Lady Thalia and the Case of Clephan
N. Cormier and Emery Joyce
History, detective, romance • Two hours • Choice-based • Web-based
Another entry in their Lady Thalia series, featuring the titular gentlewoman British thief. But, ah! Lady Thalia is a detective, now, no longer a thief, while a new thief has arrived to cause some mayhem.
The enemies-to-lovers trope is one of my favorites, and it looks like this one won’t disappoint. The theater setup in the cover art (with curtains and two sets of the comedy/tragedy masks) makes me wonder how deep the deception goes. For whatever reason, it reminds me of the recent Nintendo release Princess Peach Showtime, which includes a Dashing Thief Peach and also features the constant costume-swapping that I associate with gentlemen/-women thieves.
And since we are speculating, here, let us speculate about who Clephan could be. I could only find three references to this name on Wikipedia: two James Clephans (one journalist/antiquary/poet and one Royal Navy officer) and an E. Clephan Palmer, author/journalist/parapsychologist. Of these three, the most interesting is undoubtedly the psychical researcher.
E. Clephan Palmer, among other things, helped solve the Oscar Slater case that released Slater 20 years after his wrongful conviction. He was also interested in spiritualism, ultimately concluding that while most mediumship/séances were frauds, telepathy could exist.
Perhaps Lady Thalia has to solve a case involving this new thief (who, on second thought, is likely the one named Clephan). But the thief ends up arrested for a heist that wasn’t even his—and isn’t that a sad way to lose the game? So it’s up to Lady Thalia to surreptitiously break her enemy out of prison so that he can get the heist—and subsequent arrest, from her of course—that he deserves. They are aided by a telepathy device, but that is all of the communication between them. An escape-the-room game in which you are not the one escaping the room.
TLDR: prison escape so that she can be the one to arrest him…or steal his heart…or arrest his heart (cardiac arrest?)