The good. The setting : Regency London is beautifully recreated. You can almost feel the dampness on your skin and hear your steps on the cobblestone while you squint in the gaslight, trying to see through the dense fog that permeates everything. With an attention to details that would have made Dickens proud, Harris brings back to life every alley, every poor suburb , every deserted church, painting the story with dark hues that make it even more compelling. 
 The mystery: the author conceived a convincing plot, the gruesome murder of a young actress used as the mean to reveal the intrigues of London politics, the ambiguity of of Whigs and Tories machinations during the Napoleonic wars artfully recreated in a story that is both gripping and original. As the protagonist, you'll end up suspecting everyone and the truth will really surprise you. 
 The bad. The characterization: Sebastian St Cyr is an enough charming protagonist but he's also so stereotyped! A dark, tormented nobleman, animated, unlike his peers, by a noble attitude towards the poor, he's also gifted with an almost supernatural hear and sight (the author is anxious to clarify that these unbelievable characteristic are result of a rare genetic condition but still..); clever and courageous he's more a romantic hero than a amateur detective, which leads us to the second problem of the novel: the romance. 
 I've only one word to describe the love story which accompanies the main plot: bleah! The two star-crossed lovers, opposed by class division and by the father of the protagonist, come out directly from a cheap romance novel, their conversations predictable and the description of the sex scenes almost laughable. 
 To be honest, the author has a generic problem with conversations: the characters speak all in the same way, their different sex, personality or social standing indistinguishable, with the notable exception of Tom the urchin whose street accent is convincingly reproduced (as we said Harris made her history homework thoroughly) but even him seems sometimes a bit too clever and sophisticated for an illiterate street child. 
 The author fails especially in describing men's thoughts; in fact those have often some feminine quality not much realistic. For example we often hear male characters laments the condition of abused women, it's actually the author's voice we are hearing (I'm not saying that men are indifferent to the matter, but they usually show a different perspective, while the author attributes them thoughts that we could almost define feminist). 
 The writing style is in general quite flat and devoid of personality; for sure it is correct and erudite in some ways but it lacks in imagination and in spontaneity and Harris' attempts to a witty dialogue are not always met with success. 
 Anyway, for the most part i enjoyed the reading and the mystery surely captured my attention, the protagonists, even if stereotyped, are not unlikeable, so I think I'll try again with the second volume of the series.