Publisher: Minotaur Books

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

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

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A+ #BookReview: Fatal Enquiry by Will Thomas

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

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A- #BookReview: The Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsey Davis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsey DavisThe Graveyard of the Hesperides (Flavia Albia Mystery, #4) by Lindsey Davis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Flavia Albia #4
Pages: 336
Published by Minotaur Books on April 14, 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In first century Rome, Flavia Albia, the daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken up her father's former profession as an informer. On a typical day, it's small cases—cheating spouses, employees dipping into the till—but this isn't a typical day.
Her beloved, the plebeian Manlius Faustus, has recently moved in and decided that they should get married in a big, showy ceremony as part of beginning a proper domestic life together. Also, his contracting firm has been renovating a rundown dive bar called The Garden of the Hesperides, only to uncover human remains buried in the backyard. There have been rumors for years that the previous owner of the bar, now deceased, killed a bar maid and these are presumably her remains. In the choice between planning a wedding and looking into a crime from long ago, Albia would much rather investigate a possible murder. Or murders, as more and more remains are uncovered, revealing that something truly horrible has been going on at the Hesperides.
As she gets closer to the truth behind the bodies in the backyard, Albia's investigation has put her in the cross-hairs—which might be the only way she'll get out of the wedding and away from all her relatives who are desperate to 'help.'

My Review:

No matter how much technology advances, human nature remains pretty much the same, and that’s a big part of what makes historical mysteries so much fun AND so absorbing. That’s especially true in the Marcus Didius Falco series and its literal daughter-series, Flavia Albia, of which this book, The Graveyard of the Hesperides, is the fourth.

The setting is the Roman Empire in the first century A.D., often, but not always, in Rome itself, as this book is. Flavia Albia is a private informer – read that as private investigator – following in the footsteps of her very much alive but only occasionally meddling adopted father, Marcus Didius Falco, the protagonist of the earlier series.

Falco married above himself in the earlier series, the son of a relatively poor and constantly scheming plebeian family who married a Senator’s daughter. As The Graveyard of the Hesperides opens – both literally and figuratively – Flavia Albia is about to do the same.

Which is where the domestic half of the story kicks in, as the wedding is approaching quickly – as are her soon-to-be in-laws. Flavia loves her fiance – but his family, well, not so much. And very much vice-versa.

In other words, she’s happy to be marrying HIM, but not at all sure about ‘THEM’. A set of conflicted feelings that many feel on the eve of their wedding to someone who seems like the one sane person in a family of crackpots. And not that her intended wouldn’t feel justified having the exact same trepidations about Flavia’s family, as readers already know that Falco takes a bit of getting used to at the best of times!

But that’s the domestic half of the story, the part that in any mystery series centers on the life of the investigator and the gang of helpers and hinderers that coalesce around them as they poke their noses into places that someone inevitably believes they don’t belong.

And that’s where the opening of the graveyard of the Hesperides comes in. The Garden of the Hesperides is the open-air backside of a down-at-heels bar in an equally insalubrious neighborhood. Fiance Tiberius Manlius Faustus owns the construction company that is renovating the place, specifically that back garden.

There have been rumors for years that one of the barmaids is buried back there, so when the construction crew finds human bones, no one is all that surprised. But they don’t just find one set of bones – they find six. Now that is a surprise!

Even more surprising, it looks like all six bodies were buried at the same time and in the exact same way – very neatly and tidily at that. Almost as if all those deaths were planned. And executed.

And yet, after the night that barmaid disappeared, the place opened up the next morning and no one noticed anything amiss except that one missing employee that no one missed all that much. But there are suddenly a whole lot of people really eager for Flavia Albia to forget all those bones and mind her own business. They obviously don’t know the woman, because figuring out whodunnit absolutely IS her business.

One that she is determined to carry out no matter how many ‘frighteners’ stand in her way.

Escape Rating A-: I first met Flavia Albia’s adopted father, Marcus Didius Falco, in the book The Silver Pigs,, over 30 years ago. This was back in the days when I had a long commute to work, audiobooks were still books on actual tape, and the selection was pretty slim. Mystery was the one category there were already lots of – quite possibly because it’s damn hard to thumb to the end of a book on tape.

At the time, the concept behind the Falco series was a bit like the bear dancing; you’re not surprised it’s done well, you’re surprised it’s done AT ALL. Much like one of my other favorite historical mystery series that began around the same time, the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series that started with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.

