Genre: historical mystery

A+ #BookReview: Murder at the White Palace by Allison Montclair

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Murder at the White Palace by Allison MontclairMurder at the White Palace (Sparks & Bainbridge, #6) by Allison Montclair
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Sparks & Bainbridge #6
Pages: 320
Published by Minotaur Books on July 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In post-WWII London, the matchmakers of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are involved in yet another murder.In the immediate post-war days of London, two unlikely partners have undertaken an even more unlikely, if necessary, business venture—The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. The two partners are Miss Iris Sparks, a woman with a dangerous—and never discussed—past in British intelligence and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a genteel war widow with a young son entangled in a complicated aristocratic family. Looking to throw a New Year’s Eve soiree for their clients, Sparks and Bainbridge scout an empty building—only to find a body contained in the walls. What they initially assume is a victim of the recent Blitz is uncovered instead to be a murder victim—stabbed several times.To make matters worse, the owner of the building is Sparks’ beau, Archie Spelling, who has ties to a variety of enterprises on the right and wrong sides of the law, and the main investigator for the police is her ex-fiancée. Gwen, too, is dealing with her own complicated love life, as she tentatively steps back into the dating pool for the first time since her husband’s death. Murder is not something they want to add to their plates, but the murderer may be closer to home than is comfortable, and they must do all they can to protect their clients, their business and themselves.

My Review:

Over the course of the Sparks & Bainbridge series, beginning with The Right Sort of Man, Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge have proven to have a very strange kind of luck. The sort of luck that has them tripping over murder victims – or in this case having a murder victim nearly drop on one of their heads. But that luck of theirs extends to not just finding the body – but also getting into the thick of the police investigation, involving themselves with the mob, AND, most importantly, figuring out whodunnit.

Up until this case, that luck has extended to emerging from each case with all of their friends, colleagues and hostages to fortune – as well as themselves – relatively unscathed at the end.

This case breaks the last bit of that streak, as the body that drops on Gwen’s head at the beginning leads to Iris’ mobster boyfriend near-death as the result of a gunshot in the middle. Center mass, in fact, but enough of a smidgeon of that luck kept that bullet from his heart. Not that recovery from a through-and-through shot to one lung is going to make his recovery a walk in the park – if he recovers.

Iris wants to murder whoever shot her man – but Gwen is there to keep her friend from going off half-cocked on a revenge spree. Leaving Gwen to do most of the investigation and surprisingly all of the derring-do in Sparks & Bainbridge’s very personal quest to figure out who murdered the body that dropped in the beginning AND who is doing their damndest to make sure that Archie Spelling is interred in a coffin beside him.

Escape Rating A+: I was up until 3 am finishing this, so an A+ it most definitely is. I tried telling myself I could finish AFTER breakfast, but myself wasn’t listening. I simply HAD to find out whodunnit!

This entry in the series represents a turning point, as well as a bit of trading places. Up ’til now, Iris Sparks, former spy or whatever secret things she did during the war for whatever secret agency, was always the intrepid and daring partner, rushing in where angels rightfully feared to tread.

Gwen Bainbridge, on the other hand, was the cautious and conservative half, fearing – rightfully so – that if they cocked too much of a snook at the conventions that she would be made to pay for it in ways that have hung over her head like the Sword of Damocles in the previous books in the series.

Their positions reverse here, as Gwen is now out from under the restrictions of both her late husband’s family AND the Lunacy Court, while Iris is searching for approval – or at least understanding – from her disapproving mother and Archie’s extended family – only one of which is EVER likely to be on offer.

The police don’t want to listen to either of them – which is par for the course. Not only do the coppers not enjoy being shown up by a couple of amateurs, but Iris’ relationship with a mob boss and Gwen’s partnership with Iris, her friendship with Archie, and the friendly relations she has with Archie’s gang, tar both women with the brush of criminality.

Also, the police don’t seem to be all that interested in investigating Archie’s shooting. They don’t care much if one mobster rubs out another – they’re only worried about the potential for mob warfare that seems likely to follow.

But the case itself isn’t so much about Archie as it is about Archie poking his nose in places that it doesn’t belong. It’s about the past – and not even Archie’s own. While Archie is fighting for his life in the hospital, and Iris Sparks is emotionally flailing about the potential loss of a future she wasn’t sure that she wanted until it was nearly snatched out of her hands – it’s up to Gwen Bainbridge to get to the bottom of the case that literally dropped on her head.

While the case does get wrapped, the story of Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge and the Right Sort Marriage Bureau screeches to a halt with the pop of a champagne cork as 1947 is ushered in on a tide of desperate hope and wild expectation.

This reader, at least, desperately hopes that the next entry in the Sparks & Bainbridge will drop on her head this time next year. It’s not merely a matter of expectation – I absolutely HAVE to know what happens next.

A- #BookReview: The Mummy of Mayfair by Jeri Westerson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Mummy of Mayfair by Jeri WestersonThe Mummy of Mayfair (An Irregular Detective Mystery #2) by Jeri Westerson
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Irregular Detective #2
Pages: 224
Published by Severn House on July 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Private investigators Timothy Badger and Benjamin Watson take on another unusual and baffling case in Victorian London when a mummy unwrapping party takes a chilling turn.London, 1895. Although their last high profile case was a huge success, private detectives Tim Badger and Benjamin Watson know they can't afford to turn down any work, despite financial assistance from their mentor, Sherlock Holmes.So when the eminent Doctor Enock Sawyer of St Bart's Hospital asks Badger if the duo will provide security for a mummy unwrapping party he is hosting, Badger doesn't hesitate to take the job. After all, how hard can guarding the doctor's bizarre Egyptian artefacts be? But with Doctor Sawyer running late for his own party, the 'genuine' ancient sarcophagus of Runihura Saa is unravelled to reveal the remains of . . . Doctor Sawyer! Suddenly, the pair are drawn into a new case that's stranger and twister than they could ever have imagined.

My Review:

The “irregularity” of the Irregular Detective series is in the person of one of its protagonists, Timothy Badger of the Badger and Watson Detecting Agency. Once upon a time, Badger was one of the “invisible” children who operated as Sherlock Holmes’ eyes and ears on the streets of Victorian London. In other words, Tim Badger was one of Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars.

But when Badger aged out – or grew up – out of the Irregulars, he still needed to make his living. Which is where his partner, jack-of-all-trades Benjamin Watson comes into the picture. Both from the “wrong side of the tracks” in the East End, without a shilling between them, they set up as private detectives in the mode of Badger’s former ‘Guv’, the Great Detective himself.

As seen in the first entry in this series, The Isolated Séance, after five years of struggle to keep body and soul together, Sherlock Holmes himself gave these ‘apprentices’ a bit of a leg up. Their perseverance was rewarded with rooms in Soho – several steps up the economic ladder from their previous lodgings and office – and a seemingly magical refilling box of money for expenses.

They’re doing well for themselves. It’s a lot of hard work and shoe leather – but their successes seem to outnumber their failures. They have as much work as they can handle – and even their own chronicler in the person of newspaper reporter Ellsie Littleton.

Which leads to this second sensational case, The Mummy of Mayfair. A moniker that seems ripped, not from the headlines, but from the titles of the penny dreadful fiction that Badger loves to read. Watson prefers the newspapers and scientific journals.

