Genre: historical mystery

Review: Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea PenroseMurder on Black Swan Lane (Wrexford & Sloane, #1) by Andrea Penrose
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Wrexford & Sloane #1
Pages: 340
Published by Kensington Books on June 27, 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In Regency London, an unconventional scientist and a fearless female artist form an unlikely alliance to expose unspeakable evil . . .
The Earl of Wrexford possesses a brilliant scientific mind, but boredom and pride lead him to reckless behavior. He does not suffer fools gladly. So when pompous, pious Reverend Josiah Holworthy publicly condemns him for debauchery, Wrexford unsheathes his rapier-sharp wit and strikes back. As their war of words escalates, London’s most popular satirical cartoonist, A.J. Quill, skewers them both. But then the clergyman is found slain in a church—his face burned by chemicals, his throat slashed ear to ear—and Wrexford finds himself the chief suspect.

My Review:

This terrific historical mystery, wrapped in not one but two enigmas, begins in the best amateur-ish detective fashion by putting one of our soon to be investigators in the frame for murder. A frame he will need to investigate his way out of – even as he navigates and occasionally blunders his way into an uneasy partnership with the very last person he ever expected to be on his side.

Admittedly, the Earl of Wrexford wouldn’t have said he exactly “had” a side, at least not until he’s framed for the murder of the Reverend Josiah Holworthy. And not that he didn’t want Holworthy to suffer some kind of comeuppance for being just the sort of self-righteous fool that Wrexford never suffers gladly and preferably not at all.

But murder was going just a bit far – or at least considerably farther than Wrexford planned to go. Which doesn’t stop the frame from tightening towards a noose once Bow Street has him in their sights. Sights which have been focused even closer on the Earl thanks to the pointed, satirical cartoons of A.J. Quill, which have already painted Wrexford as the “Devil Incarnate”.

What makes this historical puzzler so delightfully puzzling is that not a single one of the characters, not the villain, not the investigators, not even the secondary and tertiary characters, are exactly who or what they appear to be.

While the stakes, which begin relatively small and seem confined to whether or not Wrexford’s neck will be stretched – or severed – not only expand but send out tentacles that reach from “mere” murder to the highest stakes and consequences of all.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up for a couple of reasons. One, I seem to be in a bit of a murder-y mood this week, with three historical mysteries to start out my week. Sometimes I just get in the mood to see justice done. Two, I was looking for something to scratch a comfort reading itch while finding something new at the same time. Both the covers and the setting for the Wrexford & Sloane series remind me a LOT of the Sebastian St. Cyr series, and I discovered that I already possessed several books in the series.

The resemblance between the Earl of Wrexford and Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin is there but isn’t as close as that cover led me to believe. Which doesn’t mean my hopes were at all dashed in the long run as Wrexford and Devlin were contemporaries who would have moved in the same circles at the same time if both had existed.

But there’s a fundamental difference in the two characters, as Devlin is exactly who he presents himself to be (at least as far as he knows when his series begins), while Wrexford’s inner person is rather different from the indolent lordling he shows the world.

So far, at least, Wrexford & Sloane do not find their affairs as intimately intertwined with the great events of their day in the same way that Devlin does. Wrexford is a member of the aristocracy, but he does not move in the halls of power – even if the resolution of the mystery before him does lead to empire-rattling consequences.

Although the events of this story initially center around Wrexford, it is the advent of Sloane that changes the game and gives the reluctant, budding partnership both its fascination and its appeal.

Because Wrexford has fashioned himself as a cold and calculating man of the new science of his day. While Sloane, hiding her poverty-stricken, widowed self behind a masculine pen name, is a creature of sharp wit, sharper tongue and indomitable will who believes it only safe for her to let her passions out through the medium of her talented ‘quill’. A woman who joins forces with Wrexford, but only in equal partnership and only on her own terms. Because she has already learned to her cost that no one can be trusted to save her or protect her – or her hostages to fortune – beyond her own redoubtable self.

The Sherlockian overtones of Wrexford’s unemotional demeanor contrasted with Sloane’s carefully banked emotions as well as their opposition in gender and station gives this case much of its dramatic tension as well as providing plenty of opportunity for the characters to spark off each other so hard they very nearly set the scene afire. Not that there aren’t plenty of fires and even explosions of a slightly more mundane origin to deal with! They are clearly people who can’t be neutral about each other, even when they are on the same side. Where those sparks will lead them will undoubtedly be explored in the books to come, along with whatever else Sloane is hiding from both Wrexford and from herself.

Plumbing the depths of Charlotte Sloane’s many, many secrets should make the subsequent books in this series every bit as riveting as this first outing. Clearly, the Wrexford & Sloane series is now on my list of comfort reads to be picked up when next the mood strikes me. I’m certain that their investigation of Murder at Half Moon Gate will pop to the top of the towering TBR pile in short order!

Review: A Disappearance in Fiji by Nilima Rao

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: A Disappearance in Fiji by Nilima RaoA Disappearance in Fiji by Nilima Rao
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Pages: 288
Published by Soho Crime on June 6, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A charming and atmospheric debut mystery featuring a 25-year-old Indian police sergeant investigating a missing persons case in colonial Fiji
1914, Fiji: Akal Singh would rather be anywhere but this tropical paradise—or, as he calls it, “this godforsaken island.” After a promising start to his police career in his native India and Hong Kong, Akal has been sent to Fiji as punishment for a humiliating professional mistake. Lonely and grumpy, Akal plods through his work and dreams of getting back to Hong Kong.
When an indentured Indian woman goes missing from a sugarcane plantation and Fiji’s newspapers scream “kidnapping,” the inspector-general reluctantly assigns Akal the case, giving him strict instructions to view this investigation as nothing more than cursory. Akal, eager to achieve redemption, agrees—but soon finds himself far more invested than he could have expected.
Now not only is he investigating a disappearance, but also confronting the brutal realities of the indentured workers’ existence and the racism of the British colonizers in Fiji—along with his own thorny notions of personhood and caste. Early interrogations of the white plantation owners, Indian indentured laborers, and native Fijians yield only one conclusion: there is far more to this case than meets the eye.
Nilima Rao’s sparkling debut mystery offers an unflinching look at the evils of colonialism, even as it brims with wit, vibrant characters, and fascinating historical detail.

My Review:

If, as Shakespeare put it, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” does it then follow that an injustice by any other name would smell every bit as foul?

From a certain perspective, that’s the dilemma before Sergeant Akal Singh, a Sikh police officer posted more or less in exile in Fiji after a humiliating professional mistake – a mistake made all that much more heinous by the racial and caste barriers imposed by the British Raj. Even though the Great War that will bring the Raj crashing down has already begun.

