Review: Murder Crossed Her Mind by Stephen Spotswood

Review: Murder Crossed Her Mind by Stephen SpotswoodMurder Crossed Her Mind (Pentecost and Parker #4) by Stephen Spotswood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Pentecost and Parker #4
Pages: 384
Published by Doubleday Books on December 5, 2023
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The latest action-packed installment in the Nero Award-winning Pentecost & Parker Mystery series follows Lillian and Will tracking the suspicious disappearance of a woman who might have known too much. From the author of Fortune Favors the Dead and Murder Under Her Skin.
Vera Bodine, an elderly shut-in with an exceptional memory, has gone missing and famed detective Lillian Pentecost and her crackerjack assistant Willowjean "Will" Parker have been hired to track her down. But the New York City of 1947 can be a dangerous place, and there's no shortage of people who might like to get ahold of what's in Bodine's head.
Does her disappearance have to do with the high-profile law firm whose secrets she still keeps; the violent murder of a young woman, with which Bodine had lately become obsessed; or is it the work she did with the FBI hunting Nazi spies intent on wartime sabotage? Any and all are on the suspect list, including their client, Forest Whitsun, hotshot defense attorney and no friend to Pentecost and Parker.
The clock is ticking to get Bodine back alive, but circumstances conspire to pull both investigators away from the case. Will is hot on the trail of a stickup team who are using her name--and maybe her gun--for their own ends. While Lillian again finds herself up against murder-obsessed millionaire Jessup Quincannon, who has discovered a secret from her past--something he plans to use to either rein the great detective in . . . or destroy her.
To solve this mystery, and defeat their own personal demons, the pair will have to go nose-to-nose with murderous gangsters, make deals with conniving federal agents, confront Nazi spies, and bend their own ethical rules to the point of breaking. Before time runs out for everyone.

My Review:

It’s still 1947 in this fourth entry in the Pentecost and Parker series, not too long after the conclusion of the previous book, Secrets Typed in Blood, and still very much under the influence of those events.

Willowjean Parker, is private detective Lillian Pentecost’s right-hand woman, still a bit sensitive about her roots as a ‘cirky girl’ and still in a bit of mourning for the people she left behind when she ran away FROM the circus after running away TO that circus to escape her abusive father.

But she’s proud of her accomplishments as a licensed private detective, and embarrassed, chagrined and downright ashamed when she gets mugged by a couple of two-bit con artists working Coney Island, getting coshed with her own sap and losing her favorite purse with its IDs, keys, and brand new – and registered – gun when she breaks up what she believed was an attempted rape – only to get suckered into a situation that she really should have seen coming a mile away.

Which turns out to be a kind of metaphor for this whole case, as in her haste to cover up her own mess she falls right into an even bigger one – and very nearly loses her boss’ trust into the bargain.

It starts as a missing persons case, brought to Pentecost and Parker by their least favorite lawyer, Forest Whitsun. When Whitsun had Pentecost on the stand in their latest confrontation, he implied that she was not just physically incapacitated by her progressing multiple sclerosis, but mentally compromised into that very bad bargain.

Having him show up at their door as a prospective client, that he trusts their expertise enough for him to ask Pentecost to help him locate a missing friend, is rather a surprise. Although not nearly as much of a surprise as discovering that Whitsun has actual friends and that any of them are female and almost, sorta/kinda, mother-figures in a life that seems bereft of all emotional contacts.

That his friend was a hoarder is a shock to everyone’s system. That she was so famous for her prodigious memory that she was the ace-in-the-hole for a high-powered white shoe law firm AND was recruited by the FBI during the late war is an even bigger shock.

That Will finds her body hidden in the piles of detritus choking her apartment – not so much.

But the ensuing shenanigans raise questions about Pentecost’s history, bring up the specters of one of her greatest enemies and poke holes in a whole lot of people’s lives. Because it’s pretty clear that Vera Bodine’s death was related to some secret that someone felt they had to kill to keep.

But the woman knew so many that it’s hard for even Pentecost and Parker to determine which of the many, many motives surrounding this very secretive woman was the one that caused her death.

Before it causes, not a second woman to die, but a third. Or perhaps a fourth.

Escape Rating A++: Murder Crossed Her Mind was an actual, literally, honest-to-goodness one sitting read for me. I started it thinking I’d read for an hour or so before bed, and then just stayed there reading. And stayed. And STAYED. Until it was done nearly four hours later. Hence that A++ rating because I simply could not put this down until Pentecost and Parker knew everything and staged a great – but still slightly speculative – reveal at the end.

Even though they, and I, both know that those things work better on TV than they do in a real case. Then again, their lawyer-client has been compared to Perry Mason, so the TV-worthy ending fits right into the feel of, well, everything.

What continues to make this series shine is the voice of its narrator, ‘Will’ Parker, who serves as Lillian Pentecost’s right-hand and leg-woman, as well as, increasingly as the series goes on, her investigative partner.

What makes this series, let’s call it ‘inspired by’ by the classic Nero Wolfe series, is that while the stories are set in the immediate post-World War II period, and is clearly heading straight into the strait-jacket of the 1950s, Will’s voice feels more contemporary to us even as she observes the times in which she lives.

Which works because, while we know the date of the period Will is narrating for the story, we don’t know when she’s narrating it FROM. It’s obviously later, she’s clearly older, sadder and wiser, but the world changed a LOT from the late 1940s to, for example, the 1970s and 1980s. Will’s in her 20s when this story takes place, so the possibility that she’s looking back from 30 or 40 years on and is still alive to do so is quite plausible and allows her to be a bit outside her time.

What made the case work, both as a mystery and as an interesting story in its own right, was the mysterious figure of Perseverance Bodine at its heart. She had the gift of perfect recall, and that gift gave her a financially secure life while allowing her to work in the shadows. But as a woman, it was all too easy for her to be seen as a mere helper with a freakishly useful talent rather than as the mover and shaker she could have been – or perhaps should have been.

It was also a bit different because it was never about what enemies Vera might have made – because she didn’t. Instead, it was about which secret someone could least afford her to reveal, which made the investigation just that much more complicated.

I was enthralled from the very first page, and this one just didn’t let go of me until the end. I’ve been just as caught up in every single one of the Pentecost and Parker mysteries so far, from their very first outing in Fortune Favors the Dead, through Murder Under her Skin, Secrets Typed in Blood and now this latest entry in the series, which dammit ends on a ginormous cliffhanger. So there’d better be a FIFTH book in this fantastic series! I just hope we don’t have too long to wait…

Review: Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night by Sophie Hannah

Review: Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night by Sophie HannahHercule Poirot's Silent Night (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries, #5) by Sophie Hannah
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical mystery, mystery
Series: New Hercule Poirot #5
Pages: 384
Published by William Morrow on October 24, 2023
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The world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot – legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice – puts his little grey cells to work solving a baffling Christmas mystery.
CAN HERCULE POIROT SOLVE A BAFFLING MURDER MYSTERY IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS?

It’s 19 December 1931. Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are called to investigate the murder of a man in the apparent safe haven of a Norfolk hospital ward. Catchpool’s mother, the irrepressible Cynthia, insists that Poirot stays in a crumbling mansion by the coast, so that they can all be together for the festive period while Poirot solves the case. Cynthia’s friend Arnold is soon to be admitted to that same hospital and his wife is convinced he will be the killer’s next victim, though she refuses to explain why.
Poirot has less than a week to solve the crime and prevent more murders, if he is to escape from this nightmare scenario and get home in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, someone else – someone utterly ruthless – also has ideas about what ought to happen to Hercule Poirot . . .

