Tower, (7 hrs, 39 min), Brilliance Audio, (2010)