When a ghost, on the verge of the final death, warns Alexia of a threat on the Queen’s life, Alexia Woolsey, far advanced in her delicate condition, is thrust into a mystery that will lead her deep into the her husband’s pack’s darkest secrets of betrayal and treason.

Heartless is the fourth book of the Parasol Protectorate Series and in this outing Ms. Carriger shows strong plotting and development talents that seemed missing, to this reviewer, in her last outing, Blameless.

Alexia finds herself neck deep in old murder plots, treason, her deceased father’s more interesting dalliances, and the impending birth of her first child. Compounding her troubles are a newly spawned werewolf in love with a vampire, and a distraught and distracted Madame LaFoux .

The plots moves quickly, with Alexia chasing down clues despite the pleadings from her husbands pack that some secrets are best when concealed, even from the Alpha’s mate. The Climax of this novel is sharp, well defined, and exciting. As an aspiring writer I have an unfortunate habit of trying to deconstruct stories as I read them, trying to work out the direction of the plot and major elements.  With Heartless I, along a number of readers I’ll wager, followed Ms. Carriger’s trail of breadcrumbs right into the waiting oven. I saluted her when the reveal of the plot occurred, like a well turned magic trick, she didn’t cheat the reader once, but left it to our own assumptions to lead us astray.

Of course I have a quibble, I always have a quibble don’t I? I doubt that the author has experienced a serious structure fire. Twice in my life I have been close to a large blaze. The first time as a youth when a neighbor’s home burned and I watched in horror and fascination. Homes on ether side a good fifty or more feet away had their pain blister, bubble, and burn. This was the flames from one smallish house, burning without spreading, hardly anything like a warehouse burning.

The second time was in firefighting training in the U.S. Navy, where, along with other trainees, I entered a compartment burning with fuel oil and fought the blaze. Truly exciting and something I even considered as a profession. I feel confident in saying that Ms. Carriger’s depiction of a major fire is somewhat at odds with how fires and the air around fires behave. Quite simply, one would not pilot a lighter-than-air craft above or near a raging inferno. However, this is a minor flaw and one I suspect will be unnoticed by the vast majority if readers.

Heartless is a fun and exciting read, well worth the time and money.