Flavia Albia’s investigations also remind me of two other long-running mystery series, one historical and one not, at least as it was written. The Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series by Jeri Westerson, beginning with Veil of Lies, is similar to Falco and his daughter in that it posits a noir-type gumshoe in an era that probably didn’t have anyone who fit that description, and yet still manages to immerse its character and the reader in that unexpected time and place to the point where you feels the broken cobblestones under your own feet as you read.

Last but not least, although the series is contemporary and not historical (sorta/kinda, as the first book, The Blessing Way, came out in 1970). Anne Hillerman’s continuation of her father’s long-running Leaphorn and Chee series into her Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito series changes its focus and updates its perspective by moving the original father-figure protagonist to the sidelines and introducing a female perspective in the form of a new daughter or daughter-like investigator.

In other words, I came into this book with a whole lot of nostalgia and more than a bit of mystery reading background and baggage crowding my thoughts and falling out a bit willy-nilly all over the place. After all, it’s been nearly two years since I last visited Flavia Albia and her family in Deadly Election.

And I’m struck again that what makes this series work – and what made the previous serious work as well – is the singular voice of its protagonist. We view Flavia Albia’s Rome through her eyes and hear her voice, filled with her reflections on her world and her place in it. She’s probably even more cynical and hard-bitten than her father, because she’s been through a school of much harder knocks and is both grateful for the safety, privilege and freedom that her adoption by Falco and Helena Justina affords her AND still conscience of just how desperate her situation was before and how easy it would be for her to fall back to the bottom.

So this case, which is wrapped around the death of a woman who was probably a prostitute and/or a procurer and supplier of sex workers, taking her as it does into the lives of many still living that life – most of them slaves who have no hope and no choice – hits her hard and reminds her of the fragility of life and her own current happiness in it.

Even as she is in the midst of her own wedding and the hope of future happiness that it brings. If she can just manage to solve this case and get her in-laws out of her own and her formidable mother’s hair before someone’s face gets shoved into fist. Quite possibly her father’s.

So come for the historical setting. Or the portrait of life in a time and place that manages to be both long ago and far away but feels just the right amount of familiar. Stay for the family shenanigans – or just for Flavia Albia’s wry, cynical commentary upon them. Either way, you’ll get caught up in the mystery and its resolution, leading right back into the opening of this review; that technology, in this case forensic science, may have changed a lot in the past two millennia, but human nature hasn’t changed a bit.

I know that I’ll be back for the next book in this series, The Third Nero, if only to learn how Tiberius Manlius and Flavia Albia manage to recover from the shocking conclusion to both the case and their wedding festivities.

#AudioBookReview: A Midnight Puzzle by Gigi Pandian

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: A Midnight Puzzle by Gigi PandianA Midnight Puzzle (Secret Staircase Mystery, #3) by Gigi Pandian
Narrator: Soneela Nankani
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery, thriller
Series: Secret Staircase Mystery #3
Pages: 342
Length: 10 hours and 38 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Minotaur Books on March 19, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In heroine Tempest Raj, modern-day queen of the locked room mystery Gigi Pandian has created a brilliant homage to the greats of classic detective fiction. Secret Staircase Construction is under attack, and Tempest Raj feels helpless. After former client Julian Rhodes tried to kill his wife, he blamed her "accident" on the home renovation company’s craftsmanship. Now the family business—known for bringing magic into homes through hidden doors, floating staircases, and architectural puzzle walls—is at a breaking point. No amount of Scottish and Indian meals from her grandfather can distract Tempest from the truth: they’re being framed.
When Tempest receives an urgent midnight phone call from Julian, she decides to meet him at the historic Whispering Creek Theater—only to find his dead body, a sword through his chest. After a blade appears from thin air to claim another victim, Tempest is certain they’re dealing with a booby trap… something Secret Staircase Construction could easily build. Tempest refuses to wait for the investigation to turn to her or her loved ones. She knows the pieces of the puzzle are right in front of her, she just has to put them together correctly before more disaster strikes.
Multiple award-winning author Gigi Pandian and her heroine Tempest Raj return in A Midnight Puzzle, where an old theater reveals a deadly booby trap, secrets, and one puzzle of a mystery.

My Review:

A Midnight Puzzle is all about the Raj Family Curse – and the sin of hubris that allows it to last so long and makes it so damn difficult to put to rest.

After her adventures – and misadventures – in the first two books in the Secret Staircase Mystery series, Under Lock and Skeleton Key and The Raven Thief, stage illusionist turned construction illusionist Tempest Raj believes that she is on the verge of solving the mystery that has cast a shadow over her family and her life for the past decade – if not considerably longer.

