I stumbled across Cut To The Quick in a used book store in the early 2000's and enjoyed it enough that I tracked down the other three novels as well. The influence of a number of authors is evident in Ross' work- Dorothy L. Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie to name a few- but while her books (and their hero) may be inspired by these earlier writers, they are also well written, original, and interesting. Julian Kestrel is an English man-about-town with a rather murky past. He gets involved in his first murder investigation because the victim is killed at a country estate where he is staying while he acts as best man in a wedding, and his valet (a reformed thief) is the chief suspect. Cut To The Quick (1994) was followed up with A Broken Vessel (1995), Whom The Gods Love (1996), and The Devil In Music (1997). Ross also wrote a short story featuring Kestrel- The Lullaby Cheat- which was included in the mystery anthology Crime Through Time (1997) but I haven't read that.
I'm taking a break from M.M. Kaye for now but am still on a historical mystery binge, so I'm going to revisit these ones; it's been a long time and the plot details are pretty fuzzy now. Oh- I also finished Leviathan Wakes... more on that later.