After all, someone in this partnership needs to keep their feet on the ground, especially with a case that has so much potential to ascend – or perhaps that’s descend – into flights of fantasy and mythology.

It begins with a mummy unwrapping party. An all too common event among the upper crust in the 1890s. It was the heyday of ‘Egyptomania’, with all of the implications of madness the word mania implies.

Badger and Watson were hired by Dr. Enoch Sawyer to provide security for his mummy unwrapping party. A party that takes an even more macabre turn when the mummy is finally unwrapped to reveal that it’s not the mummy of Runihura Saa. It’s the much more recent mummy of Dr. Enoch Sawyer – their client – who is clearly not going to be able to pay them for the job they are about to do on his behalf.

And the game is afoot!

Escape Rating A-: First, I loved this every bit as much as the first book in this series, The Isolated Séance. Second, I need to kick myself for not figuring out that the series title is a pun until now. I sorta/kinda thought the cases were “irregular” and they are that – from a séance in the first book to a mummy in the second. But it’s the DETECTIVES – or at least one of them – that are irregular. As in, the Baker Street Irregulars. 🤦🏻

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, what makes this case so much fun is the way that it blends the real with the fictional.

Mummy unwrapping parties were a very real thing in the 1890s – as shown in the painting below by artist Paul Dominique Philippoteaux circa 1890. The scene may seem macabre to 21st century readers, but such parties were all the rage in 1895, when The Mummy of Mayfair takes place.

Rage also being an important factor – at least in this particular case – as the ‘mania’ led people to strange rivalries and illegal behaviors – as humans are wont to do in the throes of a craze, fad, or mania. It still happens now, and humans haven’t changed all that much in just a bit over a century.

As much as the insanity of this particular mania turns out to be the impetus for the actions of the characters, what is making the series work are the characters and the way they manage to fit into – and take off from – the canon of Sherlock Holmes and ITS well-known and loved protagonists.

The best detectives, whether amateur or professional, are outsiders. It’s nearly impossible for humans to set aside their preconceived notions and biases in regards to people they know. A fact which very nearly sends the entire case on a wild goose chase, as one of the possible suspects is one of Badger’s former colleagues in the Irregulars.

But the triumvirate necessary to fill all of the roles that in the original canon were filled by just two changes the structure of the investigation even as it challenges the reader to see Holmes’ Victorian age from a considerably less lofty perspective.

Timothy Badger grew up in the East End, living by his wits and the nimbleness of his fingers. His accent clearly marks him as being of a “lower class” to the toffs among whom he now finds himself – and he has to grow into his role without giving up who he essentially is.

Benjamin Watson is a black man in a white world. The first thing that anyone sees when they meet him is the color of his skin. He has the intelligence and the drive to have been anything within his reach, but his reach in the late Victorian era is circumscribed by his race.

Miss Ellsie Moira Littleton is a woman in a man’s world. Much like Charlotte Sloane in the Regency-set Wrexford and Sloane series, Ellsie has been forced by circumstances to be self-supporting, and is on the outside of the society to which she was born. As an intelligent, educated, woman who needs to make her own way, she is also an outsider but with an entirely different perspective on the society of which she was once a member.

From its sensational beginning, the case is a deeply puzzling mess. Badger and Watson’s preconceived notions about their clients and their former associates, as well as their lack of knowledge of the precise ways the rich spend their time and money and protect their positions frequently send them haring off in the wrong directions – and we follow them eagerly even as they frequently caution each other.

As I’ve said frequently within these pages, I’m a sucker for Sherlock Holmes pastiches, and that’s why I initially started this series. Now I’m hooked! I’m really looking forward to the next book in this series, The Misplaced Physician, where we’ll finally get to meet Sherlock Holmes’ Watson, as Badger and his Watson will be on the case of rescuing him! It’s a good thing that investigative reporter Ellsie Littleton will be on hand to record the adventure, as the original Watson may be too embarrassed – or too injured – to write it up himself.

We’ll certainly see, hopefully this time next year!

#BookReview: A Ruse of Shadows by Sherry Thomas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: A Ruse of Shadows by Sherry ThomasA Ruse of Shadows (Lady Sherlock, #8) by Sherry Thomas
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Lady Sherlock #8
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on June 25, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Charlotte Holmes is accustomed to solving crimes, not being accused of them, but she finds herself in a dreadfully precarious position as the bestselling Lady Sherlock series continues.
Charlotte’s success on the RMS Provence has afforded her a certain measure of time and assurance. Taking advantage of that, she has been busy, plotting to prise the man her sister loves from Moriarty’s iron grip.
Disruption, however, comes from an unexpected quarter. Lord Bancroft Ashburton, disgraced and imprisoned as a result of Charlotte’s prior investigations, nevertheless manages to press Charlotte into service: Underwood, his most loyal henchman, is missing and Lord Bancroft wants Charlotte to find Underwood, dead or alive.
But then Lord Bancroft himself turns up dead and Charlotte, more than anyone else, meets the trifecta criteria of motive, means, and opportunity. Never mind rescuing anyone else, with the law breathing down her neck, can Charlotte save herself from prosecution for murder?

My Review:

A Ruse of Shadows is a fascinating study in contradictions. It’s a story about paying it forward, payback, and revenge served ice cold. It’s a yarn spun out of a tissue of lies and a truth that literally sets several people free. All the while it’s a game of three-handed chess that only one player understands is being played in 3D while both of the other players assume it’s being played in only two – and who consequently suffer the fate of those who assume.

This eighth entry in the Lady Sherlock series is also a bit of a caper story, as it begins, not at the beginning, but rather at what at first seems to be the end. Charlotte being in the midst of being questioned by the police in regards to the death of Lord Bancroft Ashburton in the immediate aftermath of his escape from the prison to which he had been remanded after his perfidy and treason were unveiled – by Charlotte and her friends – in the previous book in the series, A Tempest at Sea.

(This is a hint, by the way. Theoretically the books in this series could be read as standalone, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not just that the endings of each book flow into the next, but that there’s a vast, interconnected and rather sticky web between all of the cases – at least so far. I’m glad I began at the beginning with A Study in Scarlet Women – and I think many readers are or will be as well.)

What makes the plot of this particular entry in the series so sticky – and so convoluted – is that it seems as though every past case is tied into this present one – particularly the most recent pair, Miss Moriarty, I Presume? and A Tempest at Sea.

It’s those cases that give Charlotte her motives for both facilitating Bancroft’s escape AND murdering the man – at least in the minds of the police investigators.

But Charlotte has a bland, banal and utterly blameless answer for every single one of their questions – at least on the surface. While she relates the story that she has prepared, the reader, however, is presented with the truth behind that fiction and the story switches between Charlotte’s innocuous tale and a vast and far-reaching plot of much more interesting but considerably less innocent truths.

Along with a few switches in perspective from Charlotte’s part of the story to accounts by some of her other agents in her grand plan to thwart Bancroft’s and Moriarty’s equally grand plots to trap her and her friends – one way or another.