Long, long ago, the Raj family were illusionists and court magicians in their native India. Way back then, it was believed that a curse had been laid on the family – or the family business. It was said that the Raj family’s firstborn child in each generation would “die by magic”. Of course, over the centuries, it did happen sometimes. Just enough to keep the curse – or the belief in it – going for another century or so.

Tempest’s beloved grandfather Ash is the second child of his generation, because his older brother died “by magic”. Ash left India for Scotland and its renowned medical colleges, married a local artist and never looked back. Or at least tried very hard not to.

But the magic skipped a generation as well as a continent. Ash’s daughters, Elspeth and Emma, became stage illusionists as “The Selkie Sisters” until an accident and an argument broke their trust in each other. Working alone, Elspeth, the older of the two, did indeed “die by magic”, keeping the talk of the curse alive for another generation.

However, Emma died by magic as well – or at least disappeared in the middle of her own magic show, on the boards – or at least in the wings – of their hometown’s Whispering Creek Theater ten years ago.

Tempest has rented the haunted and haunting little theater in order to stage one final performance, a one night “Farewell” to her own ill-starred career as a stage illusionist. Of course, being in temporary possession of the place her mother vanished, Tempest is also determined to comb the theater for clues.

At least until disaster strikes – from without and from within. But in solving the current mystery, Tempest may have the opportunity she needs to lay that old mystery to rest. If her family’s construction company, Secret Staircase Construction, can survive just one more public disaster.

And if Tempest and her ‘Scooby gang’ can manage to unmask a killer before their curse sweeps Tempest AND her friends into yet another example of the Raj Family curse.

Escape Rating B: I have to admit that I went into this third entry in the series with a bit of trepidation after the muddle of The Raven Thief. Particularly as A Midnight Puzzle opened with Tempest, her family and the construction company being in the midst of what seemed like rather pointedly aimed chaos on all fronts – only because it was.

(I started this one in audio, as I figured it would get me over the hump of those trepidations. And it did. I switched to text once it got going because there were so many potential clues and delicious red herrings that I needed to find out who actually ‘dunnit’ FASTER.)

But at the beginning I was still a bit stuck in thinking this series was inflicted with Cabot Cove Syndrome, or perhaps Midsommer-itis. By which I mean that all of the mysteries so far have been a bit too intimate and her family and their business have been much too personally involved – not as the investigators, or even as the direct victims – but as the suspects.

No one’s luck is THAT bad. Unless, of course, they really are cursed.

Which means that I was very pleased to see the mystery of the Raj Family Curse – at least in its modern iteration – laid to rest at the end of A Midnight Puzzle, along with a promise of more mysteries but somewhat less personal ones in future entries in the series.

But first, there’s the mystery in THIS outing. Or rather, the two mysteries that are both squarely aimed at the Raj Family.

What makes this story work better than The Raven Thief is that the story keeps its eyes – and Tempest’s – on the prize of solving the mystery of her mother’s disappearance – no matter how many distractions and misdirections get thrown in Tempest’s way.

And no matter how much the police seem to be bungling their investigation into the deadliest of those distractions.

As much and as often as Tempest is tempted (and so is the reader!) to hare off after the many distractions and misdirections, in the end A Midnight Puzzle is a very satisfying wrap up to what looks to be the opening setup trilogy for this series. And the way that the whole thing was strung out over three books feels like it was the right length after all, because this mystery has been decades in the making, so it’s only fitting that it take a year or more to wrap up in a way that leads back around to a beginning that Tempest barely knew about, as well as a reminder that “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

But Tempest is not the one who falls, even though the resulting thud breaks her heart, and it clears the way for new, and hopefully less personal mysteries and adventures. I’m looking forward to see what Tempest stirs up next.

Review: The Lady from Burma by Allison Montclair

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
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 Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

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: The Wayward Prince by Leonard Goldberg

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Wayward Prince by Leonard GoldbergThe Wayward Prince (The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes Mysteries, #7) by Leonard Goldberg
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Daughter of Sherlock Holmes #7
Pages: 336
Published by Minotaur Books on July 11, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The fate of Prince Harry and the British throne lies in the hands of Joanna and the Watsons in the latest Daughter of Sherlock Holmes mystery from USA Today bestselling author Leonard Goldberg.

During the height of the Great War, playboy Prince Harry, the third in line to the British throne, vanishes in thin air while horseback riding in Hyde Park The strikingly handsome playboy prince is initially believed to have arranged his disappearance so he can enjoy a brief rendezvous with one of his secret lovers. But when his absence continues on for days, the royal family grows concerned and summons Scotland Yard, who can only recover scant, unrevealing clues.

