I’m a big KJ Charles fan so it was inevitable that I would read this book one day. I read it this weekend and I had a great time, with a couple caveats.
Aaron is a police detective in London in the 1920s. He is told about a graphologist, Joel, who can decipher people’s personalities from their handwriting with impossible accuracy. Aaron is sure that Joel is a charlatan or a con artist of some description and becomes obsessed with working out how Joel does what he does. The first 50% is taken up by this. Initially this put me off my stride as I thought the mystery plot would kick in sooner but it doesn’t: that comes later.
We find out early on that Joel has a ‘criminal’ history – he did two months in prison for an ‘indecent proposal’. While he doesn’t advertise his queerness to the general public, there is something about Aaron that provokes Joel into flirting at Aaron quite a bit. Aaron is tightly buttoned up and doesn’t flirt back. He wouldn’t dare – he’s a policeman. This builds some quite lovely tension between the two. There is an intensity to their connection that’s a lot of fun to read.
Joel has a limb difference – his left hand was shot during WW1 and he lost the hand. His feelings about his prosthetic are complicated. The sex scenes adapt to Joel’s limb difference and Aaron’s responses show a deep acceptance of Joel as he is.
As with all KJ Charles novels, the historical detail is rich and makes for a very immersive experience as a reader. For example, the discussions of how WW1 veterans were treated at the time made me consider the England of that time in a different light.
The mystery plot kicks in at around 60% but things stagnate almost immediately. Because it happens so late in the book, I won’t take you through it here, but I will say that there are no clues, no movement in solving the mystery until one of the characters takes decisive action around 80% in. So the pacing is a bit off. Once that decisive action is taken, the plot accelerates significantly.
For a romance novel, Joel and Aaron don’t spend a huge amount of time together before professing their love for one another. I get that given their circumstances (and the mystery plot) that it’s tricky to get that time together and stay safe, but the romance felt a bit rushed to me. It is possible that this might be a “me” problem as I recently read a trilogy by KJ Charles in which the romance arc takes three books to reach fruition. So perhaps it is quick in comparison only. Nevertheless, it is something that my mind snagged on while reading.
Do I recommend this book? Absolutely I do. It is good, but it doesn’t reach the heights of KJ Charles’ other books. The mystery brought the story momentum to a lull, and I wanted more than the limited time Joel and Aaron spent together, but Charles’ writing is always compelling, particularly in the way the characters move around in a world with such deep and specific contextual details. I probably sound a bit disappointed, and I am, but I don’t want that to stand in the way of you picking up this book.
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I’ve read everything by KJ Charles, most titles multiple times. ‘Copper Script’ rewards a re-read as one can pick up various mystery plot clues quite a bit earlier in the story after, shall we say, the lid has come off. I don’t think Charles has an equal in the historical realism of her work, so for anyone interested in early 20th century Great Britain from the perspective of non white, non straight, non aristocrats I strongly recommend.
‘Copper Script’ worked for me on multiple levels, not least Aaron’s growth from hostility/skepticism and profound internalized homophobia to acceptance/empathy and self-forgiveness.
I could agree with the grade if we are ranking KJ Charles books on a separate scale. Compared to your average romance novel she’s so much better that practically everyone else is failing. So overall she’s always the best, but for me this is not *her* best.
Mostly it’s a me thing: I just don’t like a cop hero. I mean, I can and do read and enjoy plenty of books with cop or military heroes, and I get that there’s a rich historical and literary paradigm to explore there, but it’s …not my favorite. Fwiw Aaron is great and he’s trying to fix the system from within and politically I trust Charles more than anyone I can think of offhand.
Part of it is that it feels a bit rushed, although if I have one complaint with her writing it’s that her books end at all. And yes, I love how tight her writing is, so it’s entirely unfair of me to complain that her books are too short, but here we are.
One thing I’d disagree on is that I think she puts a lot of breadcrumbs in early. It’s easy to overlook the clues to the overarching mystery especially if people (me, people always = me) find a mystery inevitably less interesting than a romance. So I liked this more on a reread, because I could see the way the plot was woven together that I had missed/ignored/not cared about initially.
Also, it reminds me a bit of Jackdaw, but not so angsty, and the magic in this is very minimal. There are a lot of elements that remind me of her other books, and this is on me for rereading them incessantly, but as a result it felt insufficiently new.
And the villain is too convincing. He’s just so awful, and realistically so. I knew it was all going to work out in the end and seeing him taken down is *immensely* cathartic, I’m not saying it was a bad choice or that the payoff isn’t there, just that my personal reading of late needs some exxxxxtra escapism levels.
KJC has become an autobuy for me. Could you note the trilogy mentioned above?
I think this is one of the lowest rating I’ve ever seen for a Charles; interesting!
@Cathy
It’s the Will Darling stories starting with Slippery Creatures. Be warned, they’re phenomenal and you’re going to want to read all three in quick succession. Enjoy!
For Cathy A Staerkel: I’d guess the trilogy is the Will Darling Adventures (Slippery Creatures, The Sugared Game, Subtle Blood). FANTASTIC, every one of them, esp on audio!!!