My Review:

Scotland Yard Inspector Edward Catchpool and his friend and mentor Hercule Poirot are just settling in to a two-week staycation (even if that term had not been invented yet) in London, staying in Poirot’s rather palatial apartment at Whitehaven Mansions, attended by Poirot’s inestimable butler, George, for the duration of the holidays.

Catchpool, in particular, was determined to spend his Christmas hols with his friend Poirot and absolutely NOT with his mother, the overbearing Cynthia Catchpool. The moment Cynthia lies her way into Poirot’s office, we understand EXACTLY why Catchpool intended to spend his holidays as far away from his mother as he could manage.

Because Cynthia Catchpool is the perfect example of another term that hadn’t been invented yet. She was a ‘helicopter parent’ long before that term was even on the horizon, someone who swoops into her son’s life – or frankly anyone’s life – and absolutely does not listen to a single thing she has to say.

She is determined that Catchpool and Poirot will return with her to the  blustery Norfolk coast in late December to solve a murder and spend Christmas with her and the friends she’s visiting,and will not take ‘NO’ for an answer, no matter how many times it’s shouted at her.

But when she describes the circumstances of the murder to Poirot, Catchpool knows instantly that he is at least somewhat doomed. Christmas itself may be saved, but Poirot gets a look in his eye that Catchpool knows all too well – that something about this case has caught the attention of Poirot’s ‘little grey cells’.

What fascinates Poirot so much that he is willing to disrupt his holiday plans? The man who has been murdered is someone who could not possibly have been intended to be murdered. So why is he dead?

Poirot must know. He must solve the case. Before the truly execrable cuisine served at Frellingsloe House causes him to die from starvation. Or poison.

Escape Rating B-: Looking back at my reviews of the previous books in this New Hercule Poirot series by Sophie Hannah (The Monogram Murders, Closed Casket, The Mystery of Three Quarters, and The Killings at Kingfisher Hill) I’ve had mixed feelings about pretty much all the books in the series, and this latest entry is absolutely no exception.

I’m beginning to think that the problem is that I like the concept more than the execution (ahem, pun not exactly intended but…) and that’s true in this entry in the series as well. Although I did find this one more readable than The Killings at Kingfisher Hill, I ended this book feeling every bit as sorry for Catchpool this time, if not a bit more, than I did then.

Because this time he’s very much put upon by Poirot AND his mother. Who I fully confess I hated as a character from her very first appearance to the point where I mentally cringed every time she appeared on the page. Her overbearing helicopter parenting, no matter how anachronistic that term, was a trial from beginning to end. The story did need her gossiping nature, I’m just not sure it needed her utter assholishness about it. Or at least I didn’t need it considering that she did not get nearly the bashing she deserved.

The case itself went to some interesting psychological places, as it turned out to be wrapped around the idea of reinventing oneself and how deeply one can get consumed by burying that past so completely that anything that touches on it causes a psychological break. I liked that Poirot and Catchpool had differing interpretations of those causes, particularly as Poirot’s reasoning felt more germane to the times while Catchpool’s was perhaps a bit anachronistic but more humane.

A lot of the ‘action’ of the story, particularly the ‘fair play’ aspects of the mystery and its resolution, were handled as more ‘telling’ than showing, as the two detectives were often working separately, and only caught up at irregular intervals through meticulous reports – which is how the reader gets caught up as well.

I’m left with a bag of mixed feelings about this one. I liked it better than The Killings at Kingfisher Hill, not as much as The Mystery of Three Quarters and Closed Casket, but still enjoying the concept as a whole. We’ll see how I’m feeling about the whole thing if Poirot and Catchpool catch another case a year or two from now.

Review: Some Danger Involved by Will Thomas

Review: Some Danger Involved by Will ThomasSome Danger Involved (Barker & Llewelyn, #1) by Will Thomas
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Barker & Llewelyn #1
Pages: 290
Published by Touchstone on May 18, 2004
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An atmospheric debut novel set on the gritty streets of Victorian London, Some Danger Involved introduces detective Cyrus Barker and his apprentice, Thomas Llewelyn, as they work to solve the gruesome murder of a young scholar.
When a student bearing a striking resemblance to artists' renderings of Jesus Christ is found murdered -- by crucifixion -- in London's Jewish ghetto, 19th-century private detective Barker must hire an assistant to help him solve the sinister case. Out of all who answer an ad for a position with "some danger involved," the eccentric and enigmatic Barker chooses downtrodden Llewelyn, a gutsy young man whose murky past includes recent stints at both an Oxford college and an Oxford prison. As Llewelyn learns the ropes of his position, he is drawn deeper and deeper into Barker's peculiar world of vigilante detective work, as well as the dark heart of London's teeming underworld. Together they pass through chophouses, stables, and clandestine tea rooms, tangling with the early Italian mafia, a mad professor of eugenics, and other shadowy figures, inching ever closer to the shocking truth behind the murder.

My Review:

Fair warning, this review is going to be LONG, even for me. I really, truly, seriously LOVED this book – even more than I expected. And I had pretty high hopes going in.

We first meet our protagonists in a tried-and-true manner that does an excellent job of hinting at the mysteries and the reveals yet to come.

Cyrus Barker is a ‘private enquiry agent’ (read as private detective), in search of a new assistant, while down-so-low-bottom-looks-like-up Thomas Llewelyn, formerly of both Oxford University and Oxford Castle & Prison, has nothing left either to life for or to live on. He sees Barker’s advertisement as a decision point. Either he’ll get the job or he’ll throw himself in the Thames.

Of course, he gets the job – otherwise we wouldn’t have this marvelous book to read, let alone the series that follows.

But the job that he gets is nothing like he expected. On the one hand, his new employer likes to hold all his cards VERY close to his vest. Llewelyn is constantly flying blind, expected to figure things out by the seat of his pants.

Pants – along with every other stitch of clothing he has on – purchased for him by his employer, who is also providing food, board, education, and all the books the former scholar can read in his spare time – of which there is admittedly little.

Most important, Barker gives him purpose, keeps his mind fully engaged, and sets him to the task of learning the ins and outs of his new job while thinking on his feet and occasionally employing his fists.

But the ‘Help Wanted’ listing said that there was ‘some danger involved’ in the job, as the title of the book indicates. Barker’s previous assistant was killed while performing that job. Llewelyn will have to keep his wits about him every second to make sure that he doesn’t suffer the same fate.

Working with Cyrus Barker promises to be the making of him, IF he manages to survive it. We’ll certainly see how well he manages in the books ahead!

Escape Rating A+: I generally require my comfort reads to have a bit of body to hold my interest. I mean that literally, as my comfort reads tend to be historical mysteries, preferably in series, so that when I have a ‘bail and flail’ day – or week – there’s always another known quantity of a book to sweep me into its world.

Buuuut, I’m caught up with one series I was using as comfort reading, the Sebastian St. Cyr series. And I’m nearly caught up with its readalike series, Wrexford & Sloane. Which left me scrabbling for another, which is very much where Barker & Llewelyn came in.

This first entry in the Barker & Llewelyn series turned out to be a comfort read on not just one but multiple levels, which is pretty amazing.