Each of her enemies believes that they have her – and their counterpart – firmly within their grasp. The police believe that they have her “dead to rights” as well. But, particularly when it comes to outsmarting ‘Sherlock’ Holmes their beliefs don’t hold a candle to Holmes’ strategies, their intelligence, or the vast circle of friends and even frenemies willing to help them against any forces arrayed against them.

Escape Rating B+: I have consistently found this series to be fascinating and frustrating in equal measure – and this entry in the series is no exception.

On the one hand, as Bancroft, Moriarty and the police in the persons of Inspector Treadles and Chief Inspector Talbot all know that Charlotte is Sherlock is Charlotte, she doesn’t need to pretend to consult a fictitious brother – which certainly removes one of my chief sources of consternation with the series.

Charlotte does, however, make plenty of use of both male and female disguises – but then so did the original Sherlock. She has little need to protect her own supposedly delicate femininity – but is forced to kowtow to society’s restrictions and assumptions on behalf of some of the other women involved in the case. Still, it makes the story considerably less frustrating for the reader as Charlotte is finally able to just get on with the case by the employment of a suitable change of face and costume.

Howsomever, the way that this story is told, with its framing story of Charlotte pretending innocence to Chief Inspector Talbot while telling the reader the truth behind her bland answers – does occasionally get more than a bit muddled, a muddling that is not helped by the additions of Olivia’s point of view as Olivia’s part of this charade isn’t revealed until the end.

Which, admittedly, was exactly as it should have been, as Olivia is the chronicler of her sister’s cases.

This story is also a bit of a mirror image to Miss Moriarty, I Presume? in that this time around it’s Lord Bancroft Ashburton (the disgraced former Mycroft after the events of A Tempest at Sea) who holds Charlotte’s hostages to fortune even as he attempts to maneuver Charlotte and her friends into a trap with the more-than-willing assistance of Moriarty. Her enemies are not friends, but are willing to collude with each other to get her, as she’s been a consistent thorn in both their sides.

The case itself, as we finally get the full picture – was every bit as twisty and convoluted and purely confounding and compelling as this reader has come to expect in this series. At the very same time the corkscrews that those twists have turned themselves into feel like they’ve been winding and tangling since the very first book in the series – only because some of them have.

In the end, I found the case fascinating, even though the way the story got told felt like a bit of a muddle, particularly at the beginning. But when it came to the reveal at the end, the whole thing wrapped up marvelously and even though we’d seen most of how Charlotte got there she still had plenty of secrets left to uncover at the finish.

A finish which doesn’t remotely feel like an end to the series. I’m not sure what Charlotte and Company will be up to next – but I can’t wait to find out!

A- #BookReview: The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline WinspearThe Comfort of Ghosts (Maisie Dobbs, #18) by Jacqueline Winspear
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, World War II
Series: Maisie Dobbs #18
Pages: 361
Published by Soho Crime on June 4, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A milestone in historical mystery fiction as Maisie Dobbs takes her final bow!
Psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs unravels a profound mystery from her past in a war-torn nation grappling with its future.
London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion—the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Soon after a demobilized British soldier, ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, takes shelter with the group, Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners.
Maisie is deeply puzzled by the children's reticence. Their stories are evasive and, more mysteriously, they appear to possess self-defense skills one might expect of trained adults in wartime. Her quest to bring comfort and the promise of a future to the youngsters and to the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie’s first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental aircraft. As Maisie picks apart the threads of her dead husband’s life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true.
The award-winning Maisie Dobbs series has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers around the world, readers who are drawn to a woman who is of her time, yet familiar in ours—and who inspires with her resilience and capacity for endurance at the worst of times. This final assignment of her own choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie Dobbs and her family, but serves as a fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people of Britain at the close of the Second World War.
Over seventeen previous books in the Maisie Dobbs series, hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide have fallen in love with this fearless, compassionate woman—this final adventure not only ties up all Maisie’s loose ends, but also serves as a fascinating portrayal of life in Great Britain after the close of the second World War.

My Review:

As seems fitting for this final book in the Maisie Dobbs series, A Comfort of Ghosts begins with an ending. One of the towering – literally as he was quite tall – secondary figures in this long-running series, Lord Julian Compton, originally Maisie’s employer, once-upon-a-time her father-in-law, later and last her friend, has died, Leaving Maisie to mourn, to comfort his widow, to be the executor of his estate and to clean up his last act in the late war.

Sending a group of young squatters to her empty house in London, to protect some of Britain’s most hidden and secretive wartime operatives from a false charge of murder. They are a loose end, and entirely too many ‘boffins’ in the war offices have become so accustomed to death being the only tool in their toolbox to take care of such loose ends that they are willing to send four adolescents to the hangman for a crime that wasn’t really a crime that they had the misfortune to witness.

This final story of Maisie’s adventures shows her doing what she has always done best – discovering a problem and getting to the bottom of a situation that someone doesn’t want to be found while protecting as many innocents – and even some of the guilty – along the way.

That, in the middle of this investigation she has the opportunity to finally lay to rest the ghosts of her own past as well as bring her dearest friend back from the brink of disaster and help not one but two dear and deeply scarred veterans out of their very own pits of despair while searching for yet one more complicated truth hidden behind a scrim of convenient lies makes The Comfort of Ghosts, and the solace that Maisie has finally learned to take from her own, a perfect ending to the series.

Escape Rating A-: This story closes all the circles that were opened back in the very first book in this series, the titular Maisie Dobbs, finds all the dangling threads that have been left hanging through the course of EIGHTEEN BOOKS, and ties each and every one of them off. So it’s a book about endings.

At the same time, because of its setting, it’s also a book about beginnings. The series began in the years just before the opening of the ‘Great War’, when young Maisie became an under-housemaid in the household of Lord Compton at the age of thirteen. Maisie’s midnight raids of the great house’s great library were discovered by the mistress of the house, Lady Rowan Compton, and Maisie’s life took a different direction than it otherwise might, leading to all of the marvelous if sometimes fraught adventures and heartbreaks of the series.

But this story takes place in 1945. The second World War has just ended, the recovery and reconstruction has barely begun. Britain is no longer the seat of empire, and the U.S. – and Russia – have taken center stage as a new thing – superpowers.

Maisie and her generation of friends and frenemies are middle aged or older, retiring, returning to home and hearth, or lying dead on a battlefield from one war or the other. This last story, this reckoning of all her accounts, is her swansong.

Which is a hint and a half not to start the series here. It’s not necessary to real all of the previous 17 books to get into this one – I have a few I never got around to but probably will eventually – but this story has so much more resonance if you’ve read at least some and have gotten to know Maisie’s circle of friends and colleagues and contacts and the myriad ways that their lives have become interconnected over the decades.

For those, like this reader, who have gotten to know Maisie over the years and books, this story is a bittersweet delight. It also feels right that Maisie leave the stage at this historical juncture, as the world she knew is not the world that is to come – as we know and as hints are shown in the story.

But, in that desire to get every thread tied off with a neat bow and foreshadow the changes in the world as it will be, it may have lingered just a bit too long and found a way to tie that last bow just a bit too coincidentally. Your reading mileage may vary.

Still and absolutely all, a marvelous and utterly fitting ending to a captivating series, leaving this reader with both that smile because it happened and a tear or two because it ended.