Everyone in the police service knows just how Akal screwed up his trusted and cushy posting in Hong Kong. He let himself be led astray by a white British woman who only befriended him in order to get inside information on the security arrangements of the rich and famous in the Crown Colony. While nothing more than conversation EVER happened, simply talking with a white woman was enough to get Akal censured if not fired. That the conversation resulted in several successful burglaries before he finally got wise nearly put paid to his entire career.

But exile in Fiji proved to be a bitter sentence for Akal. His new superior neither trusts him nor wants him, so Akal gets the worst cases, the ones that are both trivial and unsolvable. Which only makes the situation worse as then the officer can claim that he is ineffective as well. (Anyone who has not faced this type of downward spiral in a job is to be envied, but Akal, alone, far from home and already beating himself up over just how easily he was taken advantage of, is in a particularly bad place.)

Then it gets worse. As the only Indian officer in Fiji, Akal is pressed into appearing at a reception for a visiting group of officials who are looking into the working and living conditions of Indian indentured laborers on the sugarcane fields of Fiji. His supervisor orders him to pacify his fellow countrymen on a subject that no one should be pacified about.

Unsurprisingly, he fails, and gets himself ordered to travel to the sugarcane plantations to investigate a possible kidnapping on one of the most remote plantations. Again, he’s supposed to quite literally whitewash any accusations of kidnapping and put the kibosh on any further investigations of the terrible conditions at the plantations.

Conditions that everyone knows about but that no one wants to disrupt. The money the plantations bring to the island is everyone’s economic lifeblood. And no one cares about a few lazy, complaining workers, not when the alternative is cutting off the money spigot that flows into seemingly everyone’s pocket in one way or another.

Akal knows that if he carries out his orders, he’ll be well on his way to ending his exile in Fiji. But once he’s seen the conditions on the plantation – he can’t unsee. And he can’t unknow that the whitewashed report he’s been ordered to write is an injustice that will spread its stink all over him for the rest of his life.

Escape Rating A: This story has three threads to pull – or perhaps that should be three threads that absolutely do pull at the reader. Or at least this reader, because I was certainly hooked from the very beginning and only got further woven in as the story went along.

First, and the reason I picked this up in the first place, is that it is a historical mystery, set in a time period well before the internet or cell phones or, most particularly in this instance, even late 20th century forensics. Akal is on his own with this case, all he has to go by are his wits, his knowledge of human nature, and his willingness to stick his neck out because he can’t stand to see the guilty go unpunished.

Which is very much where that second thread comes in, as this mystery is deeply interwoven in historical fiction. Not just because A Disappearance in Fiji takes place in 1914, just after the opening salvos in World War I have been fired, but because it takes place in a time and place and from a perspective on that history that Western readers will not be familiar with. But which frequently sounds all too familiar in its details AND its depravity.

What brings that history to life is the point of view of Akal Singh himself, as he is both forced to see the terrible conditions under which people just like him – or at least just like him as far as the white plantation owners and overseers view him – live and work. It’s both a view that he has tried his best to ignore – as many people have and do – as well as a reckoning with the notion of what the words “my people” means to him far away from home and in the midst of a society to which he can never truly belong.

Which leads directly to the third thread of this tapestry, that Akal Singh must decide not merely between obedience to his superiors vs. a measure of justice for his people and against the people who have virtually enslaved them – a justice that he already knows no one will allow him to truly bring. But also the question of doing what is right vs. doing what is easy.

It would be easy to sweep the crimes that he has discovered under a very large and bloody rug. It’s an act that would even profit him in the long run, make his career path much smoother and possibly lead him back to cosmopolitan Hong Kong. His mother might even approve!

But the right thing to do will have costs that he already knows he will pay for the rest of his life. Even if it is the act that his father will approve of, although it will most certainly continue his exile.

Staying in Fiji is the least of the price he will have to pay. But if it leads to more mysteries featuring this thoughtful, conflicted and fascinating detective, this reader, at least, is all for it!

Review: The Last Drop of Hemlock by Katharine Schellman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Last Drop of Hemlock by Katharine SchellmanThe Last Drop of Hemlock (Nightingale Mysteries, #2) by Katharine Schellman
Narrator: Sara Young
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery, thriller
Series: Nightingale Mysteries #2
Pages: 336
Length: 10 hours and 12 minutes
Published by Dreamscape Media, Minotaur Books on June 6, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In The Last Drop of Hemlock, the dazzling follow up to Last Call at the Nightingale, even a dance can come with a price...The rumor went through the Nightingale like a flood, quietly rising, whispers hovering on lips in pockets of silence.
New York, 1924. Vivian Kelly has gotten a job at the Nightingale, a speakeasy known to the young and fun as a place where the rules of society can be tossed aside for a dance and a drink, and things are finally looking up for her and her sister Florence. They might not be living like queens—still living in a dingy, two-room tenement, still scrimping and saving—but they're confident in keeping a roof over their heads and, every once in a while, there is fried ham for breakfast.
Of course, things were even better before Bea's Uncle Pearlie, the doorman for the Nightingale, was poisoned. Bea has been Vivian's best friend since before she can remember, and though Pearlie's death is ruled a suicide, Bea's sure her uncle wouldn't have killed himself. After all, he had the family to care for . . . and there have been rumors of a mysterious letter writer, blackmailing Vivian's poorest neighbors for their most valuable possessions, threatening poison if they don't comply.
With the Nightingale's dangerously lovely owner, Honor, worried for her employees' safety and Bea determined to prove her Uncle was murdered, Vivian once again finds herself digging through a dead man's past in hopes of stopping a killer.

My Review:

Although it’s not the way the phrase is usually meant, Bea Henry’s wish, actually a downright need, to know what really happened to her suddenly late uncle Pearlie, is a case where she got what she asked for – and wished she’d never opened the can of worms wriggling behind his death.

Not to mention under it, over it, and all around it. Until all that’s left is a dangerous question that her best friend Vivian Kelly truly does not want to know the answer to.

Pearlie was dead, to begin with. With a belly full of arsenic and labeled a suicide by an overworked coroner. But Pearlie was barely middle aged, had just reconnected with his family, had been claiming he was coming into a lot of money and seemed to have everything to live for.

Bea was having a hard enough time believing that her beloved uncle was dead, but suicide was simply out of the question. No matter how things looked, it made no sense. Leading her best friend to want to help her solve a puzzle that no one should have looked twice at.

After all, they were warned.

But Vivian can’t resist either helping a friend or solving a mystery, so she’s off on a seemingly mad quest to discover what really happened, only to uncover a much bigger cockroach skittering around in the dark than she ever imagined.

Escape Rating B: As I was listening to The Last Drop of Hemlock, I remembered what I wrote about the first book in this series, Last Call at the Nightingale. Specifically, that I liked the book but did not love it – and that is just as true for this second book in the series.