Most importantly, the partnership of Barker & Llewelyn is at its very beginning in this book, and they are fascinating – partly because of the second reason. The period in which this series takes place is the Victorian era, the bailiwick of the Great Detective and his equally famous amanuensis. In other words, Barker & Llewelyn could easily find themselves in competition with Sherlock Holmes – even more than they already are.

It’s not difficult to see Barker as Holmes and Llewelyn as his Watson, but that famous duo serves mostly as a jumping off point for our protagonists in this series. This isn’t a true Holmes pastiche as the Lady Sherlock or The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes series, or the TV series Sherlock and Elementary, are.

Not that Barker doesn’t have similarities to Holmes, but more in the sense that any capable senior partner in a detective duo shares at least some characteristics with the Great Detective. What sets Barker apart is the way that Barker is, well, set apart.

Detectives are often outsiders in their own cultures, it’s what gives them the ability to observe in detachment and solve the case. Sherlock Holmes is an outsider because of his idiosyncrasies, as is made extremely apparent in the modern interpretations. However, from what little we know of Holmes’ earlier life, he’s at least a member of the squirearchy and was raised in at least upper middle class comfort with all of its privileges.

Barker has been an outsider all of his life, an English orphan abandoned in China, making his way around the globe from a rough start as a cabin boy, initially seeing the world from outside the British Empire and from the bottom up. He’s earned his place by working his way into it.

He’s also a considerably more human character than Holmes frequently is. Barker often hides the real depths of his humanity to outsiders, but it is always present to his intimates. It’s a much fuller portrait of a Victorian detective, and also one that, through Barker’s haphazard but global education, manages to credibly eschew the common prejudices of his day that Holmes exhibits in the original text.

Llewelyn is just as fascinating a character as Barker, and just as much of an outsider, although he comes at that perspective from an entirely different direction. He’s very much the apprentice in this first book, and so it should be. We’re just starting to get hints of how he ended up in depths of the slough of despond he is in when he arrives as Barker’s office for the first time, and his education in the arts of the ‘enquiry agent’ as Barker prefers to be called provide an in-depth introduction to their world.

On a personal note, part of what made this such a special comfort read for this reader is that the story takes place among the Jewish community of London in 1884 as a gruesome murder causes the leaders of that community to fear that a pogrom just like the ones that they or their families fled in Eastern Europe is about to boil over in London.

Much of the story is steeped in that community, and requires Barker to display his own familiarity with its customs and ways AND his respect for its people to Llewelyn. Even more importantly, the inside/outsiderness of the Jewish community in London, and Llewelyn’s open-mindedness to learning about it lets readers into a time and a place that history often sweeps under the carpet.

(Although my own family was still spread across Eastern Europe at this time period, I have pictures of my great-grandfather, and this would have been his generation, letting me connect to this story on a deeper level than I expected – which is where those multiple levels of comfort read come comfortably in.)

So I began Some Danger Involved in the hopes that the danger promised would lead me to a book and a series that would hold me in its thrall until the very last page, and give me something to look forward to whenever I next need a reading pick-me-up.

This first of Barker & Llewelyn’s investigations more than delivered, and I expect to dive back into their world in the next book in the series, To Kingdom Come, sometime over the holidays. If I can make myself wait even that long!

Review: Murder at Queen’s Landing by Andrea Penrose

Review: Murder at Queen’s Landing by Andrea PenroseMurder at Queen's Landing (A Wrexford & Sloane Mystery, #4) by Andrea Penrose
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Wrexford & Sloane #4
Pages: 304
Published by Kensington on September 29, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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The murder of a shipping clerk . . . the strange disappearance of trusted friends . . . rumors of corruption within the powerful East India Company . . . all add up to a dark mystery entangling Lady Charlotte Sloane and the Earl of Wrexford in a dangerous web of secrets and lies that will call into question how much they really know about the people they hold dear—and about each other . . .

When Lady Cordelia, a brilliant mathematician, and her brother, Lord Woodbridge, disappear from London, rumors swirl concerning fraudulent bank loans and a secret consortium engaged in an illicit—and highly profitable—trading scheme that threatens the entire British economy. The incriminating evidence mounts, but for Charlotte and Wrexford, it’s a question of loyalty and friendship. And so they begin a new investigation to clear the siblings’ names, uncover their whereabouts, and unravel the truth behind the whispers.
As they delve into the murky world of banking and international arbitrage, Charlotte and Wrexford also struggle to navigate their increasingly complex feelings for each other. But the clock is ticking—a cunning mastermind has emerged . . . along with some unexpected allies—and Charlotte and Wrexford must race to prevent disasters both economic and personal as they are forced into a dangerous match of wits in an attempt to beat the enemy at his own game.

My Review:

Wrexford and Sloane are going to need the services of Professor Sudler’s mechanical Computing Engine (modeled after Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine) to calculate whodunnit and particularly why it was done in this fourth entry in the Wrexford & Sloane Regency historical mystery series.

It all begins with a murder that the police hope to put down to footpads, and an overheard conversation between friends who might – possibly, probably, unfortunately – have something to do with the dead body found on the docks at Queen’s Landing.

The dead man was a shipping clerk for the seemingly all-powerful East India Company, Bow Street, in the person of lead Runner Griffin, want Wrex to look into the mess, and Charlotte Sloane is all too rightly fearful that the conversation she overheard at her grand re-entry back into Society between her friend Lady Cordelia and Cordelia’s rather disheveled brother Woodbridge has something to do with the death.

Both Wrex and Charlotte really, truly, seriously had hoped that they were through with investigating murders, because the last one (Murder at Kensington Palace) got way too close to being one of theirs.

Charlotte now has too many hostages to fortune, too many people that she can’t bear to lose, that she rightly fears that her investigations could lead to one or more of their deaths. Surprising himself most of all, Wrex is the same, even if neither can admit that at the top of that list is their unacknowledged feelings for each other.

At the same time, they understand each other well enough to know that neither of them is going to stop rushing in where angels quite rightly fear to tread.

This case is one whose rotten heart certainly lies where no one would want to investigate, because the wealthy, powerful and highly connected East India Company is very much a law unto themselves. A law that the company has proven to be willing to enforce with deadly weaponry all around the world.

Home soil definitely not excepted.

But Wrex and Sloane follow where the case leads. In this case that leads from a much too trusting friend to a protective sister and an engineering genius in fear of all of their lives. Then is passes into the labyrinthine web of machinations and calculations at the heart of the East India Company.

It’s up to Wrexford and Sloane to find the snake at the center of this conspiracy and cut off its head before their friends become the latest in a long line of victims. Or before they do.

Escape Rating A: You wouldn’t think that it would be possible to make what is ultimately a financial crime be all that fascinating, but the machinations of arbitrage that turn out to be the center of this criminal conspiracy are both easy enough to follow and absolutely deadly in their application.

If the love of money is the root of all evil, then this evil is rooted in a group of high-ranking criminals who love money to the exclusion of all else and don’t care who stands in their way of getting it.

But, because the crime itself is a bit bloodless – even if the covering up of that crime is not – it takes Wrexford and Sloane and all of their friends more than a bit of painstaking clue hunting to reach the endgame in one only slightly bloodied piece.