A+ #BookReview: Fatal Enquiry by Will Thomas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Fatal Enquiry by Will ThomasFatal Enquiry (Barker & Llewelyn, #6) by Will Thomas
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Barker & Llewelyn #6
Pages: 293
Published by Minotaur Books on May 13, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Brimming with wit, atmosphere, and unforgettable characters, FATAL ENQUIRY reintroduces private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewellyn, and their unforgettable world of Victorian London.
Some years ago, Cyrus Barker matched wits with Sebastian Nightwine, an aristocrat and sociopath, and in exposing his evil, sent Nightwine fleeing to hide from justice somewhere in the far corners of the earth. The last thing Barker ever expected was to encounter Nightwine again—but the British government, believing they need Nightwine's help, has granted him immunity for his past crimes, and brought him back to London. Nightwine, however, has more on his mind than redemption—and as Barker and Llewellyn set out to uncover and thwart Nightwine's real scheme, they find themselves in the gravest danger of their lives.

My Review:

Most of the entries in the Barker & Llewelyn series, at least so far, begin with Thomas Llewelyn in some kind of VERY hot water, in the middle of a case that we haven’t yet seen the beginning of. Then his narrative winds back and we get to learn how he got into the pickle we opened with and the game is afoot.

This time around doesn’t seem like it starts in that ‘usual’ fashion, as Llewelyn and his ‘Guv’, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker, are sitting peacefully in their offices negotiating the precise time at which Barker will let Llewelyn go for his half-day off.

Which is when the situation goes entirely pear-shaped, and they are suddenly on the run after a coded telephone call.

It’s not until somewhere in the middle of that run for their lives that the reader figures out that this was the standard opener after all. Because this is a pickle that Barker and Llewelyn have been in since the very first book in the series, Some Danger Involved.

Barker’s old nemesis, Sebastian Nightwine, has merely been biding his time – off running his usual con games somewhere out on the fringes of the British Raj – waiting for the right opportunity to bring him back to London where he can finally finish Barker off – once and for all.

Or at least that’s Nightwine’s plan – a plan which Barker must thwart to preserve his life, his reputation AND especially the lives of all those he holds dear – even as he is aware that on one count, at least, he’s already failed.

Each believes that the other is a pawn in their long game. Llewelyn, on the other hand, is certain that he’s a pawn in both their schemes. None of them are aware that they are all being played for fools, and that there is a puppet master operating in the wings pulling ALL of their strings.

Escape Rating A+: I knew when I started this book that it would finally break the two weeks of mostly ‘meh’ reading that’s been happening around here. And it absolutely did!

But there was one story during that ‘meh’ that did rise above, and that was “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub”. You’d think that story and this book wouldn’t have much in common – but they actually do. Because underlying both stories, in spite of their very different genres, is a story about the excesses of empire, the lengths that those who are in charge or those empires will go to continue their expansion, and the desperation and necessity of those who stand in their way.

That it’s the same empire turned out to be utterly fascinating.

In this case, however, the sixth case that Thomas Llewelyn has written about his work and adventures with his boss and mentor, Cyrus Barker, the story starts out much closer to home when Barker and Llewelyn flee theirs in order to stay out of the hands of the police – who have been led astray, by a very roundabout route, by people with big dreams of empire and one man willing to exploit those dreams for his own gain.

A gain that is intended to secure Barker’s downfall and death. Poor Thomas Llewelyn is merely collateral damage in this chess game of a mystery, as Barker sets his lifelong adversary Nightwine up for a big fall even as Nightwine does the same to him.

Along the way, we – along with Llewelyn – learn a LOT more about Barker’s mysterious past. Because that’s where this case has its origins. At the same time we see the operations of the levers of power and privilege being moved by a con man running a game that is too tempting for even the savviest government officials to resist.

What makes the story rise to an A+, at least for this reader, was the delicious irony of the ending. Nightwine returns to London with deep, well-laid plans to eliminate Barker. Barker, forced to react rather than plan, still manages to maneuver Nightwine to what he believes will be his enemy’s downfall. It’s only after the results of that inevitable confrontation have been dealt with that Barker learns that both he and Nightwine have both been played by someone neither realized was even studying their board – let alone running it.

Someone who still has plans for Barker – or at least for Llewelyn – but only if this particular fly steps willingly back into the spider’s den.

I had a grand time with this entry in the series, so obviously I’ll be back to see Barker and Llewelyn try to get ahead of Jack the Ripper in the next book in this marvelous series, Anatomy of Evil, the next time I’m in the mood for murder – or just in search of a ripping good read!

A+ #BookReview: A Murder Most French by Colleen Cambridge

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: A Murder Most French by Colleen CambridgeA Murder Most French (American In Paris Mystery, #2) by Colleen Cambridge
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: culinary mystery, foodie fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: American in Paris Mystery #2
Pages: 272
Published by Kensington on April 23, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Postwar Paris is surging back to life, and its citizens are seizing every opportunity to raise a glass or share a delicious meal. But as American ex-pat Tabitha Knight and chef-in-training Julia Child discover, celebrations can quickly go awry when someone has murder in mind . . .
The graceful domes of Sacré Coeur, the imposing cathedral of Notre Dame, the breathtaking TourEiffel . . . Paris is overflowing with stunning architecture. Yet for Tabitha Knight, the humble building that houses the Cordon Bleu cooking school, where her friend Julia studies, is just as notable. Tabitha is always happy to sample Julia’s latest creation and try to recreate dishes for her Grand-père and Oncle Rafe.
The legendary school also holds open demonstrations, where the public can see its master chefs at work. It’s a treat for any aspiring cook—until one of the chefs pours himself a glass of wine from a rare vintage bottle—and promptly drops dead in front of Julia, Tabitha, and other assembled guests. It’s the first in a frightening string of poisonings that turns grimly personal when cyanide-laced wine is sent to someone very close to Tabitha.
What kind of killer chooses such a means of murder, and why? Tabitha and Julia hope to find answers in order to save innocent lives—not to mention a few exquisite vintages—even as their investigation takes them through some of the darkest corners of France’s wartime past . . .

My Review:

According to Julia Child, “The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

While Child absolutely did say that, she certainly hadn’t said it yet at in 1950, the time this second book in the American in Paris Mystery series takes place, directly after the events of the first book in this delicious historical mystery series, Mastering the Art of French Murder.

Julia Child is too busy learning French cooking, living her larger-than-life life in Paris AND at the beginning of writing her masterpiece, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, when this series takes place.

Meaning that Julia – as much as she steals every scene in which she appears – is not the amateur detective protagonist of this series, even if she is every bit as much an American in post-war Paris as her best (fictional) friend Tabitha Knight.

Tabi probably would not entirely agree with that opening quote from Julia. It’s not fear of failure that dooms so many of Tabi’s cooking forays, it’s the fear of disappointing – yet again – her two messieurs, her elderly grandfather and his partner, her adopted Oncle Rafe.

Tabi does, however, most definitely have a what-the-hell attitude, but it seems to be increasingly focused, not on cooking but on murder. Not committing them, of course, but solving them. It’s an attitude that is immeasurably helped by just how many corpses she seemingly trips over.