The concern deepens when MI5 decodes a recent message from German spies in London which speaks of a captured asset that will bring great embarrassment to the Crown. There is a strong belief within the Intelligence agency that plans are underway to transport the captive prince to Berlin without delay. Despite an intensive search, no trace of the royal can be detected.

With Scotland Yard and MI5 baffled, Joanna and the Watsons are called in, and they soon find themselves entangled in a web of abortion, murder, treason, and spies, all of which is seemingly being orchestrated by an arch-enemy of the long-dead Sherlock Holmes. In their race to rescue Prince Harry, it becomes clear that the mastermind behind the maze of crimes has a singular motive in mind. He desires overdue revenge in the form of Joanna’s death.

My Review:

Even more strongly than yesterday’s book recalled the St. Cyr series, this seventh entry in The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes series intentionally calls back to its ‘parent’ on pretty much every page in a way that evokes a smile of nostalgia as well as an itch to see precisely which game is afoot. Even though the times have moved on from the original Holmes’ Victorian Era to the new Edwardian Age – and the new century – there are always going to be cases that cry out for the genius of the ‘Great Detective’.

And just as Sherlock Holmes’ genius and methods are carried on by his progeny, so too are the evil plots of his enemies by theirs – with a heaping helping of the desire for revenge stirring the pot.

At first, the case of the wayward prince seems straightforward. Well, more or less, sorta/kinda. It’s not that it doesn’t start out brimming with terrible possibilities, it’s just that those terrible possibilities are all rather mundane in the scheme of things.

Prince Harry, third in line for the throne (after the future Edward VIII AND the future George VI) is well into adulthood during the Great War taking place on the continent. Which does knock quite a few of the truly awful possibilities straight off the table.

Not to mention that the Prince has a habit of occasionally slipping away from his guards for a romantic assignation in the kinds of places and with the type of women that the Palace would not be best pleased to see splashed all over the gutter press.

But he’s been gone too long for that to be the case, which has now become urgent. It is much too plausible that the Prince has been abducted by German agents intending to cart him back to the Kaiser and parade him around to embarrass his father and his country. The cost to British morale would be incalculable.

Howsomever, the more that Mrs. Joanna Watson, the titular daughter of Sherlock Holmes, follows the trail of clues, the more certain she is that this is no simple kidnapping. Rather, it is a carefully laid plan to ensnare – not the Prince – but herself.

A new ‘Napoleon’ of crime is hiding in the shadows of war torn London, intending to lure, guide or, if necessary, drag the daughter of his father’s old enemy back to the place where once it seemed that both antagonists fell to their deaths – so that a different ending of that saga can finally be written.

Escape Rating A-: The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes series is always a guilty pleasure for this reader, and I have to say that this entry in the series was very pleasing indeed – in spite of the things that still niggle at me. This entry in the series was every bit as captivating as the first, and seems to have been the right book at the right time once again.

I fell right into this story and didn’t emerge until the last page, already itching for the next entry in the series – which does not seem to have been announced yet. Dammit.

The story in all of the books in this series so far relies on a combination of nostalgia, a passing familiarity with the popular image of Sherlock Holmes, and a love of convoluted puzzles of the type that Holmes himself used to find irresistible.

The nostalgia factor is personified in this series by the inclusion of Dr. John H. Watson, Sr., Sherlock Holmes’ investigative partner and friend. The senior Watson is now in his 80s, so he is there to provide a bit of gravitas, more than a hint of respectability, a crack shot when needed and a direct connection to Holmes and his work. He is not the chronicler nor is he the prime mover of events, but his part is necessary to the story and to its near-constant evocation of the late Holmes.

The action, the detection and the chronicling are in the hands of Dr. John H. Watson, Jr., a practicing pathologist, and his wife Joanna, the daughter of Sherlock Holmes. One of my biggest niggles about this series is that Joanna seems to exhibit every single one of Holmes’ personality tics, almost as though there’s a checklist being worked from.

That she has his genius is more than plausible – that she seems to go about every investigation mimicking his mannerisms is a bit too much.

That being said (and admittedly re-said, because it drives me batty every time), the cases themselves are both absorbing and fascinating, and this one is certainly no exception. The stakes are extremely high – even before Joanna learns the identity of her adversary.

The involvement of the Palace in the investigation – and more importantly the WAY that the Palace gets involved in the investigation – adds a level of both verisimilitude and schadenfreude that gives the reader more than a nod of recognition. The behavior of the Royals and the ‘Firm’ that protects them doesn’t seem to have changed much in the intervening century.