Along the way, it’s very much a lesson in the heights and the sacrifices that the best of friends will undertake in order to help and support each other. Which is quite a bit of a departure from where both Wrex and Charlotte Sloane began this series in Murder at Black Swan Lake.

Which means that a big part of the appeal of this series so far has been the gathering of the ‘Scooby Gang’ around Wrex and Charlotte, a gathering that continues apace in this entry in the series.

A second factor in that appeal that also continues is the way that this series displays the dark and gritty underbelly of the glittering Regency period with a focus that is very different from its marvelous readalike series featuring Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin.

Devlin is all up in the politics of the period, while Wrex’ focus is on the scientific foment occurring at the same time. Sudler’s engine is just a bit earlier than Charles Babbage’s on which it is modeled, but not by much. And Babbage did accomplish the goal that Sudler sets for himself merely a decade later. The steam engine that Wrex’ friend Sheffield invests in was equally real.

And, as we all observe every day in our own time, advances in technology bring vast amounts of change to the human condition, not all of it good, not all of it bad, but all of it capable of changing the status quo well past the point of society’s ability to contain or even mitigate its effects.

All of which is reflected in the changes in Wrex’ and Sloane’s lives and in the crimes that they solve. This series is its own kind of historical mystery magic, and this entry in the series is absolutely no exception!

Two final notes before I leave you to pick up the Wrexford & Sloane series for yourself. First, there was a bit in the middle where I thought I’d read this book before because something was a bit too familiar. That was the result of a combination of resemblances. The tea/silver/opium triangle at the heart of the financial shenanigans was not only real history, but it was also part of the skullduggery in R.F. Kuang’s recent Babel. Combine that with the surreptitious search of Professor Sudler’s country retreat, whose setup and result resembles a similar scene in Candace Camp’s A Rogue at Stonecliffe, and I had a minute there where I thought I’d forgotten an entire book. If your reading tastes are similar to mine, I hope I’ve saved you that same minute of consternation.

But speaking of bookish resemblances, Murder at Queen’s Landing ends on a proposal signifying great changes to come, very much like the endings of Laurie R. King’s A Monstrous Regiment of Women and Dorothy L. Sayers’ classic Gaudy Night.

Which means that I’ll be picking up the next entry in this series, Murder at the Royal Botanic Gardens, to learn exactly what those great changes will be, the next time I’m in search of a comfortingly murderous read!

Review: Murder at Kensington Palace by Andrea Penrose

Review: Murder at Kensington Palace by Andrea PenroseMurder at Kensington Palace (Wrexford & Sloane, #3) by Andrea Penrose
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Wrexford & Sloane #3
Pages: 359
Published by Kensington Books on September 24, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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Wrexford and Sloane must unravel secrets within secrets—including a few that entangle their own hearts—when they reunite to solve a string of shocking murders that have horrified Regency London...
Though Charlotte Sloane’s secret identity as the controversial satirical cartoonist A.J. Quill is safe with the Earl of Wrexford, she’s ill prepared for the rippling effects sharing the truth about her background has cast over their relationship. She thought a bit of space might improve the situation. But when her cousin is murdered and his twin brother is accused of the gruesome crime, Charlotte immediately turns to Wrexford for help in proving the young man’s innocence. Though she finds the brooding scientist just as enigmatic and intense as ever, their partnership is now marked by an unfamiliar tension that seems to complicate every encounter.
Despite this newfound complexity, Wrexford and Charlotte are determined to track down the real killer. Their investigation leads them on a dangerous chase through Mayfair’s glittering ballrooms and opulent drawing rooms, where gossip and rumors swirl to confuse the facts. Was her cousin murdered over a romantic rivalry . . . or staggering gambling debts? Or could the motive be far darker and involve the clandestine scientific society that claimed both brothers as members? The more Charlotte and Wrexford try to unknot the truth, the more tangled it becomes. But they must solve the case soon, before the killer’s madness seizes another victim...

My Review:

The murder that drags Wrexford and Sloane back into the fray after the events of Murder at Half Moon Gate again hits a bit too close to home – at least for Charlotte Sloane. In fact, it’s so close to home – her past home if not her present one – that when Wrex informs her that the recently elevated Lord Chittenden is dead, she performs the only quintessential female act he’s ever seen her do.

She faints. She literally swoons at his feet. And he doesn’t know what to do about it. But then, not knowing what to do about or with Charlotte Sloane, AKA the brilliant satirical artist A.J. Quill, has been a constant state of affairs for Wrex since the moment they met in Murder on Black Swan Lane.

Charlotte has just learned that her dear cousin, one of the few people who accepted her as she was back in a day she hasn’t yet revealed to Wrex, has been accused of murdering her other dear cousin – his twin brother. Charlotte is certain that this accusation is as false as the one that brought Wrexford to her door in the first book in this series.

But there’s no evidence for Nick Locke’s innocence, while the evidence for his guilt is both gruesome and damning. Not even a visit to Nick in Newgate dims Charlotte’s belief that he can’t possibly be guilty – even if does cast a dark pall over her determination to win him free.

Which is when Charlotte realizes that the cost of Nicky’s freedom – if it can be won at all – will be the sacrifice of her own. In order to investigate the possible suspects, a surprising number of whom are women in the upper reaches of the ton, Charlotte will have to finally admit the truth of her own origins, and walk with eyes wide open back into the gilded cage she escaped from in what seems like another lifetime.

Only because it was. A life that she didn’t fit into then, and must return to now. After all, needs must when the devil drives – and there is absolutely a devil driving the rush to Nicky’s judgment. And Charlotte’s own.

Escape Rating A-: I got into the Wrexford & Sloane series because it is an amazing readalike for the Sebastian St. Cyr series without being the same at all – which I know sounds contradictory but bear with me.

Both are historical mystery series, and both take place in England during the Regency. Both feature amateur detectives who are aristocrats, working with female partners with whom they have tension-filled relationships.

But, but, but there are huge differences. The St. Cyr series is exactly what it says on the label. The story is told primarily from the perspective of Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, the man who will in the fullness of time become the Earl of Hendon. In the meanwhile, Devlin expiates his demons, many but not all of which he acquired while serving in France during the Napoleonic Wars, by solving murders – generally the kind of murders that no one in the halls of power want solved..

Although Wrexford gets top billing in ‘his’ series, it’s not his journey. Instead, this story is told from the perspective of Mrs. Charlotte Sloane, a widow living in genteel poverty who makes ends at least wave at each other by penning satirical drawings and publishing them under the nom-de-plume A.J. Quill. It’s clear that she grew up in different circumstances, but when the story begins neither Wrexford nor the reader know exactly what those circumstances were or why she left them.

If the St. Cyr series had been written from the perspective of Devlin’s wife, the social reformer Hero Jarvis, it might read something like Wrexford & Sloane, but it isn’t and she doesn’t and as a consequence the two series are looking at the same period through much different lenses.

If you like one you’ll like the other just as much – I certainly do – but they are cousins rather than twins or even siblings. To mix metaphors entirely and get back to Sloane and her cousins at the same time.

The other thing that makes the two series different, and has been a huge factor in the Wrexford & Sloane series so far, is that Wrexford, unlike Devlin, is a man of science rather than politics, and this case, like the previous two books, is steeped in that world that seemed to be changing and discovering every day.

And yet asks the same questions that are still being asked today. Questions about possibility vs. morality, whether the ends justify the means, how far, how dark and how deep an experiment should be allowed to go, and whether just because something CAN be done doesn’t mean it SHOULD be done.