The historical details of the setting feel absolutely pitch perfect, and utterly true about life in the poverty-stricken areas of Jazz Age New York City where Bea Henry’s black family and the orphaned Irish Kelly sisters live on neighboring blocks but aren’t supposed to acknowledge each other as neighbors, let alone best friends.

While at The Nightingale, the jazz club and speakeasy where Bea ‘Bluebird’ croons to a packed audience and Vivian waits tables and dances whenever she can, they have a place where they can be who they are, owned and operated by a woman who loves other women, seconded by a Chinese bartender who has to be careful every minute he’s outside the club and sometimes even within it.

I had the mixed sensation with this book, as I did with the first, that I was fascinated by the story but frustrated by the characters, and now that I’m two stories in I think that’s down to Vivian herself. The story follows in Vivian’s wake, through a limited perspective where the reader only knows what Vivian knows and only sees what Vivian sees, and we’re not able to see what’s happening when Vivian is not present.

But we do see inside Vivian’s head – albeit not in her “I” voice. So we know what Vivian thinks and feels. And it still feels like Vivian is too naive to be even half as successful as she’s been. She keeps thinking that everything is going to be alright – which it’s not. It’s not that she’s optimistic – it’s that she’s blind and clueless in a life that should have disabused her of that notion long ago.

The Nightingale’s bartender Danny Chin is an optimist – but he’s still realistic about his situation. He’s just decided to look on the bright side wherever he can without losing sight of the dark side that is always there. Vivian does a lot of pretending that dark side isn’t there until it slaps her in the face – particularly when it comes to poking her nose in murder.

So I’m back at liking this but not loving it. Fascinated in many ways but not as engaged as I wanted to be. Certainly the mystery pulled me along quite handily, particularly in the way that I thought I knew ‘whodunnit’ at the halfway point, only to discover at the end that while I kind of did, I also kind of didn’t. And that even at that end, neither I nor Vivian quite knew all of the answers.

I did like this more than enough that I’ll be reading – or more likely listening to – the next in the Nightingale Mysteries whenever the club next opens it doors.

Review: The Housekeepers by Alex Hay

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Housekeepers by Alex HayThe Housekeepers by Alex Hay
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, thriller
Pages: 368
Published by Graydon House on July 4, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The night of London's grandest ball, a bold group of women downstairs launch a daring revenge heist against Mayfair society in this dazzling historical novel about power, gender, and class.
Mrs. King is no ordinary housekeeper. Born into a world of con artists and thieves, she’s made herself respectable, running the grandest home in Mayfair. The place is packed with treasures, a glittering symbol of wealth and power, but dark secrets lurk in the shadows.
When Mrs. King is suddenly dismissed from her position, she recruits an eclectic group of women to join her in revenge: A black market queen out to settle her scores. An actress desperate for a magnificent part. A seamstress dreaming of a better life. And Mrs. King’s predecessor, with her own desire for vengeance.
Their plan? On the night of the house’s highly anticipated costume ball—set to be the most illustrious of the year—they will rob it of its every possession, right under the noses of the distinguished guests and their elusive heiress host. But there’s one thing Mrs. King wants even more than money: the truth. And she’ll run any risk to get it…
After all, one should never underestimate the women downstairs.

My Review:

It’s 1905, the somber colors and repressive sensibilities of the Victorian era are gone along with the 19th century, and the glittering Edwardian era is in its full if brief splendor of wretched excess in the pursuit of pleasure while so-called ‘Radicals’ agitated towards reform and the world lurched towards the Great War that upended society, killed a generation of young men and hastened the British Empire towards its sunset.

This is a heist story, and like all the best heist stories, it starts kind of in the middle. In this particular story it starts with a beginning AND an ending, although neither is either the beginning or the ending of the story.

First, there’s an invitation. The oh-so-correctly worded and printed invitation to an opulent masquerade ball at the recently inherited and ridiculously opulent Park Lane mansion of the wealthy Miss de Vries. A young woman who should still be in full mourning for her recently deceased, utterly unlamented and very obviously nouveau riche father. A man who may have been buried as Wilhelm de Vries but was born plain old Danny O’Flynn but made his fortune and his name – literally in both cases – in the diamond mines of South Africa.

Second, there’s a dismissal. Mrs. King, housekeeper to the late Mr. de Vries was caught entering the male servants’ quarters the night before. Everyone believes it was for an assignation, and she’s dismissed without a character or a reference from her respected, respectable and well-earned job. It’s just the first of many such dismissals, as Miss de Vries is determined to set her own course with her own people around her, so ALL of her father’s ‘loyal’ servants will have to go.

But Mrs. King had her own reasons for entering service in this particular household and rising through its ranks. Her dismissal, as much as it most definitely rankles, frees her up to begin step one of a fiendishly clever plan.

Her plan to strip the entire mansion down to its foundations, to take back her own from the man who, by turns, sired her, protected her, abandoned her, and hid her from the world he created for himself. Mrs. King, born Dinah O’Flynn, plans to get the biggest piece of her own she can grab.

While the biggest ball of the season is in progress under the very same roof at the very same time.

Escape Rating B: The Housekeepers is all about the heist. Which means that the characters take a back seat to the caper on this thrill ride, and the story is more about putting the operation together and taking the target apart than it is about the gang who are pulling it off.

At the beginning we don’t know much about any of the principals. We know a bit more by the end, but this isn’t the kind of story where character development takes center stage. After all, we don’t need to know a whole lot about either Danny or Debbie Ocean’s backstory or motivations to get caught up in the capers that they pull off. (And yes, The Housekeepers does ring a lot of the same bells as Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s 8.)

The focus of the first two-thirds of The Housekeepers is pulling together the operation to strip Stanhope House bare to the walls (Stanhope House really did exist although the O’Flynn/de Vries family did not). The final third of the story is, naturally, the edge of the seat thrill nail-biter of pulling off the meticulously planned caper.

But the two principals of the story, Mrs. King and Miss de Vries, are both women who keep their cards close to the vest and their emotions even closer. They release bits of their motivations and their backstories, but reluctantly, as if each bit of history was a diamond to be guarded zealously under all conditions. We see them but we don’t know them, and we don’t care about them nearly as much as I hoped.

But it’s a caper story, which means we don’t need to know their motivations, only whether they can make good on their ambitions. Which Mrs. King manages to do in spite of the odds against her and her gang as well as all the things that can go wrong and inevitably do.

This story, with its blend of Ocean’s 8, Comeuppance Served Cold, The Sting, Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey, keeps the reader compulsively turning pages to see if Mrs. King and her gang can manage to pull off the heist of their newly born century. The inner reticence of the story’s principals, Mrs. King and Miss de Vries does leave the story a bit cold at its heart, much like The Forty Elephants, which is based on a true story about an female-led gang operating in New York City during the same time period as The Housekeepers.