The way that corpses seem to follow in her wake, and her inability to ignore the clues that bubble up before her, unfortunately looks like it’s helping police judiciaire Inspecteur Étienne Merveille into entirely too many headaches, if not an early ulcer.

Because somehow, no matter how many times Merveille warns her away, when Tabi rushes in where even angels would fear to tread, Merveille is always on hand to rescue her.

Maybe Tabi is following Julia’s three-part plan for managing men after all – no matter how many times the lady protests too much otherwise.

Escape Rating A+: If you loved the first book in this series – and who didn’t? – you will run, not walk to get this second book because it’s every bit as charming as the first. If you still need a bit of convincing, I’m going to get right to that.

But before I do, if you haven’t read Mastering the Art of French Murder and aren’t sure whether you can start the series here – you can. Everything you need to catch up does get enough of an explanation to make it work. Howsomever, that first book is delightful and delicious so even if you do start here you’ll want to go there immediately afterwards!

Yes, this review is full of squee. It’s that kind of book and that kind of series.

This time around, Tabitha gets involved in the case not because she’s a suspect, but because the murder happens literally right before her eyes – as does the second murder. Also before Julia’s eyes as well, and she absolutely can’t resist egging Tabitha on whenever she falters in her determination the least little bit.

Which is pretty much true for Julia all the way around.

The case is a twisted puzzlement – but in it’s ever increasing list of victims and in its choice of methods. Increasing both Tabitha’s and the reader’s fascination is the way that the string of murders links back to the late war, the simmering resentments of the surviving Resistance fighters and the blot on the French psyche that the collaborators represent.

Then the whole thing dives into the catacombs. Literally as well as figuratively, and the secrets that are hidden among the bones – not all of which are ancient.

When her messieurs receive a beautifully wrapped bottle of pilfered, poisoned wine – just as the first two victims did, Tabitha throws aside her remaining qualms and cautions to throw herself into an investigation that gets her thrown into the pitch black darkness of the catacombs.

Tabitha rescues herself – which is definitely part of her charm for this reader – but she’s afraid she won’t be able to run across Paris fast enough to save her messieurs. Fortunately for Tabi, her apple didn’t fall far from the family tree – and Inspecteur Merveille has been following her a LOT more closely than she imagined.

Their relationship – whatever it might turn out to be – is one of the teasingly dangling threads left at the end of this book. The mystery gets tidily wrapped up, but nearly everyone in Tabi’s life seems to think that Merveille has a tendre for her that would be worth exploring.

If it’s not obvious from all the squeeing, I would love for there to be a third book in this series and possibly more. For one thing, I have to see if Tabitha continues to follow that three-part plan of Julia’s for managing men. Tabi has the first part completed, as she actually managed to feed the man a surprisingly edible – for her at least – Croque Monsieur albeit without the bechamel sauce. Step two in Julia’s plan is to flatter the man which should be easy enough to do as he just saved her life and is quite competent at everything she’s seen of him so far.

Tabitha should have plenty of opportunities as the series continues – which I am oh so hopeful that it will. Because it looks as if investigating murders is looking more and more like it’s Tabitha’s answer to one of Julia’s instructions, to “find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”

“Bon appetit!”

A- #AudioBookReview: The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ RozanThe Murder of Mr. Ma (Dee & Lao, #1) by John Shen Yen Nee, S.J. Rozan
Narrator: Daniel York Loh
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Dee & Lao #1
Pages: 312
Length: 8 hours and 24 minutes
Published by Recorded Books, Soho Crime on April 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

For fans of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films, this stunning, swashbuckling series opener by a powerhouse duo of authors is at once comfortingly familiar and tantalizingly new.
Two unlikely allies race through the cobbled streets of 1920s London in search of a killer targeting Chinese immigrants.
London, 1924. When shy academic Lao She meets larger-than-life Judge Dee Ren Jie, his life abruptly turns from books and lectures to daring chases and narrow escapes. Dee has come to London to investigate the murder of a man he’d known during World War I when serving with the Chinese Labour Corps. No sooner has Dee interviewed the grieving widow than another dead body turns up. Then another. All stabbed to death withg a butterfly sword. Will Dee and Lao be able to connect the threads of the murders—or are they next in line as victims?
John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan’s groundbreaking collaboration blends traditional gong'an crime fiction and the most iconic aspects of the Sherlock Holmes canon. Dee and Lao encounter the aristocracy and the street-child telegraph, churchmen and thieves in this clever, cinematic mystery that’s as thrilling and visual as an action film, as imaginative and transporting as a timeless classic.

My Review:

It can be considered both sad and ironic that Ma Ze Ren had left his native China in pursuit of fortune and adventure among the Chinese Labour Corps in the trenches of World War I, survived, immigrated to London and opened a successful shop dealing in Chinese antiquities – having seemingly attained all that he had originally sought – only to be killed in the midst of his shop by means of one of those self-same antiquities he intended to sell.

When they both served in the Labour Corps, Ma Ze Ren and several of his compatriots had come to an agreement with the man who served as the liaison between the Chinese Labour Corps members and the British officers who used them as cannon fodder, Judge Dee Ren Jie, that Dee would make arrangements to send their bodies back home if the chances of war required such service.

The war may be long over when this story opens in 1924, but that contract still holds Judge Dee, so he has come to London to take care of Ma’s final arrangements. But before he can even begin, Dee is taken up in the midst of a labor riot along with other Chinese men protesting for fair wages and treatment in a city that considers them something less than fully human.

Which is where the chronicler of this tale, scholar and author Lao She, comes into the tale. Dee needs to be out of jail before an enemy realizes that he has this nemesis in his clutches. Bertrand Russell wishes to help his friend Dee without getting his own name attached to this scandalous business.

And Lao She is bored out of his mind – even if he is unwilling to admit it to himself – spending his days teaching Chinese language and literature to students who have no love or care for the language or the people who speak it, merely a desire to get a leg up on their fellows in the commercial opportunities opening up in a modernized China.

Lao is supposed to be clandestinely exchanged for Dee – but Lao gives away the game with every move he makes and every word he’s not supposed to be uttering. So a prison break it is, with Lao, Dee and Russell scattering along with the rest of the prisoners.

But Dee still has a mission, Lao has acquitted himself well in the melee and has acquired a taste for danger and adventure he never realized blazed within him. Reluctant partners, resistant friends, together they will uncover not one but two murder plots in a fascinating tale that takes readers from the homes of the intelligentsia to the alleys of Limehouse – with a stop among the pioneers of the silver screen along the heights and depths of its way – only to arrive frantic and breathless at one of the first principles in any investigation:

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Escape Rating A-: The Murder of Mr. Ma was the highlighted review in the online mystery/crime review newsletter First Clue several months ago, and something about that review caught my attention and held it more than long enough for me to mark the title in Edelweiss as “Highly Anticipated” and immediately grab it when my anticipation was rewarded with the availability of an eARC and later an early audiobook.

(The above is a hint. If you love mysteries, subscribe to First Clue!)

The comparison in many reviews of this book are to Holmes and Watson, particularly the Holmes played by Robert Downey Jr. in the Guy Ritchie movies – because that particular version of Holmes is considerably more active than most.