Because this case was steeped in those scientific questions, as well as the age-old question about the fine lines between genius and madness, and between interest and obsession. All the red herrings in this one, and there were many, had been electrocuted or charred to a crisp before presentation, making the solution seem just that much farther out of reach.

But what held my interest, and will hold most readers by the heartstrings, is Charlotte Sloane’s journey, and her decision to give up the thing she prizes most in order to save a person she holds dear. And that’s a dilemma that is every bit as potent two centuries ago as it is today.

Obviously, I’m still enjoying my read of the Wrexford & Sloane series very much, although I will probably take a bit of a break before I get back to it to keep the whole thing at the correct level of compulsion and freshness. But I know I’ll be picking up Murder at Queen’s Landing the next time the mood for a compelling historical mystery strikes!

Review: Where the Dead Lie by C.S. Harris

Review: Where the Dead Lie by C.S. HarrisWhere the Dead Lie (Sebastian St. Cyr, #12) by C.S. Harris
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #12
Pages: 334
Published by Berkley on April 4, 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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The gruesome murder of a young boy takes Sebastian St. Cyr from the gritty streets of London to the glittering pleasure haunts of the aristocracy . . .
London, 1813.Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, is no stranger to the dark side of the city, but he's never seen anything like this: the brutalized body of a fifteen-year-old boy dumped into a makeshift grave on the grounds of an abandoned factory.
One of London's many homeless children, Benji Thatcher was abducted and tortured before his murder—and his younger sister is still missing. Few in authority care about a street urchin's fate, but Sebastian refuses to let this killer go unpunished.
Uncovering a disturbing pattern of missing children, Sebastian is drawn into a shadowy, sadistic world. As he follows a grim trail that leads from the writings of the debauched Marquis de Sade to the city's most notorious brothels, he comes to a horrifying realization: someone from society's upper echelon is preying upon the city's most vulnerable. And though dark, powerful forces are moving against him, Sebastian will risk his reputation and his life to keep more innocents from harm . .

My Review:

The dead lie in multiple meanings of the word AND in multiple places in this twelfth entry in the long-running, utterly marvelous Sebastian St. Cyr series.

The dead, and their deaths, circle around three points: a serial killer, a supposedly lost work from the pen of the late Marquis de Sade, and lost, missing or abandoned children. Those are three topics that sit uneasily in the mind separately, together they are a nightmare.

Or rather, Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin’s nightmares – and he already has PLENTY of those to keep him awake on entirely too many nights.

It begins with a child’s dead body, as a midnight burial is interrupted by an old soldier with a long-standing grudge. But it’s only the first body that’s found in this frequently macabre tale of murder and privilege. Benji Thatcher, abandoned, abused, stabbed, raped and killed, was not the first body to be murdered in such a heinous manner – only the one whose accidental discovery leads to more.

Too many more as Devlin discovers. Even more horrific, there are also too many people in the circle he is supposed to be a part of who don’t give a damn. Along with at least one who is adding to the body count even as Devlin does his damndest to see him hanged.

That he fails isn’t on Devlin, but rather, on the privileges of a society that protects both him and the killer – even as it fails to protect those without that privilege. Those like the children abandoned on London’s streets because their parents have been transported to remote penal colonies such as Georgia, or Botany Bay.

As well as those who have the misfortune to have been born female – no matter their class – not even the most privileged. Not even Devlin’s own niece who could still be saved – but refuses to let herself be.

Escape Rating A-: This one is a really hard read. It’s excellent, just as the entire St. Cyr series is, but this one is difficult because there’s just so much tragedy and horror uncovered within its pages.

At its heart, this is a story about lost children, and all the ways that society (not just his but also, frankly, ours) allows children to be lost, abandoned and abused. These children are being preyed upon because no one will miss them and the killer knows it.

And has exploited their position, over and over again, because they know they are so privileged and so protected that even if they are suspected, which they are and have been long before St. Cyr becomes involved, few will believe they could possibly be guilty of such heinous crimes and even then there are people in very high places who will guarantee they never pay.

Wrapped around the ongoing horror of finding not one but three mass burial sites, there’s a story about a lost child who is found, an adult child who loses a parent to an untimely death, a formerly lost child who recognizes that he has found a home, and a lost child who finds his way back to a home he once rejected.

With one child’s, as well as their mother’s, tragedy yet to come in the later books in the series.

This entry in the series is of the ‘read ‘em and weep’ variety, as everyone in Devlin’s true circle is as harrowed and horrified as the reader – which is made infinitely worse by the people who are informed but simply refuse to care. If “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” then there is more evil in the world than even Devlin can fix – and he is made all too aware of that in this entry in the series.

My reading of Where the Dead Lie completes my ‘catch-up’ read of this series, so I’ll be waiting with the proverbial ‘bated breath’ for the forthcoming new entry, What Cannot Be Said, currently scheduled for publication in April of 2024. And in the meantime, I have the readalike Wrexford & Sloane series to catch up with, as it reads quite a bit like the St. Cyr, series would read if we were viewing the Regency from Hero Devlin’s perspective rather than Sebastian’s.

Review: Who Buries the Dead by C.S. Harris

Review: Who Buries the Dead by C.S. HarrisWho Buries the Dead (Sebastian St. Cyr #10) by C.S. Harris
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #10
Pages: 338
Published by Berkley on March 3, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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The grisly murder of a West Indies slave owner and the reappearance of a dangerous enemy from Sebastian St. Cyr’s past combine to put C. S. Harris’s “troubled but compelling antihero” (Booklist) to the ultimate test in this taut, thrilling mystery.
London, 1813. The vicious decapitation of Stanley Preston, a wealthy, socially ambitious plantation owner, at Bloody Bridge draws Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, into a macabre and increasingly perilous investigation. The discovery near the body of an aged lead coffin strap bearing the inscription “King Charles, 1648” suggests a link between this killing and the beheading of the deposed seventeenth-century Stuart monarch. Equally troubling, the victim’s kinship to the current Home Secretary draws the notice of Sebastian’s powerful father-in-law, Lord Jarvis, who will exploit any means to pursue his own clandestine ends.
Working in concert with his fiercely independent wife, Hero, Sebastian finds his inquiries taking him from the wretched back alleys of Fish Street Hill to the glittering ballrooms of Mayfair as he amasses a list of suspects who range from an eccentric Chelsea curiosity collector to the brother of an unassuming but brilliantly observant spinster named Jane Austen.
But as one brutal murder follows another, it is the connection between the victims and ruthless former army officer Sinclair, Lord Oliphant, that dramatically raises the stakes. Once, Oliphant nearly destroyed Sebastian in a horrific wartime act of carnage and betrayal. Now the vindictive former colonel might well pose a threat not only to Sebastian but to everything—and everyone—Sebastian holds most dear.

My Review:

Whenever I flail around looking for a comfort read, I end up back in Regency England, following Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, as he investigates yet another murder that touches upon the high and mighty of his time and place – whether the high and mighty like it or not.

Especially, and sometimes just a bit gleefully, whether his powerful father-in-law, Lord Charles Jarvis, likes it or not. Devlin enjoys discomfiting his father-in-law, while Jarvis would just as soon see Devlin dead, and is more than capable of arranging it. The only thing keeping the two men from killing each other is that they both love Hero Jarvis, Lord Jarvis’ daughter who is, much to the consternation of her father, Devlin’s wife.