Howsomever, like so many of the stories which The Housekeepers reminds readers of, this will make a terrific movie someday, blending the pace of Ocean’s 8 with the costumes of Downton Abbey. I hope it happens!

Review: The Isolated Seance by Jeri Westerson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Isolated Seance by Jeri WestersonThe Isolated Séance (An Irregular Detective Mystery #1) by Jeri Westerson
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Irregular Detective #1
Pages: 224
Published by Severn House on June 6, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The first in a gripping new Victorian mystery series set in London from critically acclaimed author Jeri Westerson.
Watch out, Sherlock! Introducing one-time Baker Street Irregular Timothy Badger and his partner-in-crime Benjamin Watson, two exciting and unconventional young consulting detectives, mentored by the great man himself, tackling intriguing and unusual cases in Victorian London with endearing verve and wit.
Sherlock Holmes's protégés Tim Badger and Benjamin Watson are catapulted into a tricky first case when a man is brutally murdered during a séance.
London, 1895. Former Baker Street Irregular Tim Badger is determined to follow in the footsteps of his great mentor, Sherlock Holmes, by opening his own consulting detective agency with his partner, Benjamin Watson. The intrepid duo are ready to make a name for themselves . . . if only they had clients!
Their luck changes when Sherlock recommends his protégés to Thomas Brent. Brent is eager to find out who killed his master, Horace Quinn, during a séance at Quinn's house. What was Quinn desperately trying to find out from his deceased business partner, Stephen Latimer, before he was stabbed through the heart?
It seems that everyone in Quinn's household had a reason to want him dead. Can Tim and Benjamin step out of Sherlock's shadow to navigate dark secrets and unexpected dangers in their pursuit of a cold-blooded killer?

My Review:

Sherlock Holmes was such a towering figure of investigative genius that it takes not one but two men to even think of stepping into his shoes. Someday, when they’ve got a little more experience under their belts and are a bit more confident in their ability to even hold a clue-seeking magnifying glass up to the ‘Great Detective’s’ bootprints.

Sherlock meets the Irregulars in A Study in Scarlet, as illustrated by Richard Gutschmidt.

Once upon a time, and not all that long ago in the year 1895, Tim Badger was one of the many street urchins that Holmes employed as his Baker Street Irregulars, beginning in Holmes’ very first adventure, A Study in Scarlet, back in 1881.

In 1881, the Irregulars were all children – or at most teens. Inevitably, they grew up. Well, some of them at least, as the game afoot on the streets of London in the late 19th century in their circumstances was that of survival of the fittest – and the Irregulars all entered that game with the deck stacked against them.

But it’s not a surprise that one of those survivors would outgrow the Irregulars with a talent for detection and the same burning need that drove their mentor Holmes, a desire to make a living by righting wrongs and pursuing criminals. Even though there are better ways to make a living and the odds are still stacked against them.

Tim Badger is just one of those ragamuffin boys who has aged out of being invisible and now has to make a living for himself. He’s chosen to follow in his mentor’s footsteps, with the assistance of his very own Watson. But unlike Holmes’ Dr. Watson, Mr. Benjamin Watson is in every bit the same poverty-stricken circumstances as Badger.

Ben Watson is a young black man with a penchant for chemistry and an oddly assorted collection of surprisingly useful odd jobs in his past. A past that isn’t nearly as checkered as Badger’s.

Their first big case is a desperate one, and so are they, even though they’re handed that case on Holmes’ silver salver, for reasons that Badger and Watson have yet to determine. Holmes claims he’s too busy, but that’s pure balderdash and Badger knows it. For Holmes the case would be easy as pie, but for the two fledgling detectives in a race to prove that a young man was wrongfully accused of murdering his employer – it’s the chance of a lifetime.

Or the end of more lives than just their client’s, including, quite possibly, their own.

Escape Rating A-: Surprisingly and delightfully, The Isolated Séance is a story of Sherlock Holmes, of all people, paying it forward – in spite of that phrase not being in common parlance until more than a century later.

As a way of making the leap from Holmes himself to a ‘new generation’ it’s an excellent way of shifting the focus of this Holmes pastiche from the great man to a couple of young men just getting their start – as Holmes and his Watson were when they first took rooms together at 221b.

We get just enough of a glimpse of Badger and Watson’s original circumstances to see just how much the two young men are in over their heads when Holmes steps in and gives them not just a case but an astonishing hand up in their attempts to follow the path he has already broken and solve a case that is every bit as convoluted as anything Holmes himself took on.

Holmes calls his starting grant to them an investment in his legacy, and so it proves. It also helps kick the story into a higher gear as it removes many of the external impediments to their possible success, giving both the characters and the reader a chance to focus on those impediments that are inherent to the case itself and to their maturity – or rather its lack. Particularly in Badger’s case.

(Although both men are very young, Watson’s circumstances as a black man in a city that is prejudiced against him at every turn gives him a bit of caution and maturity that Badger sadly lacks. Watson’s perspective as someone who will always be considered an outsider even before he opens his mouth reminds this reader of the relationship between a young Mycroft Holmes and the more mature Cyrus Douglas in Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s Mycroft Holmes series. Please consider this a readalike recommendation as the Jabbar series is marvelous.)

The case itself is a farrago of mysterious circumstances, wild conjectures, police intractability and mistaken identity from its murderous beginning in the midst of a seance to its tragic, justly unjust ending. Elements which are present in much of Holmes’ canonical casebook as well.

But the way that Badger and Watson come to their solution – and wrestle with their consciences along the way – stands on its own merits. As do they. I look forward to watching their career continue in the second book in this series, The Mummy of Mayfair, hopefully this time next year!

Review: What Darkness Brings by C.S. Harris

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: What Darkness Brings by C.S. HarrisWhat Darkness Brings (Sebastian St. Cyr, #8) by C.S. Harris
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #8
Pages: 349
Published by New American Library, Berkley on March 5, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

London, September 1812. After a long night spent dealing with the tragic death of a former military comrade, a heart-sick Sebastian learns of a new calamity: Russell Yates, the dashing, one-time privateer who married Sebastian’s former lover Kat Boleyn a year ago, has been found standing over the corpse of notorious London diamond merchant Benjamin Eisler. Yates insists he is innocent, but he will surely hang unless Sebastian can unmask the real killer. For the sake of Kat, the woman he once loved and lost, Sebastian plunges into a treacherous circle of intrigue. Although Eisler’s clients included the Prince Regent and the Emperor Napoleon, he was a despicable man with many enemies and a number of dangerous, well-kept secrets—including a passion for arcane texts and black magic. Central to the case is a magnificent blue diamond, believed to have once formed part of the French crown jewels, which disappeared on the night of Eisler’s death. As Sebastian traces the diamond’s ownership, he uncovers links that implicate an eccentric, powerful financier named Hope and stretch back into the darkest days of the French Revolution. When the killer grows ever more desperate and vicious, Sebastian finds his new marriage to Hero tested by the shadows of his first love, especially when he begins to suspect that Kat is keeping secrets of her own. And as matters rise to a crisis, Sebastian must face a bitter truth--that he has been less than open with the fearless woman who is now his wife.