The reader does kind of know that Prince Harry is going to come out of this alright, because he is a historical figure and whether he misbehaved in quite this way or not, history records that he lived to see not only the Great War to its conclusion, but the next war as well.

And that’s fine because Prince Harry may be the macguffin in this mystery but that’s not the point of it all. It’s all about drawing Holmes’ daughter and his enemy’s son back to an all too familiar place and the solution to an all too possible ‘final problem’.

It’s that mystery and its reenactment that kept me turning pages until the end. But if this turns out not to be anyone’s end after all – as it didn’t the first time around – I would not only not be entirely surprised, but I’d be downright thrilled.

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 Raven Thief by Gigi Pandian

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Raven Thief by Gigi PandianThe Raven Thief (Secret Staircase Mystery, #2) by Gigi Pandian
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery, thriller
Series: Secret Staircase Mystery #2
Pages: 320
Published by Minotaur Books on March 21, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Multiple award-winning author Gigi Pandian is one of the best locked room mystery writers working today. Her newest heroine, Tempest Raj, returns in The Raven Thief, where sliding bookcases, trick tables, and hidden reading nooks hide something much more sinister than the Secret Staircase Construction crew ever imagined.
One murder. Four impossibilities. A fake séance hides a very real crime.
Secret Staircase Construction just finished their first project with Tempest Raj officially a part of the team—a classic mystery novel-themed home interior. Their client is now ready to celebrate her new life without her cheating ex-husband, famous mystery author Corbin Colt. First up, a party, and Tempest and Grandpa Ash are invited to the exclusive mock séance to remove any trace of Corbin from the property—for good. It's all lighthearted fun until Corbin's dead body crashes the party.
The only possible suspects are the eight people around the séance table—a circle of clasped hands that wasn't broken. Suspicion quickly falls on Grandpa Ash, the only one with actual blood on him. To prove her beloved grandfather’s innocence, Tempest must figure out what really happened—and how—or Ash will be cooking his delectable Indian and Scottish creations nevermore.

My Review:

Hidden staircases are far from the only secrets that Tempest Raj has to contend with in this second book in the Secret Staircase Mystery series, after the events of last year’s locked room mystery/thriller romp, Under Lock and Skeleton Key.

In fact, the Raj family seems to be keeping an entire hidden vault chock-full of secrets, each believing they are protecting the others – and Tempest herself is no different. But those secrets – or at least a few of them, very nearly put Tempest’s beloved grandfather Ash into prison.

It all starts innocently enough. Lavinia Kingsley wants to exorcise the demon of her cheating ex-husband from her life in general and from the home they once shared in particular. As the bastard is very much still alive – and still living in town – Lavinia decides on a fake séance to remove his virtual or spiritual presence. A ceremony in which she plans to burn a box of papers he left behind when he moved out – into his new girlfriend’s house.

Even in a real séance, the practitioner does not expect the corpse of the dearly or not-so-dearly departed to manifest in the room. So it’s more than a bit of a surprise – it’s a downright shock – when Corbin Colt’s still warm body drops from the ceiling to the middle of the table.

Tempest’s magician friend Sanjay prepared the room for the fake séance, but that was absolutely not one of the props he planned to include!

But that preparation included all the participants surrendering their cell phones, all of the doors to the room being locked, and all of the lights dimmed to set the ‘right’ atmosphere for the event. When that body drops right in front of him, Ashok’s instincts as a retired doctor are to examine the victim in the hopes that he can save the man.

An instinct that unfortunately covers Ash in the evidence used to indict him for the murder of a man who once filed a restraining order against him for assault.

Leaving Tempest and her friends in the same position they found themselves in Under Lock and Skeleton Key – running an unofficial, unsanctioned and absolutely unprofessional investigation into a murder case involving her family that the police seem to have gotten all wrong. Again.

Escape Rating B-: Like the series opener, The Raven Thief is a cozy mystery thriller that takes the classic locked-room mystery and gives it a whole prop cupboard’s worth of new, inventive and occasionally downright magical twists and turns.

When Corbin Colt’s case turns into a murder investigation, it’s not merely a locked room mystery. There are not just one or two, but four impossibilities built into his killing, from how did his murderer get the body into the ceiling with the séance attendees in the room to how did he get so recently dead when he was seen a half hour away by hundreds of witnesses just a few minutes before his shocking demise?

Watching Tempest figure out just how it was done and whodunnit was a lot of fun, filled with oodles of surprises and misdirections, but it takes a fair amount of book to get there.