As has been confessed before, I am a sucker for a Holmes pastiche, so I would have been interested in this book on that basis alone, but I think that quick comparison sells Dee and Lao and The Murder of Mr. Ma a bit short in this particular instance.

There is a surface resemblance in that Dee is the more active and experienced investigator – with or without resorting to the martial arts – while Lao, like Watson, is the newbie at this particular game and is tasked with creating a record of the adventure rather than necessarily figuring out the solution on his own. And if this combination appeals, Barker & Llewelyn are a bit closer analog than Holmes and Watson in more ways than the initially obvious.

What takes this story up another notch or ten is that both Dee and Lao were real historical figures – who never met due to having lived centuries apart. But Lao was a Chinese scholar in London during this period in real life, while Dee was a figure out of legend whose adventures were popularized by Robert van Gulik in the mid-20th century. (So if you think Dee’s name sounds familiar, that’s most likely the reason.)

Of course, what makes any mystery is the way the case itself is laid out and investigated, and that’s where this one draws the reader in its whirlwind every bit as much as Dee pulls Lao along in his wake. Because at first it seems as if the murder was a result of the prejudice and anti-Chinese sentiment that Dee, Lao and their countrymen face on every side in London in 1924, not helped at all by the popular “Yellow Peril” movies that play on and sensationalize the British fear of “the other”.

But the more Dee and Lao, with the able assistance and frequent succor of Dee’s friend Hoong, search for clues and motives, the less that simple but terrible conclusion feels like the entirety of the answer – not that it doesn’t underlay that answer but it’s just not the whole of the thing. Particularly as that answer is made even more elusive by Lao’s struggles with his pride and his naivete, and Dee’s ongoing attempts to extract himself from his opium addiction.

This is a mystery with layers surrounding layers, wheels within wheels, two investigators neither of whom are having their best day and criminals whose overweening pride finally gets in their way. And it’s marvelous.

The audiobook, narrated by Daniel York Loh,  was a delight, but as is so often the case, I switched to text near the end because I couldn’t figure it out either and I just HAD to know. I have two and only two quibbles with the whole thing. I REALLY wanted Lao to get over his mooning over his landlady’s daughter because it was obvious from the beginning that he was deluding himself about his prospects and almost willfully blind to the obvious. His vain hopes and how thoroughly they were going to be dashed took a lot of audio time. My other quibble – a much bigger one – is that the short story that introduced this fascinating pair “The Killing of Henry Davenport” in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine does not appear to be available online, and that there’s no second book firmly fixed on the horizon. Dee’s and Lao’s investigations NEED to be a series. So much. So very much.

Which means that I leave this review pleased that Lao finally let himself get hit with the clue-by-four regarding Miss Wendell, and that rumors of a second book leave me with hope on that front as well.

A+ #BookReview: The Black Hand by Will Thomas + #Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews> Giveaways
A+ #BookReview: The Black Hand by Will Thomas + #GiveawayThe Black Hand (Barker & Llewelyn, #5) by Will Thomas
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Barker & Llewelyn #5
Pages: 289
Published by Touchstone on July 1, 2008
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

When an Italian assassin's body is found floating in a barrel in Victorian London's East End, enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his assistant Thomas Llewelyn are called in to investigate. Soon corpses begin to appear all over London, each accompanied by a Mafia Black Hand note. As Barker and Llewelyn dig deeper, they become entangled in the vendettas of rival Italian syndicates -- and it is no longer clear who is a friend or foe.

My Review:

So far, at least, the Barker & Llewelyn series is a bit like a caper movie. Not that Cyrus Barker and his assistant Thomas Llewelyn are committing capers – their job is to either thwart or investigate such goings-on. Instead, just like a good caper movie, the story opens at a climactic moment and then rewinds to the beginning of the story we’ve just been dropped into the middle of so we can see how things came to such a desperate pass.

As those climactic moments are generally life-threatening, and specifically threatening to the life of Thomas Llewelyn, it’s a good thing that we go into that pulse-pounding scene knowing that Llewelyn must have survived. After all, part of his job as private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker’s assistant is to chronicle Barker’s cases – and dead men tell no tales.

The tale that Llewelyn has to tell this time around is the story of a brewing turf war among London’s criminal underbelly. There’s a new player in the old game of gangs and turf and money, but a new player under a very old and familiar name – the Sicilian Mafia.

Muscling for territory in wide-open London with their signature stilettos against native gangs and older immigrant groups who rely on fists, brickbats and other coshes to get their dirty work done, the incomers cut a wide swath, literally, through the forces scrambling to array against them.

Including both Scotland Yard and the Home Office, which is where Barker and Llewelyn get dragooned into the fight. A fight that Barker most certainly did not start, but is utterly determined to finish – no matter how many favors he has to call in, how many compromises he has to make, or how many of his own hostages to fortune he has to put in harm’s way.

Escape Rating A+: There are three – well, at least three – things going on in this book, and every single one of them just adds to the reader’s compulsion to keep turning the pages, starting from that chilling, riveting opening.

The first thing, of course, is the case itself. The Mafia – or at least one arm or finger of that organization – is doing its damndest to carve out a toehold for itself in London – by carving up as many as possible until they get their way.

Barker’s remit – to be handled however he sees fit – is to make London so hot for the Sicilian gangs that they go back to Sicily, before their brand of bloody assassination becomes the norm in London.

But just because Barker has carte blanche from the Home Office, that doesn’t mean they’ll provide him with anything else, and certainly not any of their own forces. They don’t even want Scotland Yard involved but have left Barker to do things as he sees best. After all, they can always blame him for whatever goes wrong after the fact.

He sees best to call in a whole lot of favors, which means that the reader, through Thomas Llewelyn’s eyes and pen, gets to learn a whole lot more about who Barker really is under the persona he has created for himself, where he comes from, and who and what he holds dear. As well as how many rules, regulations, laws and ethics he is willing to bend if not outright break to see this thing through.

Those revelations rock Llewelyn to his foundations but don’t change his mind one single bit about following the man he refers to as ‘the Guv’ anywhere he leads – even into the jaws of hell.

So, there’s the case. Then there’s the deeper dive into Barker’s secrets – a set of revelations that should continue as the series progresses.

Last but not least there’s the resonance to the now in this story that is very much steeped in the ‘then’. Because while the case may be about the Mafia, what’s behind their advent into London is a debate about immigration and immigrants and just how easy or difficult it should be and just how much enforcement is necessary and which way and upon whom the economic impacts have and will fall.

And doesn’t all of that sound bloody familiar?

I’m here for all of the above, but even if just one part of that appeals to you, the fully realized historical setting, the whodunnit, the network of ‘Irregulars’ that Barker and Llewelyn are developing, Llewelyn’s continued training, OR the way that the past links to the present, this series is utterly fan-damn-tastic every single step of the way.

The deeper I read into this series, the better it gets. Each book in the series has been tight, taut, thrilling and compelling, all at the same marvelous time. They’ve just been awesome so far, and I can’t recommend the whole thing highly enough – although I plan to keep trying. I also, of course, plan to keep reading, and suspect that it won’t be long before I pick up the next book in the series, Fatal Enquiry.

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Because I’ve enjoyed this series so much so far, it was an obvious choice for one of this week’s Blogo-Birthday giveaways – especially as the latest book in the series, Death and Glory, is coming out later this month!