The case in this 10th outing of the series begins with a murder. Not just the usual garden-variety murder, either. Stanley Preston, a man who loved collecting memorabilia related to the famously dead, is found not merely dead but decapitated much like the late King Charles I. Or, to be a bit more accurate, like Oliver Cromwell, whose body was decapitated after death – and whose head is part of Preston’s ‘cabinet of curiosities’.

The late, mostly unlamented Mr. Preston was one of those people who are so cantankerous and so outspoken about all the many and varied things they are cantankerous about that it’s not hard to imagine that someone killed him. In fact, it’s all too easy and potential suspects are legion.

Or would be if not for that grisly, gruesome and downright difficult to accomplish decapitation. Not that plenty of Preston’s enemies weren’t more than wealthy enough to hire it done. Including, quite possibly, his daughter. Or one of her long-suffering suitors who believed that her father stood in the way of their happiness.

Bow Street would love to pin the murder on Miss Preston’s most objectionable suitor – at least the most impoverished one. Devlin hopes that the crime can be laid at the door of one of his own enemies, newly returned to London.

Unless the whole thing comes back around to Preston’s cantankerousness combined with his inability to keep his objectionable opinions behind his teeth. And a man who with a secret that he can’t afford to have exposed.

A secret not all that different from Devlin’s own.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up this week because yes, I was having a comfort read flail, and Sebastian St. Cyr always delivers – or rather whisks me away from my time to his. Which got me to thinking about the nature of comfort reads in general, and why this works for me in particular.

I had originally hoped this week that Blind Fear, being the third book in a series I’m definitely enjoying, would scratch some of that comfort read itch – but it didn’t – leading me straight to questions about why and why not.

What makes mysteries in general so much of a comfort is the romance of justice. If a story is a mystery and not purely a thriller, then it’s guaranteed that in the end the crime is solved, evil is punished and justice triumphs.

The Finn Thrillers have a mystery component, but they are exactly what it says on the label. They’re thrillers. At the end of the whole series, it seems highly probably that justice will triumph and evil will get its just desserts. But it hasn’t happened yet and doesn’t look like it’s happening any time soon. And in the meantime Finn is dealing with a lot of injustice, directed at himself as well as others, and wading all too frequently in some of the nastier cesspits of human behavior as he searches high and low – mostly low – for that justice.

In a historical mystery like the St. Cyr series, the historical setting adds to the comfort. Not that the past was any better, easier or safer than the present, but rather that its problems and its evils are not open-ended. We know what got solved or resolved, which situations improved and which are still plaguing the world today.

Not that justice writ large always triumphs in the St. Cyr series, but writ small it generally does. Even if the evils of the socioeconomic issues of the day are frequently appalling. Devlin and Hero attempt to do some good with the money and power they have, and often succeed if only a bit.

Bow Street may attempt to rush someone to judgment because it’s convenient for the high and mighty, but Devlin is always successful at standing in their way on that front, at least. The official story that gets into the papers may sweep things under the rug that shouldn’t be, and some of the rich and powerful escape the full range of justice they deserve, but no one is successfully railroaded to the hangman’s noose who hasn’t earned that punishment, at least not on Devlin’s watch.

And that is most definitely a comfort to the reader. Or at least this reader.

Who Buries the Dead was the penultimate title in my quest to catch up with the Sebastian St. Cyr series. I have one book left, Where the Dead Lie, and I’m pretty confident at this point that I’ll have that read long before the 19th entry in the series, What Cannot Be Said, gets said, done and published in April 2024.

After that, if I get desperate for a comfort read that is very like St. Cyr, I’ve got more of the Wrexford & Sloane series to look forward to. And I am!

Review: Sherlock Holmes and the Silver Cord by M.K. Wiseman

Review: Sherlock Holmes and the Silver Cord by M.K. WisemanSherlock Holmes & the Silver Cord by M.K. Wiseman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Genres: historical mystery
Pages: 198
Published by M.K. Wiseman on August 1, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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"I speak of magic, Mr. Holmes." Poor Mr. Percy Simmons, leader of London's Theosophical Order of Odic Forces, stands upon the hearth rug of 221B Baker Street, slowly mangling his hat brim in ill-concealed distress and fully aware that his is not a case which Mr. Sherlock Holmes would ordinarily take up. These are not ordinary times, however. For something, some unquiet demon within Holmes stirs into discomfiting wakefulness under the occultist'swords. This unassuming Mr. Simmons has-in addition to his more fantastical of claims-spoken of good and evil with the sort of pure conviction and sincerity of soul that Sherlock yearns for. Something Holmes sought for himself during the three years in which the world thought him dead. While, for all intents, constructions, and purposes, he was dead. But, six months ago, Sherlock Holmes gave up that chase. He returned to Baker Street, declared himself alive to friend and foe alike, took up his old rooms, his profession, and his partnership with Dr. J. Watson. Only to find himself haunted still by the questions which had followed him out of the dreadful chasm of Reichenbach Why? Why had he survived when his enemy had not? To what end? And had there ever, truly, been such a thing as justice? Such a thing as good or evil?

My Review:

Sherlock Holmes & the Silver Cord, chronologically at least, is the kind of story that should have been included in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, right after The Adventure of the Empty House.

Why? Because The Empty House was the story that marked the return of Sherlock Holmes after his encounter with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem. And Silver Cord takes place just a few short months after Empty House, and shows that Holmes’ personal house of the soul and spirit is every bit as empty as that house he led Moriarty’s remaining henchmen to stake out upon his return to London.

Which goes a long way towards explaining why this story, like the author’s previous forays into Holmes pastiches, Sherlock Holmes & the Ripper of Whitechapel and Sherlock Holmes & the Singular Affair, came from the pen of the Great Detective himself and was not written after the fact by his ‘Boswell’, Dr. John H. Watson.

Sherlock Holmes as Watson portrayed him was a ‘thinking machine’, a creature made entirely of intellect who revealed little of his own inner workings and devoted all his prodigious mental powers to his cases. Watson did not show him as a man of finer feelings or filled with an inner life, nor did he portray his friend as particularly virtuous. Rather, Watson’s Holmes was an ascetic because he didn’t care about finer feelings, his own or anyone else’s.

The Sherlock in Silver Cord, however, shows an all-too-human side that Watson probably thought he knew, but in more depth of angst than Victorian sensibilities would ever have allowed him to portray – or than Holmes himself would have ever chosen to show.

But in Holmes’ own mind, as we are in this story, we see a man dealing with the aftermath of a great but scarring undertaking, as well as a person who has spent years living by his wits and on his last nerve, suddenly expected to return to a normalcy that lacks the drive, focus and sheer adrenaline that has keep him alive in multiple senses of that word for more than long enough to get addicted to the sensation.

Perhaps even as much of an addiction as Holmes’ infamous seven-per-cent solution.

This is a case that has both Holmes and the reader hooked because it initially seems to deal in realms beyond the physical. For the reader, the complete lack of physical clues combined with the way that the actions of the villain seem determined to drive his victims to despair without any actual threats does have the potential to be paranormal in some form or fashion.

While the setting of these crimes – if they are crimes – among the cognoscenti of spiritualism and esoteric theologies pushes Holmes towards questions of his own morality, to the sharp but seemingly narrow dividing line between good and evil, and to his own mental meanderings into the state of his own soul after his deliberate plot to destroy his enemy.