What was much less fun, or at least much more disjointed, was following Tempest as the family secrets and curses that have plagued her life twisted her up, sent her on more than one wild goose chase and just generally muddied the waters of both the case in hand AND the overarching story of her family and the tragedies that have followed them around the world.

Tempest’s family have a long and storied history as stage magicians – a history that included Tempest herself until just prior to the events of Under Lock and Skeleton Key. Both her mother and her aunt were murdered due to a secret not yet revealed. A mysterious figure that Tempest has nicknamed ‘Moriarty’ is stalking her, claiming to be protecting her but that is murky at best and the reader, along with Tempest is still very much in the dark about his true purpose.

So there are two stories combined into The Raven Thief, and they don’t manage to jell into one. The case of the dead bastard, while not exactly straightforward, had the potential to be a delightful mystery romp of an arsehole getting his just desserts that gets twisted by human emotions and clever misdirection.

The secrets that the Raj family are keeping from one another keep rising up to bite them in the collective arse – which could make the mystery more fascinating. But so far it feels like trying to solve an equation for too many unknowns and they just muddy the waters – at least for this reader.

I did enjoy the last third of the book, as the case in hand starts drawing towards its conclusion. I love Tempest’s quirky family and their even quirkier business adding whimsy, hidden rooms and secret staircases to houses. I’ve also read and liked a few of the books in the author’s Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt series. Taking all of those things together means that I’ll be picking up the next book in the Secret Staircase Mystery series in the hopes of getting a few more clues to all of those pesky family secrets that keep getting in Tempest’s way.

Review: A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: A World of Curiosities by Louise PennyA World of Curiosities (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #18) by Louise Penny
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #18
Pages: 400
Published by Minotaur Books on November 29, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns in the eighteenth book in #1 New York Times bestseller Louise Penny's beloved series.
It’s spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge.
But something has.
As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines.
But to what end?
Gamache and Beauvoir’s memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back. Did their mother’s murder hurt them beyond repair? Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt?
As Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long dead stone mason is discovered. In it the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village. Every word of the 160-year-old letter is filled with dread. When the room is found, the villagers decide to open it up.
As the bricks are removed, Gamache, Beauvoir and the villagers discover a world of curiosities. But the head of homicide soon realizes there’s more in that room than meets the eye. There are puzzles within puzzles, and hidden messages warning of mayhem and revenge.
In unsealing that room, an old enemy is released into their world. Into their lives. And into the very heart of Armand Gamache’s home.

My Review:

Armand Gamache’s chickens come home to roost – and lay rotten eggs all over Gamache’s past cases, his present peace, and even Three Pines itself in this 18th book in the series.

A World of Curiosities is a story about reckonings, about settling up accounts and finding out that one has been found wanting. Even Armand Gamache. And that all of his mistakes, omissions and oversights have followed him home and put his family and friends in danger.

The roots of this story go deep, back to events that have been previously touched on but not described in detail, back to Armand’s own early cases as well as to the horrific case where he found Jean-Guy Beauvoir languishing in the basement of an outlying Sûreté office. Because Jean-Guy, being himself, was considered insubordinate. Because he wouldn’t play along.

A case that initially seems to be at the heart of it all. And is. But isn’t. But is after all. Again, one of Gamache’s oversight chickens that has come home to roost and shit all over Three Pines.

At first it all seems like an interesting bit of curiosity. A hidden room is found over the bookstore. It’s been bricked over – actually stoned over – for well over a century, lost to time and hidden from sight until a very old but newly discovered letter makes its way from an archive, to a dead woman, to the descendant of the man who bricked that room over all those years ago.

It’s not a straightforward path, rather a convoluted set of fits and starts that seems to have been in motion for years of its own. As was the intent of its patient and painstaking creator. A man who has been plotting his revenge against Armand Gamache for decades, and now has the perfect pawns in place to make Gamache pay.

Or so he believes.

Escape Rating A+: I know I’m not conveying this one well at all. Obviously, I loved it. I was also a bit disturbed by it, because all of the past crimes that lead up to this present danger were very disturbing.

The story opens at a combined commemoration and graduation ceremony at the École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal. The massacre was a real event, a 1989 mass killing of female engineering students by a man who was outraged by women moving into what were formerly male-only preserves.

In addition to bringing this horrific crime back into the light, it also serves as a way of introducing two of the important characters of this entry in the series, two young women, Harriet Landers and Fiona Arsenault, who both graduate as engineers during the ceremony.

