This novel is like a cross between GK Chesteron's Father Brown mysteries and David Fincher's Se7en. I don't blame anyone who'd consider this an unforgivably facile and reductionist comment, but I've been grasping for a better way to describe the way FH Batacan is writing two different registers of the mystery novel and attempting to meld them in a single work. The reader is expected to reconcile the Latin-quoting, erudite Jesuit anthropologists Gus Saenz and Jerome Lucero with the frankly bile-churning descriptions of mutilated young boys that are left to rot amidst literal hills of garbage. There's a reason why the harrowing scene of a priest finding the body in Payatas is immediately followed by Father Saenz's sterile white and clean laboratory within the Ateneo de Manila premises. It's an audacious yet subtle juxtaposition of the pseudo-elevated life of the mind pursued by the Philippines' burgis class and the kind of criminal poverty that they (we) so carefully choose to unsee. 

The plotting itself follows familiar beats, and it bets less on the surprise whodunnit reveal and more on the inexorable unfolding of a tortured and torturing mind. This is the part where Se7en beats out Father Brown. When it was published by UP Press back in 2002 it was a mere sliver of a book, but the international version to be published by Soho Crime clocks in a 368 pages. Much of the real estate goes into creating a more substantial climax and denoument. I'm glad that this expansion does not lose Batacan's razor-sharp, journalistic writing and her knack for choosing the right details for more efficient devastation. Plus, she did away with that annoying patch of French dialogue in v1.0, which is an infinite win.

I don't think I can ever be objective about this novel, since I've formed a large part of my self-image around having loved its earliest iteration. My only takeaway is that I still loved it despite its familiarity, despite the weaknesses I see as a fan of the genre, despite the cruel distance imposed on it by time. Here's to hoping for its success leading to more books.

(It's really jarring as I read the review of some Westerners on Goodreads and Amazon, how they're pinging the story for its unrelenting depiction of gore, abject poverty, corrupt bureaucracy and I'm like... well.)

Setting this novel in the factory town of Leicester in the 1860s against the backdrop of England's industrialization is quite a bold authorial choice for an author playing within a genre that is over-enamored of its typical Georgian-Regency milieu. That choice is the first signal that characters in The Duchess Affair has other preoccupations aside from the approval of the ton. Socialist pamphlets! Sanitation Societies! Chess strategems! Mary Wollstonecraft namedrop!

The main characters convey raw, recognizable emotions and motivations within the contrived set-up of their meeting. Robert, the Duke of Clermont, has a lot of earnest vulnerability in him that happily doesn't devolve into casual misogyny masquerading as emotional baggage. And while the backstory for Minnie requires a lot of suspension of disbelief to accept, the smart, strategic unfolding of the mystery carried the plot ably to the end.

This type of novel is my prime argument as to why we should evaluate works of fiction within the bounds of their genre, as opposed to judging them against all works of literature. The Duchess War elevates the tropes of the historical romance while adhering strictly to its form, like a beautifully wrought contemporary sonnet. Yes, there is a happy ending. Yes, there is a surfeit of cravats and satin gloves. Yes, there are at least 3.5 sex scenes spaced out in appropriate intervals. But to complain about all those sign posts without acknowledging what sets it apart from the more mediocre iterations of the romance novel is akin to watching a stage musical and becoming outraged that Javert bursts into song.

(Sorry for using this as review as a my soapbox asklhfaldfha. I really enjoyed this.)