My Review: 

The Hope Diamond in 1974

The Hope Diamond, the very real, very beautiful and very large Hope Diamond, is currently owned by the Smithsonian Museum and housed in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Once upon a time, the Hope Diamond was just a bit bigger than the 45.52 carats it is today and was part of the Crown Jewels of France. Then there was that little historical incident known as the French Revolution, and the Crown Jewels were first put on display and then stolen in 1792.

At which point it disappeared from history, only to reappear in its current size and setting in 1839 as the Hope Diamond in a gem catalog from the banking family of that name.

So where did it go between 1792 and 1839? It’s not exactly the kind of thing that a person could hawk on a street corner – or even take to the usual dealers in stolen goods. Because of its unusual color, it was too easy to trace – even after cutting it down from its original OMG 115 carats to the (still OMG) 67.125 carat gem that was part of the French Crown Jewels.

When the noted art collector, diamond merchant, high-priced pawnbroker and all-around thoroughly disgusting example of humanity Daniel Eisler is killed in his own front parlor, it’s not a case that would normally involve Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin. But the man accused of the murder is dear to a woman Devlin once loved. She claims her husband is innocent – of that crime at least.

Devlin agrees to look into the killing, as it’s pretty obvious that whatever else is going on, there’s been somewhat of a rush to judgment, to the point where it looks like a fix is in. A fix that has tentacles that reach all the way up to the highest powers in that land – whether one defines those high and mighty powers as the Prince Regent or Devlin’s father-in-law, the power behind Prinny’s shaky throne.

At first, it doesn’t seem possible that the famous blue diamond could have anything to do with the death of a dealer whose hands it may have passed through, once upon a time. After all, Daniel Eisler – at least in his fictional incarnation – is such a thoroughgoing bastard that most who hear of his death consider it an improvement to humanity as a whole.

(Daniel Eisler was based on a real person, Daniel Eliason, who really does occupy a place in the history of the Hope Diamond at the time this story takes place. However, the real person does not seem to have been anything like as poor an excuse for a human being as his fictional counterpart.)

But the deeper Devlin digs, the more the diamond – and the agents of Napoleon still hunting it after twenty years – appears to be at the center of a case that otherwise gets darker and murkier as it goes.

Revealing secrets and lies that have lurked in the shadows of the seemingly war with France – and have the potential to rock Prinny’s unstable Regency to its foundations.

Escape Rating A: It’s not much of a surprise that after Tuesday’s book reminded me SO MUCH of St. Cyr that I would be hearing the siren song of the next book in my catch-up read of the series. I kind of wish I’d listened to that voice a bit more readily, as once I started What Darkness Brings I fell right into it with a grateful sigh.

One of the things that I’ve loved about this series is the way that it blends real historical events and figures with a story that often feels “ripped from the headlines” of its own era’s newspapers and gutter press.

Nearly all the history of the Hope Diamond and the French Blue diamond from which it was cut really happened – especially the truly wild bits about the original theft. The speculation about why that theft occurred and just how it got to England are not just plausible but have been looked into as possibilities over the centuries. One part of that speculation and conjecture in Devlin’s time, however, has been verified. In 2005, when scientific testing confirmed that the Hope Diamond was, in fact, cut from the gem in the French Crown Jewels.

At first, I didn’t think the plots in this entry in the series were going to reach nearly as high as they did, but once you read even a bit of the true history and the conjectures that surround it, it made sense that it turned out the way it did.

The way the murder, the theft plot and the real history branched and intertwined made this entry in the series one hell of a wild ride, while still tying up loose ends from previous entries and opening up entirely new fields of questions for future books in the series – some of which have admittedly been answered by the point where the series as a whole rests – hopefully temporarily – after Who Cries for the Lost closed its own set of doors and opened yet more to keep us all on pins and needles until the next entry in the series.

Next up in my catching up/filling in read of the St. Cyr series will be Why Kings Confess. And I confess that I’ll be picking that up the next time I’m looking for a comfort read, or guaranteed competence porn, or just have the urge to see what I missed with these marvelous characters!

Review: The Benevolent Society of Ill Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Benevolent Society of Ill Mannered Ladies by Alison GoodmanThe Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (The Ill-Mannered Ladies, #1) by Alison Goodman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Ill-Mannered Ladies #1
Pages: 464
Published by Berkley on May 30, 2023
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A high society amateur detective at the heart of Regency London uses her wits and invisibility as an 'old maid' to protect other women in a new and fiercely feminist historical mystery series from New York Times bestselling author Alison Goodman.
Lady Augusta Colebrook, "Gus," is determinedly unmarried, bored by society life, and tired of being dismissed at the age of forty-two. She and her twin sister, Julia, who is grieving her dead betrothed, need a distraction. One soon presents itself: to rescue their friend's goddaughter, Caroline, from her violent husband.
The sisters set out to Caroline's country estate with a plan, but their carriage is accosted by a highwayman. In the scuffle, Gus accidentally shoots and injures the ruffian, only to discover he is Lord Evan Belford, an acquaintance from their past who was charged with murder and exiled to Australia twenty years ago. What follows is a high adventure full of danger, clever improvisation, heart-racing near misses, and a little help from a revived and rather charming Lord Evan.
Back in London, Gus can't stop thinking about her unlikely (not to mention handsome) comrade-in-arms. She is convinced Lord Evan was falsely accused of murder, and she is going to prove it. She persuades Julia to join her in a quest to help Lord Evan, and others in need—society be damned! And so begins the beguiling secret life and adventures of the Colebrook twins.
A rollicking and joyous adventure, with a beautiful love story at its heart, about two rebellious sisters forging their own path in Regency London

My Review:

Lady Augusta Colebrook is an ape-leader. She’s a 42 year old spinster with no prospects of marriage whatsoever – and she’s content in that state, living with her twin sister Julia in rather well-upholstered circumstances. Lady Augusta and Julia may still be under the control of the younger brother who inherited the title, but his control is limited to general opprobrium and ownership of the house they live in as they have independent means of their own.

What makes Lady Augusta (generally called Gus by her friends and intimates) an ape-leader? The term is from an old English adage which said that a spinster’s punishment after death, for failing to procreate, would be to lead apes in hell. Technically both Gus and Julia are ape-leaders, but Gus’ personality tends toward leading considerably more than Julia’s does or ever will.

Julia is a peacemaker who thinks the best of everyone. Gus is the person in whose wake Julia is generally trying to make peace after Gus has refused to kowtow to the behavioral expectations due to her gender.