It’s Fiona who links back to the earlier case, and it’s that earlier case that is so very disturbing. Because it began as a missing persons case, which turned into a murder case, which led to the discovery that Fiona and Sam Arsenault, ages 13 and 10 respectively, were being pimped out by their now-dead mother. And the damage that was done to them, that echoed through their lives and their personalities from those foundational experiences to the present day.

One of the questions that echoes down through this entire book is the question about not whether they were permanently damaged by their early experiences but just how much they were damaged and whether they can ever be something that might be considered saved or rehabilitated. That Gamache believes that Sam is the true sociopath while Jean-Guy believes it is Fiona doesn’t alter the question about whether either of them can contain their true natures well enough not to spend their lives harming themselves, each other and everyone around them.

Part of what makes the story such a riveting tangle, however, is the way that the focus is solidly on the Arsenaults and the questions about will they, won’t they, did they, don’t they that the true evil hiding in plain sight isn’t even glimpsed until very late in the game.

A World of Curiosities, like so many of the books in this marvelous series, was just about a one-sitting read for me. I started it at dinner and finished just before bed. Which was after midnight and the only reason it was before bed was that something about the story shook me up enough that I didn’t want to take it to bed with me. It was also one of the rare cases with this series where I did thumb to the end about midway through, not because I needed to find out whodunnit – I was happy to follow that trail with Gamache – but because I needed the reassurance that all my friends, the characters who have come to inhabit the series and the village of Three Pines, were going to come out of this alive if not unscathed.

I also realized that the characters are what I love this story for, rather than the process of the investigation and the sheer brilliance of the detectives. Not that Gamache and his colleagues are not generally brilliant, but that’s not the point for me. Every book in this series is such a deep character study, of Gamache, his family and friends, the villagers, and of course the perpetrators and even the red herring characters. Not that forensics and all the trappings of modern policing don’t play a part in the ultimate solution, but Gamache solves crimes by knowing and understanding the people involved and that’s what makes the series so compelling.

While the mystery in A World of Curiosities is a page-turning twisting, turning, swirling – and occasionally stomach-churning whodunnit, the real charm of the series is in its characters, and the best way to get every single drop of that charm is to start at the very beginning with Still Life.

Now I have a year at least to wait for the hoped-for 19th book in the series. In the meantime, there’s a brand new TV series titled Three Pines, based on the novels, that begins tonight on Amazon Prime. I know what I’ll be watching this weekend!

 

Review: Deadly Election by Lindsey Davis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Deadly Election by Lindsey DavisDeadly Election (Flavia Albia Mystery, #3) by Lindsey Davis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Flavia Albia #3
Pages: 320
Published by Minotaur Books on July 14, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In the blazing July heat of imperial Rome, Flavia Albia inspects a decomposing corpse. It has been discovered in lots to be auctioned by her family business, so she's determined to identify the dead man and learn how he met his gruesome end.
The investigation will give her a chance to work with the magistrate, Manlius Faustus, the friend she sadly knows to be the last chaste man in Rome. But he's got other concerns than her anonymous corpse. It's election time and with democracy for sale at Domitian's court, tension has come to a head. Faustus is acting as an agent for a 'good husband and father', whose traditional family values are being called into question. Even more disreputable are his rivals, whom Faustus wants Albia to discredit.
As Albia's and Faustus' professional and personal partnership deepens they have to accept that, for others, obsession can turn sour, and become a deadly strain that leads, tragically, to murder.

My Review:

I want to start this with “Once upon a time” but I’m not sure whether that’s once upon a time, in 1989, the author published the first book in a historical mystery series featuring a hard-boiled rapscallion of a private inquiry agent named Marcus Didius Falco. The series ran for 20 books, until Falco passed the investigative torch to his adopted daughter Flavia Albia. Deadly Election is the third book in her series, which is now at ten books and continuing.

It could be “once upon a time”, back when audiobooks were still on actual tape, I listened to that first book, The Silver Pigs, and picked up all the subsequent books I could get my hands on in any form.

At the time, the series was a bit like the bear dancing, in that you are not surprised it’s done well, you’re surprised it’s done AT ALL. But in the end, it was done and done very well indeed, in spite of the seeming implausibility of the protagonist.

Once you’ve read the fortunes and misfortunes of the father, it seems natural to continue the adventure with the daughter who brings her own version of wry intelligence mixed with utter cynicism to her own investigations – following in her father’s often self-indulgent footsteps.