Escape Rating B: The fascinating thing about this ‘series’ of Holmes stories is the way that the author has managed to create a combination of times, places and reasons why Holmes would be writing the story himself rather than using Watson as his amanuensis.

In the first outing, Sherlock Holmes & the Ripper of Whitechapel, Holmes wrote the story himself because Watson was, quite plausibly in fact, a potential suspect in the murders. The case of Sherlock Holmes & the Singular Affair took place in the time period just before Holmes met Watson and they took up rooms together at 221b.

In this case, it’s because Sherlock Holmes is caught up in his own angst about his premeditated plan to drop Moriarty to hell by way of the plunge down Reichenbach Falls – even if Holmes had to join him there himself. In a moment of clarity during that struggle, Holmes saw just how close he and his adversary were, that only a hairsbreadth separated their fates. Not just the question of who lived and who died, but of who should have. Holmes saw how little separated each of them from the other’s side of the line.

At the same time, Holmes is finding that normalcy is a bit, well, uninspiring in comparison to his years on the run. He’s suffering from what would today be labeled PTSD, keeping up a frenetic pace of investigations in order to substitute for the constant thrill of adrenaline he had lived under as he chased Moriarty’s remaining agents – and they chased him.

He’s also realizing that he’s been more than a bit of an ass in the way he treated Watson, not just in pretending to be dead at Reichenbach but in not standing with his friend in his hours of need. And then expecting Watson to just take him back and take back up with him the moment he returned.

And Holmes isn’t wrong about that last bit. He was an ass. And he frequently is. But Watson is at his side anyway, always and forever. Whether Holmes deserves it or not. And he is finally aware that he often does not.

Then there’s this case, which combines Holmes’ internal struggles and angst over recent events with a bit of envy that the people he’s investigating seem to have found ways to enlightenment or at least spiritual peace that have eluded him.

Holmes, for once in his otherwise skeptical life, wants there to be answers beyond this world – even if they are not for him.

What he discovers in the course of his investigation answers the more typical investigative questions of whodunnit, how did they do it and why did they do it without any involvement in the metaphysical. But it’s Holmes’ angst-ridden and inchoate search for answers to the questions ‘beyond the veil’ that give this story a sense that either it’s not quite the Holmes we’re used to – or Holmes isn’t quite who we expect him to be.

It all makes sense after reading the author’s notes at the end, but in the middle, as Holmes mostly spins his metaphysical and spiritual wheels in search of answers for himself rather than the case, it goes a bit off the well-beaten Holmesian path in a way that can be uncomfortable for the reader.

We don’t like to see our heroes stumble, and this is a story where Holmes is definitely stumbling – if only inside the confines of his own head. But seeing him trip over his own mental, spiritual and even moral feet makes him more human. Whether that’s a good take on the character or merely an unsettling one is left in the mind of the reader.

In this reader’s mind, while this portrait of the Great Detective as a seeking human was uncomfortable in its reading, it added rather a lot to the development of the character as he appears in later-set stories like Laurie R. King’s marvelous introduction to Holmes’ second act,  The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.

Your reading mileage, of course, may vary.

Review: The Lady from Burma by Allison Montclair

Review: The Lady from Burma by Allison MontclairThe Lady from Burma (Sparks & Bainbridge, #5) by Allison Montclair
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Sparks & Bainbridge #5
Pages: 336
Published by Minotaur Books on July 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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In Allison Montclair's The Lady from Burma, murder once again stalks the proprietors of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau in the surprisingly dangerous landscape of post-World War II London…
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 war widow with a young son entangled in a complicated aristocratic family. Mostly their clients are people trying to start (or restart) their lives in this much-changed world, but their new client is something different. A happily married woman has come to them to find a new wife for her husband. Dying of cancer, she wants the two to make sure her entomologist, academic husband finds someone new once she passes.
Shortly thereafter, she's found dead in Epping Forest, in what appears to be a suicide. But that doesn't make sense to either Sparks or Bainbridge. At the same time, Bainbridge is attempting to regain legal control of her life, opposed by the conservator who has been managing her assets - perhaps not always in her best interest. When that conservator is found dead, Bainbridge herself is one of the prime suspects. Attempting to make sense of two deaths at once, to protect themselves and their clients, the redoubtable owners of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau are once again on the case.

My Review:

The course of true love never does run smooth, and the business of finding it even less so, especially when Sparks & Bainbridge mix the business of romance with the business of murder.

They also say that money is the root of all evil, and that every woman needs roots. Gwen Bainbridge has money – she’s just not permitted to spend it or control it or act independently about it or pretty much anything else without the permission of the legal minder assigned to her by the Court of Lunacy. An assignment that Gwen and her psychiatrist believe that she is ready to shuck off two years after her official diagnosis.

Gwen attempted suicide upon learning of the death of her husband at Monte Cassino during the late war. So her wealthy father-in-law had her committed and her rights stripped away, resigning her to the treatments of the day which were barbaric in the extreme both medically and legally.

One of the overarching plots in this series has been about Gwen’s quest to regain her independence as well as custody of her son, and get both of them out from under the various thumbs they are forced to endure.

Her in-laws at least meant well, even if their methods for going about it were terrible. The motives of the man in charge of her fate, her ‘Committee’ in the legal parlance of the day, turn out to be even more terrible than she originally believed.

But Gwen is intimately acquainted with the circumstances that might drive someone to suicide, so, when a client presents themselves at the Right Sort Marriage Bureau, intending to contract for a search for her soon-to-be-widower, Gwen is suspicious that Adele Remagen is planning to take her own life before cancer takes it for her.

And Gwen is having none of it. To the point where she refuses to take the rather unusual contract unless Mrs. Remagen promises not to end her life prematurely. A promise the dying woman gives.

So it’s a surprise to learn that Adele Remagen seems to have committed suicide after all. Unless the suspicions of the young constable who found her body are to be taken into more account than his supervisor is willing to allow.

Which of course, both Sparks & Bainbridge certainly are. That Mrs. Remagen’s death is going to tie itself neatly if not tidily into Gwen’s pursuit of her independence is not something that either Sparks or Bainbridge see anywhere on the horizon, but it is looming there all the same.

The question is whether Gwen can get out from under everything else that is looming over her before it’s too late.

Escape Rating A: The Lady from Burma is a story about closings and openings. Mrs. Adele Remagen’s life is closing, and the top item on her ‘to-do’ list before she dies is to make sure that her beloved husband opens himself back up to the world after she’s gone.

Gwen Bainbridge hopes that her life is opening back up. She has high hopes that her petition for independence from the Court of Lunacy will be granted and that her life will become her own, in many ways for the very first time. And it’s only on the cusp of that longed-for change that she realizes that she never really closed out the last chapter of her life and that she needs to do that before she can start again, as the person she is now.

Iris Sparks is looking at both sides of the equation. Acknowledging that she has opened her heart to gangster Archie Spelling, and that being part of some level of commitment to a relationship doesn’t have to mean the loss of her hard-won independence.

In the midst of all their personal issues, Sparks & Bainbridge have learned that they are meeting on a common platform that neither expected when the series opened. Iris Sparks has always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie, as evidenced by her secret work during WW2. But Gwen Bainbridge, who has always played it safe, has come out of her experience with a yen to experience all that life has to offer – including the dangerous and deadly parts. She’s gotten just as addicted as Sparks to the rush of throwing herself into danger and solving the case – even if she’s still struggling a bit with admitting that to herself.