The sisters should be content to sit on the sidelines of Regency society and mind their own behavior while observing the misbehavior (amorous and otherwise) of the younger and livelier members of the ton.

But there’s life in both of these “old girls” yet, and Gus at least is determined to make sure that both of them experience that life to the fullest – for whatever time her sister might have left. Which leads them to the kind of dangerous derring-do that neither of them ever expected.

The kind of adventure in the kinds of places that may very well get them killed – even as it opens their eyes to the kinds of things that no well-bred, well-behaved woman is expected to see or know.

But once they’ve seen, once they know, they can’t unsee. And they can’t help but try to fix what they can with as much benevolence as possible.

Escape Rating B+: “Well behaved women seldom make history” or so goes the famous quote by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, which may be a quote from 1976 rather than the Colebrook sisters Regency – but very much still applies.

It’s also the reason I picked this book up.

The cover, and the blurb, both lead readers to the impression that this book is going to be on the light and frothy side, but that is far from the case. Rather than being a look at the frivolities and minor disgraces in the life of the ton, as so many Regency romances are, The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies shines its light in very dark places, in a way that is not dissimilar to C.S. Harris’ Sebastian St. Cyr series.

Both the Colebrook sisters and St. Cyr are conducting their investigations during the Regency period, in this book specifically 1812 – which is also the year in which books 4 through 8 of the St. Cyr series (Where Serpents Sleep, What Remains of Heaven, Where Shadows Dance, When Maidens Mourn, What Darkness Brings) take place. Both series expose the slimy underbelly of the glittering Regency, but they do it from different perspectives.

St. Cyr, as a member of the aristocracy, operates within the halls of power, while the Colebrook sisters, as disregarded females on the outskirts of the ton, expose the dangers that specifically affect women in that society merely for living while female. In a way, it’s as though Sebastian’s wife Hero, a social reformer in her own right, was the focal point of his series.

(This is all a very large hint that if you enjoy the one series you’ll probably enjoy the other, as they are shining their lights into the dark places of the same historical period. Just not the same dark places.)

What makes the dark places that the Colebrook sisters so chilling is that the places their so-called ill-behavior takes them were all much too real. And it’s much too easy for a reader to imagine themselves in those circumstances. Women really were not just their husband’s property in this era, but his to seemingly dispose of as he pleased, even into an early grave whether indirectly by way of an insane asylum or by an outright murder which was entirely too easy to cover up in a world where a man’s word was law, his wife was chattel and forensic science hadn’t even reached infancy yet.

It’s no wonder that Gus has no desire to marry – she’s too intelligent not to be aware that for a woman with both independent means and an independent streak a mile wide, the costs for her could be deadly.

The conditions that Gus and Julia investigate in the three stories that make up this book are dark, gruesome and inescapably real, to the point where this book needs a whole lot more trigger warnings than that blurb would lead one to believe.

Whether or not a reader will stick through those dark places is going to depend a lot on how one feels about Gus and Julia, because they, especially Gus, are the ones leading us through multiple valleys of the shadow of death, and if they aren’t people you’re willing to follow, then it does work.

I felt for Gus, and liked her intelligent observations of the conditions she was supposed to live under and decided to refuse from her position of relative privilege. I’m not totally sure she successfully walked that fine line between giving a historical-set heroine enough agency to do the things we need her to do to be the protagonist without making her more of a creature of our time than hers. Julia does feel like a woman of her times, which is why she drove me a bit crazy as a character as I couldn’t get into her head at all.

Your reading mileage may vary when it comes to Gus and Julia, but there seems to be no debate on the personality of their brother Duffy. Duffy is used to demonstrate just how circumscribed their lives are supposed to be by the lights of their society. He’s also a total arsehat, a person whose head is so far up their arse that they are wearing it for a hat. And in Duffy’s case, only the British spelling will do. He’s the character we all love to hate. If this were the froth that the cover picture leads you to believe, he’d be both the villain AND the comic relief.

Instead he’s a symbol of everything that’s wrong and just why Gus needs to fight back so damn much and so damn hard.

While there is a bit of a romance hinted at, this is far, far, far from being what is usually meant by a Regency romance – and it’s a much more interesting book for it, but perhaps not for the faint of heart.

Review: Tamam Shud by Kerry Greenwood

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Review: Tamam Shud by Kerry GreenwoodTamam Shud: A Phryne Fisher Mystery by Kerry Greenwood
Narrator: Kirsty Gillmore
Format: audiobook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Phryne Fisher
Length: 59 minutes
Published by Audible Audio, Isis Publishing Ltd on February 12, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

1948. After serving with the French Resistance during the Second World War, codenamed La Chatte Noire, Phryne Fisher escaped to Australia in search of sunshine, butter and peace. So she’s furious when tragedy intrudes upon her newfound tranquillity and she discovers a dead man on Somerton Beach - well-dressed, good-looking and with a secret smile on his lips. The police are baffled as to his identity and cause of death - not to mention the scrap of paper bearing the words TAMAM SHUD found upon him, and the coded message in the book from which it was torn. But WPC Hammond knows Phryne’s fame as a detective. And Phryne telephones her old friend Bernard Cooper, who spent the war at a place called Bletchley, doing something awfully top secret involving codes....

My Review:

The mystery at the heart of this Phryne Fisher story really happened. Somerton Man, as the unidentified corpse came to be known, really was discovered on the beach at Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, on December 1, 1948. To this day, his identity is still uncertain, although a likely candidate was finally determined just last year. JUST last year.

The body was not discovered by Phryne Fisher, although, considering Phryne’s wartime service in both World Wars, and the conclusion that she and her friends both in and out of the Intelligence services eventually reached, if Phryne or someone like her had been involved, or if Somerton Man, whoever he was, had himself been in the spy game, it would have been a secret that a whole lot of people would have taken to their graves.

And perhaps did.

During the course of the Phryne Fisher series, at least so far, Phryne’s date of birth is left deliberately vague. She claims to be in her late 20s – or thereabouts – in the late 1920s setting of the series so far – even though her first-person voice and her vast experience do make one wonder more than occasionally.

In Tamam Shud we finally learn, definitively, that Phryne was ‘born with the century’. In this case the 20th century, making Phryne 48 in this story that takes place after her World War II service, just as the series as a whole takes place after her service as an ambulance driver during World War I and in the intelligence services post-war.

Which makes her a contemporary of Mary Russell, the partner and wife of Sherlock Holmes in Laurie R. King’s series. A reference that seems more apt than it otherwise might, as Tamam Shud has a bit of the feel of the final canonical Sherlock Holmes story, His Last Bow.

So Tamam Shud has the feeling of Phryne’s swan song, as it takes place much later in her life than the author had ever planned to portray, and the Phryne in this tale, as well as the world she inhabits, is in a much different place than during the more lighthearted ‘Roaring 20s’.