Flavia Albia is a different kind of investigator altogether. Not that she doesn’t find herself in trouble as often as her father did. It’s just that many of the times Falco had to be broken out of jail it was his own fault due to some of that self-indulgence. When Flavia Albia gets into trouble it’s usually because she’s working too hard or following too closely in a case. The former at least was something her father was seldom accused of.

And if it seems like I’m meandering a bit or giving a lot of background, that’s actually kind of how both series work. Because there is generally a lot of background, all to the purpose of immersing the reader in the world inhabited by Flavia Albia and her frequently disreputable family – with her “dear old dad” as the head disreputable. Without his redoubtable wife, Helena Justina, he would never have managed to stay any course long enough to have enough to retire on – as he has.

But as we walk the streets of Imperial Rome with Flavia Albia, we are able to immerse ourselves in her world. It’s a fascinating view of a time and place long subsumed by history, made all the more absorbing because as much as many things are different, human beings don’t seem to have changed a bit.

For good and for ill. Considering Albia’s profession, she’s better off if a few more people are doing ill – as then they might need her services as an “informer” – otherwise known as a private inquiry agent or, as anachronistic as the term would be – private detective.

In Deadly Election, she has two cases to wrangle with. One comes to her through her friend – and possibly her eventual lover, Manlius Faustus. He’s already been elected to public office, but he’s now mentoring his childhood friend into the business. They’re using Albia’s services to investigate their rivals to see if some dirt can be found to foul up their campaigns – while trying to keep ahead of whatever dirt their opponents might dig up on them.

But the election has already turned deadly, as Albia’s other work, assisting with the family auction house, has turned up a dead body locked in a storage crate scheduled for auction. At first, Albia has no clue to the corpse’s identity, but as she investigates she discovers that the late lamented may not have had an enemy in the world, but he certainly had a relative in that race for public office.

It’s up to Albia to figure out who done it and why at a time and place where forensics were non-existence, women officially had no public role (unofficially was an entirely other matter) and where everyone is afraid to talk because the emperor’s agents are everywhere – looking for possible – or potential traitors.

Escape Rating A-: Part of what makes these series fun is that each book begins with what almost seems like a lot of extraneous information. Information that turns out not to have been extraneous at all by the time the story ends. But it does feel like an immersion process, that it takes time to become acquainted, or re-acquainted, with Albia’s Rome as she experiences it.

And to get used to her first-person voice, because she’s an intelligent outsider who has learned to be whoever and whatever she needs to be to get the job done and get paid by her client. But behind her mask of professional politeness she’s wry and snarky and frequently wishes she could let loose with a cutting remark or ten – because so many of her clients deserve it. Her thoughts can feel very modern, just as her adopted father’s did, but it works surprisingly well.

As Flavia goes on with her business and takes us through her Rome, we start to feel the cobbles under our feet, the mud between our toes, and even smell the overwhelming decay of the liquefying corpse the auction house’s staff find locked in a chest.

At first we’re watching her, and then we’re with her, in a way that wouldn’t work nearly as well if the story didn’t circle around to the case the way it does.

A lot of this particular story is about family ties and nepotism in politics. (Doesn’t that sound all too familiar?) Also it takes place in the middle of a very long, very hot summer, and that seems familiar as well. Forensics are non-existent. She has to solve her cases by painstakingly asking questions of everyone involved and piecing together the parts of the answers that might be true.

It’s easy for both Albia and the reader to get lost in the cover ups and lies, and isn’t that just politics all over.

At the same time, Albia’s relationship with Faustus is driving her crazy. He seems to be the only man in Rome immune to her charms. He’s divorced, she’s a widow, there’s no reason they can’t embark on an affair. Except that they are not of the same class. How much social opprobrium he’s willing to endure is not something she’s willing to risk her heart on.

But this case throws them together at every turn. Which makes it a lot of fun for the reader to wonder whether they’re going to get together or even if they should, while Albia takes a hard look at all the candidates for office and all the murder suspects for that poor corpse and begins to think they might be one and the same.

The heart wants what the heart wants, the cases aren’t going to be easy to solve, and the emperor is insanely paranoid – adding a level of unpredictable danger to a situation that no one except Flavia Albia wants to cope with in the first place!

But it’s all a lot of fun for any reader, like this one, who loves historical mysteries set in unusual times and places. And for any reader who likes their protagonists to have an inner asshole voice that isn’t always as inner as it should be.

In other words, I had a ball with this book, even if Albia wasn’t always having one herself. I’ll be back sometime with the next book in the series, The Graveyard of the Hesperides, the next time I’m in the right mood, if only to see how Albia’s romance is – or isn’t – going!