Drumroll please! On this third day of my Blogo-Birthday Celebration, today’s giveaway is the winner’s choice of ANY book in the Barker & Llewelyn series in any format, up to $25 (US) which should be enough to get even Death and Glory if you’re already caught up!

Good luck with today’s giveaway and remember that there’s more to come!

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A- #BookReview: A Body at the Dance Hall by Marty Wingate + #Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> Blogo-Birthday> book reviews> Giveaways
A- #BookReview: A Body at the Dance Hall by Marty Wingate + #GiveawayA Body at the Dance Hall (London Ladies' Murder Club #3) by Marty Wingate
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, historical mystery
Series: London Ladies' Murder Club #3
Pages: 304
Published by Bookouture on April 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

1922. Amateur sleuth Mabel Canning is surrounded by the bright lights of London as she chaperones a young American woman to a dance. But when someone is murdered, a deadly tango begins…Meet plucky woman-about-town Mabel Canning, leader of the London Ladies’ Murder Club and trusted assistant to gentlewomen. When she is tasked with accompanying Roxy, a fun-loving heiress, on a glamorous night out, Mabel can’t wait to sip champagne and practice the foxtrot. But just as Roxy sashays out of sight, a mysterious man warns Mabel that the feisty young redhead is in danger. And someone is dead before the music stops...Roxy was the last person to see the victim alive, and she stumbles into Mabel’s arms with her daffodil-yellow dress splashed with blood. Determined to protect her ward, Mabel gathers her dashing beau Winstone and her pals from the murder club. Together they trace the weapon back to the ballroom, but when its twin goes missing, it is clear time is running out to prevent another murder on the dance floor…The police conclude the killer is in Roxy’s family, but Mabel finds herself spinning between a motley troupe of suspects. Mr Bryars, the anxious ballroom manager, is constantly tripping over himself to hide his secrets. But would he kill to protect his reputation? And young Ned Kettle may have looked dashing while waltzing around with Roxy, but he was once a notorious thief. Is the sticky-fingered rogue also a dab hand at murder?Just as Mabel and her murder club friends quickstep closer to the truth, Roxy is kidnapped, and Mabel comes cheek to cheek with the killer. Can she save poor Roxy and herself? Or has she danced her last dance?A delightfully witty and utterly addictive whodunnit absolutely bursting with 1920s sparkle, from USA Today bestselling author Marty Wingate. Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Richard Osman, Verity Bright and T.E. Kinsey.

My Review:

As a member of Miss Kerr’s Useful Women Agency, Mabel Canning has taken on all kinds of jobs and been useful to many different people, from helping someone decide on wallpaper to delivering packages to making sure that certain young scamps really do board their trains back to school.

It’s not at all outside the bounds of the services offered by the Useful Women Agency for Mabel to accompany a young American woman on outings and excursions, to be her tour guide while keeping an eye on her, and doing her best to keep Roxanne Arkwright out of trouble.

But trouble finds Mabel, as it has in her previous adventures, A Body on the Doorstep and A Body at the Séance, in the form of, well, a dead body – this time on the floor of the Hammersmith Palais de Danse.

(Yes, it’s a new face on the ballroom floor, which is how I always heard the phrase, “new face on the BARroom floor” as a child. I’m both tickled at the reference and chagrined at how long it took me to figure it out – albeit not THIS long.)

Scotland Yard, in the person of Detective Inspector Tollerton isn’t nearly as surprised as he’d like to be to discover Mabel on the scene of yet another murder – but Mabel has been useful to Scotland Yard in two previous cases, so Tollerton seems to have reached a position of tolerance, at least, on the subject of Mabel and her penchant for being on the scene when a body drops at someone’s feet – whether those feet are her own or not.

At least this time around Mabel can’t possibly be a suspect, as she was locked in the Palais’ larder at the time. And neither can her charge, Roxanne Arkwright, be in this particular frame. Although Roxanne’s father certainly could be. And briefly is as the case unfolds.

That the murder victim, Oswald Deuchar, was a private investigator in the employ of Roxanne’s father, Rupert Arkwright, for the purpose of watching over Roxanne – along with Mabel but without her knowledge – adds both to the confusion and to the potential motives for his death. After all, private investigators, even ones as quirky and eccentric as Deuchar often accumulate enemies.

Unless the poor man’s death wasn’t about Oswald the investigator and protector, but instead had everything to do with his protectee – and Mabel’s – Roxanne Arkwright.

Escape Rating A-: I’ve already reached the point in Mabel’s adventures where I’m here specifically for her, and the particular case she’s working on is just extra. A compelling extra in the case of A Body at the Dance Hall, but still extra. I’m here to see how Mabel and her friends are doing, and to watch as she learns more about London, her assigned jobs for the Useful Women Agency, and the progress of her romance with her neighbor, Park Winstone. I’m especially here for the way that she keeps learning how to be a good investigator as well as an independent woman, a good worker and a good friend.

What I really like about Mabel and her adventures is that Mabel comes into the story both by agency and with agency and that it doesn’t feel anachronistic that she does.

In the first book in the series, A Body on the Doorstep, Mabel comes to London from the tiny village of Peasmarsh. She’s in her early 30s, never married, and has always dreamed of being on her own. She loves her father dearly, but Peasmarsh is a small, insular town and she’s not ready to settle into the plans it has for her.

Mabel’s comes to London after both the Great War and the Spanish Flu epidemic. An entire generation of young British men died in the trenches, to the point where Mabel is one of many women who may have to make their own ways in the world because of those losses. The idea that she might be on her own, that her father may worry about her – he does – that the doorman at her building looks out for her on his behalf and sends back reports – which he does – does not mean that Mabel isn’t completely independent. It just means that he loves her and wants to know someone is looking out for her, but even that doorman abides by the principle that what her dad doesn’t know won’t hurt anyone. No one is supporting Mabel except herself and she answers to no one except Miss Kerr at the Useful Women Agency.

Mabel’s life is a far cry – and a delightful one – from women in quite a lot of historical mysteries (including the one I bailed on last week in a rage). Mabel’s world isn’t fair to women – the world STILL isn’t – but her times and her circumstances allow her to be in a position to answer to herself alone and not be forced to kowtow to the men in her life for every second of her existence. Which was a true experience but isn’t any fun to read and too many female-fronted historical mysteries spend the first third of the book if not more showing all the ways that the world forces them to conform and how they, in turn, are forced to work around all those restrictions.

This series is a breath of fresh air because Mabel doesn’t have to do all of that heavy lifting just to be about her business. And I’m so very happy that is so and honestly relieved to start another of her cases.

And I’ll get down from my soapbox now.

The thing about this particular case is that both Roxanne and the villain have daddy issues. Their fathers have been missing from their lives from about the same age – but the reasons for their absence are quite different, and the results, well, the results are about as diametrically opposed as they could get – very few of which have to do with their positions at nearly opposite ends of the socioeconomic ladder.