Because this case has brought out both the best and the worst of her, as she has to fight her corner for her freedom, and prove to the men who want to control her that she is both utterly sane and totally committed to standing on her own two feet and defying them when they try to contain her. A combination of positions that threatens to put her right back in the sanatorium – not because she’s wrong but because she’s right.

And in the middle of their personal sturm und drang, of which there is plenty on all sides, there’s the search for justice for Adele Remagen, and the grief of love lost that may never be found again.

Sparks & Bainbridge are fascinating protagonists. They come from such opposite backgrounds, have such different responses to both their work AND the murder-y messes they find themselves in, and yet have found a path to sisterhood that surprises, delights and supports them both. I found a reading ‘partnership’, so to speak, with them in their first outing, The Right Sort of Man, and I enjoy both following their journey AND watching them make matches as they solve murders. The Lady from Burma was another captivating read about this intrepid duo, so I’m already looking forward to their next adventure!

Review: Murder at Half Moon Gate by Andrea Penrose

Review: Murder at Half Moon Gate by Andrea PenroseMurder at Half Moon Gate (A Wrexford & Sloane Mystery) by Andrea Penrose
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Wrexford & Sloane #2
Pages: 360
Published by Kensington on March 27, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A wealthy lord who happens to be a brilliant scientist . . . an enigmatic young widow who secretly pens satirical cartoons . . . a violent killing disguised as a robbery . . . Nothing is as it seems in Regency London, especially when the Earl of Wrexford and Charlotte Sloane join forces to solve a shocking murder.
When Lord Wrexford discovers the body of a gifted inventor in a dark London alley, he promptly alerts the watchman and lets the authorities handle the matter. But Wrexford soon finds himself drawn into the murder investigation when the inventor's widow begs for his assistance, claiming the crime was not a random robbery. It seems her husband's designs for a revolutionary steam-powered engine went missing the night of his death. The plans could be worth a fortune . . . and very dangerous in the wrong hands.
Joining Wrexford in his investigation is Charlotte Sloane, who uses the pseudonym A. J. Quill to publish her scathing political cartoons. Her extensive network of informants is critical for her work, but she doesn't mind tapping that same web of spies to track down an elusive killer. Each suspect--from ambitious assistants to rich investors, and even the inventor's widow--is entwined in a maze of secrets and lies that leads Wrexford and Sloane down London's most perilous stews and darkest alleyways.
With danger lurking at every turn, the potent combination of Wrexford's analytical mind and Sloane's exacting intuition begins to unravel the twisted motivations behind the inventor's death. But they are up against a cunning and deadly foe--a killer ready to strike again before they can recover the inventor's priceless designs . . .

My Review:

Everyone has secrets. Everybody lies. Everybody dies. When the Earl of Wrexford practically trips over direct evidence of the latter on his way home from drinking at his club, he’s not all that interested in poking his nose into either of the former, at least not as long as it looks like the man’s death was the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not having enough money on his person to convince the footpads to leave him alone – or at least alive.

It’s only in the cold and entirely too bright light of the next morning, coping badly with his hangover from the drinking of the night before, that Wrex learned that he knew the man whose corpse he discovered, and that his recollections of the crime scene don’t jibe AT ALL with the official determination of a robbery gone wrong.

Or at least not the usual kind of robbery. Someone slit the seams of the dead man’s clothing to hunt for something secreted in the lining. Something like papers.

Considering that the late Elihu Ashton was a genius engineer who had purportedly invented a way of making a more powerful steam engine, and that the patents for that revolutionary invention had not yet been filed, there are plenty of motives for his murder.

In Regency England, steam is the power that is driving the burgeoning industrial revolution. There’s money to be made in anything that increases the power and efficiency of steam engines.

But the money that will be made will line the pockets of the investors. The rich will get richer. And the workers who will lose their jobs and their livelihoods as the inevitable result of all that efficiency have no hope and no choices.

Unless they turn ‘Radical’ and break the machines that are taking away their work and their dignity. Or unless someone is using them to divert suspicion from yet another rich man’s grab for more money and more power.

Wrex may not want to be involved in another murder, and he swears that he’s a man of science who doesn’t even have a heart other than as an efficient pump for his circulatory system. But Charlotte Sloane seems to have infected him with her inability to let an injustice stand – even if her own secrets get exposed along the way.

Along with his.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up, so soon after finishing Murder at Black Swan Lane, because I was still searching for comfort reads after last week and kind of wanted to stay in Sebastian St. Cyr’s world after Friday’s review of Why Kings Confess. But reading books in a series too close together doesn’t work as well for me as I always hope it will, so I turned to Wrexford & Sloane, which is very much the same world, just seen through a different set of characters who therefore have a different perspective on the same point in time.

Although St. Cyr and Wrexford are both aristocrats in Regency England, and quite literally occupy the same social strata (Wrexford has already inherited his Earldom while St. Cyr hasn’t yet) Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, investigates murders that touch on the powers that be – sometimes all the way up to the Prince Regent himself – or at least his household.

Wrexford is a man of science, a member of the Royal Academy, and his circle of friends and influence is vastly different. Where St. Cyr is often focused on the Napoleonic Wars and the destruction they have left in their wake, Wrexford is more focused on the advances of the scientific community and the social unrest that seems to follow the change and upheaval of society that is its result.

And if Wrexford isn’t sufficiently focused on that change and upheaval, his friend, the artist and satirist A.J. Quill is more than happy to point him in the right direction.

At the heart of this story, both the mystery and the situation that surrounds it, is change. The change in working conditions that has sparked the radical political movement, the Luddites that violently oppose change, and the further widening gap between the titans of the new industry and the human beings who are its true engine. And the changes of life and circumstance that have caught up Charlotte Sloane, AKA A.J. Quill, even as she and Wrex get themselves caught up in another murder investigation.

Charlotte Sloane is determined that Bow Street doesn’t take the easy way out, blaming the radical workers for a series of murders that have more to do with money than politics. Wrex is caught between preventing a miscarriage of justice and preventing Charlotte and her young charges from becoming victims of yet another villain’s machinations.

While each wonders whether the other has a heart after all, and whether they can find their way to each other in spite of the barriers between them. But first they have to survive the bloody mess they’ve landed themselves in this time. With the able assistance of their friends, and colleagues, and especially the Weasels.

The first and most obvious readalike for Wrexford & Sloane is still, by far and away, Sebastian St. Cyr. If you like one you’ll like the other and vice versa. But now that I’m two books in with Wrexford & Sloane, the elements that set the two apart have become more apparent, and that’s most definitely an excellent thing.

At the same time, this series has also brought other historical mysteries to mind, especially Lady Sherlock and Mary Russell. Charlotte Sloane’s situation has turned out to be much like Charlotte Holmes’ in the Lady Sherlock series, although I believe that Sloane’s solution is likely to be a bit more traditional than that particular Holmes. And for any reader who loved the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, the ending of Murder at Half Moon Gate has more than a passing resemblance to the conclusion of A Monstrous Regiment of Women and I am most definitely here for it.

As well as for the next book in the Wrexford & Sloane series, Murder at Kensington Palace, the next time I’m looking for a comfort read that introduces itself with a corpse.