Phryne’s gang has broken up, or dispersed over the intervening years. She’s on her own in Adelaide, and rather than calling upon Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, the redoubtable Mr. Butler, or even Bert and Ces, once Phryne gets her teeth into this case she calls upon the resources she accumulated during her years in the French Resistance, including her handlers in British Intelligence.

Phryne, or Le Chat Noir as she was during the war, is not quite who she once was, which she recognizes with more than a touch of both rue and chagrin. But she is still a force to be reckoned with while hunting down a truth that some would prefer remain a mystery.

Police photo of Somerton Man, 1948

Escape Rating A-: To love this short, bittersweet story it is probably necessary to know Phryne Fisher as the books portray her. There’s not enough time to get into the depth necessary to introduce new readers to this beloved character. But for those who already love Phryne, it’s a special treat.

Rather than the ‘portrait of the detective as a young woman’ we have in the book series, this is the portrait of who that young woman has become after 20 years of hard choices and a second war on the heels of the first. So there’s an element here of Phryne proving to herself that she’s still got it when it comes to ferreting out the solution to the mystery.

There’s also a sense of her finally emerging from a post-war slough of despond and coming back to life and back to her truest self – even if that self is a little longer in the tooth than she ever imagined she’d be. Or at least than she ever imagined that she’d look.

The mystery in Tamam Shud ends up being more interesting than fun the way that many of the puzzles that Phryne solves in the books turn out to be. And that seems right, both out of a bit of respect for the very real unsolved mystery at its heart – and for the fact that Phryne is older, sadder and perhaps wiser. Or simply a bit more cognizant that the world isn’t what it was and neither is she.

Also, this is very, very short. Coming to it as someone familiar with the books, it seemed like the story barely sketched Phryne and focused on the unsolved mystery. Which wrapped up rather quickly. (As it would if the government were hushing up post-war spy games.) It does end in hope that Phryne has discovered a new lease on life.

It’s always a treat to spend time with this character, making this short, bittersweet audiobook into something a bit more special for this reader than either its length or its depth possibly warrant.

Reviewer’s note: This version of the story seems to only be available in audio. The paperback/ebook is an entirely different book about the same case, the author’s attempt to solve the mystery from her own first-person perspective rather than Phryne’s. Phryne’s version of the story came later, for inclusion in a collection of stories about fictional detectives solving real historical mysteries titled True Detective, which I have attempted to locate to no avail.

Review: When Maidens Mourn by C.S. Harris

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: When Maidens Mourn by C.S. HarrisWhen Maidens Mourn (Sebastian St. Cyr, #7) 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, #7, #7
Pages: 341
Published by Berkley, New American Library on March 6, 2012
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Regency England, August 1812. Sebastian's plans to escape the heat of London for a honeymoon are shattered when the murdered body of Hero's good friend, Gabrielle Tennyson, is discovered drifting in a battered boat at the site of a long-vanished castle known as Camlet Moat. A beautiful young antiquarian, Miss Tennyson had recently provoked an uproar with her controversial identification of the island as the location of Camelot. Missing and presumed also dead are Gabrielle's two young cousins, nine-year-old George and three-year-old Alfred.Still struggling to define the nature of their new marriage, Sebastian and Hero find themselves occasionally working at cross-purposes as their investigation leads from London's medieval Inns of Court to its seedy back alleys, and from grand country homes to rural enclaves where ancient Celtic beliefs still hold sway. As he probes deeper, Sebastian also discovers dark secrets at the heart of the Tennyson family, and an enigmatic young French lieutenant with a dangerous, mysterious secret of his own.Racing to unmask a ruthless killer and unravel the puzzle of the missing children, Sebastian and Hero soon find both their lives and their growing love for each other at risk as their investigation leads to Hero's father, who is also Sebastian's long-time nemesis... and to a tall, dark stranger who may hold the key to Sebastian's own parentage.

My Review:

The legend of King Arthur has always loomed large over Britain, but even more so at times when the current monarch is less than popular. Or, as in the case of the corpulent, aging, spendthrift Prinny, Prince Regent for his mentally incapacitated father George III, not just unpopular but downright detested for his endless need for more money and therefore higher taxes to maintain his profligate lifestyle AND continue to prosecute Britain’s seemingly endless war with Napoleon and France.

At times like these, King Arthur, the “once and future king” shifts from being a mere legend to a figure of hope. People are looking for a savior from the hated Hanoverian dynasty and praying for a fated king from the mists of time and myth skirts the edges of treason without quite toppling into that abyss.

Not that Prinny isn’t scared out of his mind over the broadsheets that appear everywhere, and especially not that the powerful Lord Jarvis, propping up Prinny’s throne, isn’t looking for a way to tamp down the enthusiasm. No matter how many lies he has to tell, how many experts he has to blackmail, and how many people he has to kill in the cause of keeping Britain safe and Prinny’s throne secure.

Even if he has to lie to his daughter and have one of her dearest friends murdered. As far as Jarvis is concerned he’ll do whatever is necessary in service of what he considers, not merely the “Greater Good”, but the highest cause of all.

But the murder of Gabrielle Tennyson, his daughter Hero’s dear friend, puts Jarvis in opposition – again, pretty much perpetually – to Hero’s new husband, Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin. As always, Devlin is determined to get to the bottom of this devilishly complicated case that has, so far, left one woman dead and put her two missing nephews in danger of following her into the grave – if they haven’t already.

While the conflict between Hero’s loyalties and Devlin’s secrets open a chasm in their barely-begun, frequently tense relationship and ink-barely-dry marriage. A chasm they may not be able to navigate across – not even for the sake of the child they married to protect.

Escape Rating A+: The Sebastian St. Cyr series, as a collective whole, comprises three elements that are endlessly fascinating. As historical mysteries, they generally begin with a dead body, in this particular case that of Gabrielle Tennyson. Thus there is always a case to be solved, with St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, as the principal investigator into whodunnit and often more importantly, why it was done and all too often, who ordered it done.

The who ordered it part leads directly to the second element. These stories take place during the Napoleonic Wars or in their immediate aftermath. Devlin served as a cavalry officer and suffers from PTSD as a result of that service. His penchant for investigating murders is one of the ways he copes with his condition.

But Devlin is a member of the aristocracy, the heir to an Earldom. When he pokes his nose into the doings of the ‘high and mighty’ he can’t be ignored or shoved aside – not that plenty haven’t tried. As a consequence, there is quite often a political element to his investigations, along with a deeper than usual dive into the frequently rancid sausage-making of government – with insights into history as they are happening.

When Maidens Mourn dives into that morass from a surprising direction, as the murder of Gabrielle Tennyson leads back to the government’s underhanded contrivance to put the legend of King Arthur to rest. Again. (“This has all happened before and it will all happen again.”)