Because I don’t want to get into spoiler territory, let’s talk about Roxanne’s issues because, well, her issues have issues and not a one of them is her fault. Her parents are divorced, her mother left England for America eight years ago, when Roxy was just ten years old. And her mother has been gaslighting her ever since about pretty much everything to do with her father, to the point of outright parental alienation so severe as to constitute emotional abuse while demonstrating EXACTLY why parental alienation is considered emotional abuse at the same time. Roxanne comes to London expecting to find a monster, only to discover a father who loves her very much and has missed her terribly, and a stepmother who can help Roxy heal from her mother’s treatment and build up faith in herself and her own judgment – because that’s exactly what her own mother has been tearing down all these years.

All of which means that in the middle of her assignment to show Roxanne the sights of London, Mabel also has a ringside seat on the behavior of Roxy, her father and stepmother, her mother when she arrives from America very much like the avatar of DOOM in T. Kingfisher’s A Sorceress Comes to Call – albeit one without any actual magic but plenty of the same malice.

The closer Mabel gets to Roxy, the more she treats her as a bit of a ‘little sister’, the much harder it is to detach herself as the plot closes in and traps Roxy in its jaws. From that point, it’s a race to the finish, to save the young woman from an enemy that no one saw coming because there was so much enmity already floating around.

I had a ball with A Body at the Dance Hall, so I’m thrilled to say that there is a FOURTH book coming in December, Murder of a Suffragette. I’m already looking forward to it.

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Because I really enjoy Mabel’s adventures, as I did the author’s Birds of a Feather and Potting Shed series, I chose this book for my Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week, so that I could share that enjoyment with the lucky winner of today’s giveaway.

On this second day of my Blogo-Birthday Celebration, today’s giveaway is the winner’s choice of ANY one of Marty Wingate’s books, in any format, up to $20 (US).

Good luck with today’s giveaway and remember that there’s more to come!
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A+ #BookReview: The Hellfire Conspiracy by Will Thomas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: The Hellfire Conspiracy by Will ThomasThe Hellfire Conspiracy (Barker & Llewelyn, #4) by Will Thomas
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Barker & Llewelyn #4
Pages: 338
Published by Touchstone on July 10, 2007
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In the latest adventure in what is "fast becoming one of the genre's best historical-mystery series" (Booklist), roughhewn private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his assistant Thomas Llewelyn must track down London's first serial killer.
When Barker and Llewelyn are hired to find a girl from the upper classes who has gone missing in the East End, they assume her kidnapping is the work of white slavers. But when they discover five girls have been murdered in Bethnal Green, taunting letters begin to arrive in Craig's Court from a killer calling himself Mr. Miacca.
Barker fears that Miacca might be part of the Hellfire Club, a group of powerful, hedonistic aristocrats performing Satanic rituals. He must track the fiend to his hideout, while Llewelyn confronts the man who put him in prison.
Dodging muckrakers, navigating the murky Thames under cover of darkness, and infiltrating London's most powerful secret society, The Hellfire Conspiracy is another wild ride that "brings to life a London roiling with secret leagues, deadly organizations, and hidden clubs" (Ron Bernas, Detroit Free Press).

My Review:

This fourth entry in the marvelously absorbing Barker & Llewelyn historical mystery (after The Limehouse Text) will grab the reader by the throat and not let go until the end – even as one’s gorge rises more than a bit at the nature of the crimes committed.

A young girl has been kidnapped in Bethnal Green, a down-at-heels neighborhood that seems to be on the cusp between gentrifying and falling straight down into hell alongside its infamous neighbor, Whitechapel.

But the girl is not a resident of the area, she’s just a bored little visitor forced to tag along with her do-gooding mother as she volunteers at one of the many charitable institutions in the area. If Gwendolyn DeVere had been a local girl, it’s sad to say that no one would have cared and the police would have paid no attention whatsoever. Girls and women come to bad ends in Bethnal Green every single day.

Middle and upper class children are an entirely different matter. The police ARE interested in the disappearance of the child of one of the Queen’s elite Life Guards. Howsomever, as Cyrus Barker and his assistant Thomas Llewelyn do their best to bring the girl’s abductor to justice, it seems as if the police are not merely one step ahead of them, but actively hindering their investigation.

Whether because they resent Barker working on their patch, whether it’s merely inter-agency warfare between Scotland Yard and the Thames River Police or even if they are protecting a potentially guilty party out of respect or loyalty is just one of many things that stick in Barker’s craw.

The case, as heinous as it is, looks to be the work of a serial killer. But Barker’s investigation turns up an even more disgusting angle – albeit one not quite as gruesome. Because the death of one well-to-do child has kicked off a hornet’s nest in the middle of the internecine war between privilege and reform.

The reformers want to raise the age of legal consent to 16, because too many young girls are forced in prostitution at much too early an age. The nobility want to retain their privilege to ‘buy’ 13 year old girls and ‘keep’ them until the girls are no longer young and fresh faced, and then have the right to get another – and another.

And it’s a privilege that some of them, at least, are willing to kill for. Including Llewelyn’s old nemesis.

More than one reckoning is due, and Barker and Llewelyn intend to deliver. Whatever it might cost them.

Escape Rating A+: I just wasn’t getting into the book I planned to read, I flailed, I bailed, and found myself back in Victorian England with Barker & Llewelyn, and fell right into The Hellfire Conspiracy.

Which, now that I think about it, is a bit of a pun of a title – although not a funny one. The original club operated about a century before this one, but it’s all in the family. Literally, as the most infamous earlier incarnation was organized by the current reprobate’s grandfather, took place in the same location, and was just as disgusting as this one. And there certainly is a conspiracy of silence regarding their membership and the depraved practices those members engage in, but it’s not the actual conspiracy at the heart of the actual crime spree. Although in a way, it sorta/kinda is.

That the Hellfire Club in either version is not the actual murderer is a bit of a surprise twist, because they are utterly disgusting, and so are their aims and practices. Yet they are able to operate pretty much in plain sight because of their immense privilege.

Part of what makes this series so fascinating is that it takes place at around the same time as the Sherlock Holmes stories, but it operates in an entirely different sphere. Barker and Llewelyn are both middle-class at best, are able to blend in with ‘the quality’ when necessary, but their hearts and their sensibilities are with people of their own class and further down the economic scale.

What made this particular case so absorbing was that it happens at the intersection of so many things, both historical and fictional.

Fictionally, we get a bit more information about both Barker’s and Llewelyn’s still obscure pasts, which is being revealed in tiny bites in each book. HIstorically the political infighting between the Reform Movement and the aristocracy, along with the somewhat exaggerated but real fears of so-called ‘White Slavery’ made the reform cause that much more urgent even as the nobility dug in their heels and the muckraking newspapers of the day breathlessly reported on both sides adds even more hair-raising facets to a case that was already sensational.

But it’s the characters of Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn themselves that keep the reader turning pages. Especially in a case like this one, where they go in knowing that the odds of a happy ending are very much against them, but determined to bring as much justice as can be had to all the victims of this atrocity; the living and the dead.

This series has turned out to be THE BEST comfort/go to series, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the dark and terrible places that they have to go to in order to find some measure of justice. Even though, very much like in the Sebastian St. Cyr series, that measure is seldom as full as one would like it to be because some of the perpetrators are above the investigator’s touch.

But that means I will certainly be back for the next book in this series, The Black Hand, the next time I flail, need to bail, and have to find a compelling story to take refuge in.