Diving into the Arthurian legends in this particular instance proved to be doubly poignant, as it touches, indirectly and fictionally, on the very real Arthur, Lord Tennyson, who will grow up to write The Idylls of the King, a Victorian reimagining of, you guessed it, the legends of King Arthur.

Along with the investigation and the politics and history, there’s a third, personal element to each story, an element that at first seemed the most prominent in this case. Devlin and Hero have been married a scant four days when this story opens. Their marriage is one of necessity, as Devlin needs an heir, and Hero is carrying that heir after the events in Where Serpents Sleep, when they spent one night grasping for life while expecting to die.

Hero is the daughter of Devlin’s greatest enemy, and she is now trapped between two conflicting sets of secrets, a conflict that may cost her any possibility of happiness in her hasty but necessary marriage. Devlin has secrets of his own that he does not want to reveal to a woman he is not sure he can trust – and yet there can be no trust if one of them doesn’t give up something.

Part of what makes this series so interesting is that Hero is likely to prove the one with the stronger will and the better reason not to compromise, but as things stand at the end of this book, how they will go on together is yet uncertain.

At least, it’s uncertain at this particular point in the series. I began reading St. Cyr almost 20 years ago, at the beginning with What Angels Fear. At first, it read as a combination of historical mystery firmly grounded in its historical period with a touch of romance. What initially captivated me was that combination of history and mystery, and the way that the historical period has come to the fore – as well as the continuing development of this fascinating cast of characters – has made this one of my favorite comfort reads.

So I’ve read the early books and the later books and am hit or miss in the middle. I’m systematically changing those misses to hits as I wait for each new book in the series. Which means that next up will be What Darkness Brings, the next time I need a reading pick-me-up to whisk me away!

Review: Murder and Mendelssohn by Kerry Greenwood

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Murder and Mendelssohn by Kerry GreenwoodMurder and Mendelssohn (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, 20) by Kerry Greenwood
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Phryne Fisher #20
Pages: 338
Published by Poisoned Pen Press on December 4, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

To the accompaniment of heavenly choirs singing, the fearless Miss Phryne Fisher returns in her 20th adventure with musical score in hand. An orchestral conductor has been found dead and Detective Inspector Jack Robinson needs the delightfully incisive and sophisticated Miss Fisher’s assistance to enter a world in which he is truly lost. Hugh Tregennis, not much liked by anyone, has been murdered in a most flamboyant mode by a killer with a point to prove. But how many killers is Phryne really stalking? At the same time, the dark curls, disdainful air and the lavender eyes of mathematician and code-breaker Rupert Sheffield are taking Melbourne by storm. They’ve certainly taken the heart of Phryne’s old friend from the trenches of WWI, John Wilson. Phryne recognizes Sheffield as a man who attracts danger and is determined to protect John from harm. Even with the faithful Dot, Mr. and Mrs. Butler, and all in her household ready to pull their weight, Phryne’s task is complex. While Mendelssohn’s Elijah, memories of the Great War, and the science of deduction ring in her head, Phryne’s past must also play its part as MI6 become involved in the tangled web of murders.

My Review:

Mayhem, music and murder – a combination set to intrigue both the indomitable Phryne Fisher and her legions of fans. A legion to which I am more than happy to belong – just because of delightfully complex mysteries like this one.

This entry in the series was particularly delicious because, as several of the characters remark during the course of the investigations, no one is going to mourn either of the actual murder victims. There are no grieving family members to notify in either case – in fact – no one is grieving at all.

The first thing both victims have in common is that they sowed contempt and disgust wherever they went. So it’s not a question of determining possible motives for either murder – it’s a matter of winnowing down a rather long list.

For Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, who is most definitely NOT the Jack Robinson of the TV series, it’s a case that he fully admits is not in his area of expertise – so he solicits his friend Phryne Fisher’s help.

Because everything that happens, whether in high or low places, is always in the bailiwick of Phryne and her friends. One way or another.

Very much like the case in yesterday’s book, there are so many possible motives and suspects for these murders that it’s difficult for even Phryne Fisher to narrow down just who done what to whom. Usually, when Phryne gets involved, she sees through the thicket of obfuscation and the churning sea of red herrings to determine who the guilty party might be.

With this case, it’s beginning to look like the long arm of coincidence might really have a hand in the affair, to the point where there might be more potential murderers than there are victims.

And doesn’t that make for a fine mess for Phryne to unravel – with more than a little help from her many, many friends. Especially since there’s an old and very dear one caught in the middle.

Escape Rating A: This turned out to be one of the longer and more convoluted entries in Phryne Fisher’s catalog of adventures – and I was just in the right mood for it. Phryne is always a comfort read for me, and that’s just what I was looking for, making this very much the right book at the right time.

While I came to the Phryne Fisher books from the Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries TV series, they are not the same in spite of their shared roots. Because the white-hot chemistry between Phryne and Jack in the onscreen version was never intended in the books and does not exist. Jack in the books is an older, experienced detective who is happily married and comfortable as an adjunct to Phryne’s menagerie of a household. He has come to be a friend and to accept her help willingly but that’s all there is.

Phryne in the books is intended as something a bit like a female James Bond – without the license from the Crown. She’s a complex character with a deep, rich history who has walked through a lot of dark places during her service in World War I. A darkness that she is not always able to put behind her – and does reach out for her in this entry in the series.

The mystery in Murder and Mendelssohn, while it is complex in some ways it isn’t what gives this story its depth. What gave this one both its heart and its zing was the way that it called back to Phryne’s service as an ambulance driver in World War I and her post-war stint in the intelligence service.

A dear friend from those bad old days in the trenches has arrived in Melbourne with an insufferable man who thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes. And he might be. But he’s also dismissive of everyone in the world because they aren’t as intelligent as he is. Of course he’s wrong, both in that Phryne is every bit as smart as he is, and being an arsehole to every single person you meet is no way to go through life AND you miss learning a lot of things you really need to know.

That her old friend is in love with this jackass, and that someone is out to kill one or both of them just adds to Phryne’s tasks in this mystery. She needs to solve the murders that Jack brought her, keep her old friend alive AND get the arsehole to notice that other people are human and worth just a bit of courtesy. Enough to appreciate that her dear friend John Wilson is in love with him and either love him back or let him go. If any of them survive the bit of their collective past that seems to be out to get them.

So a LOT happening, and a ton of fun in the resolution, with more than a bit of derring-do and just a soupçon of bittersweetness. A thoroughly delightful serving of Phryne Fisher’s fascinating brew. And I loved every minute of it!

Phryne is a comfort read for me, so I’ve been steadily working my way through the series whenever I need something guaranteed to let me lose myself in a good story in a fully-realized world. Next up in my journey with book-Phryne is Death in Daylesford, but I just learned that there is a new-to-me audiobook available, Tamam Shud. I’ll be diving straight into that as soon as I finish my current listen!