Tag:

Historical

Review

The Ghosts of Paris

by Brian Kenney

Part historical fiction, part mystery, this sweeping novel picks up the reader and transports them on a whirlwind trip from Sydney to London to Paris, where the long and compelling search finally comes to an end. It’s 1947, and the Second World War has been over for two years, although its impact remains enormous. Detective Billie Walker is hired by a well-to-do woman to find her husband, who’s been missing in Europe these past two years, and before you can say Qantas, Billie is up in the air, accompanied by Sam, her handsome assistant. Funny thing is, Billie also has a husband lost in Europe—a wartime photographer—providing the story with a double plot. But the greatest pleasure in this book comes from all the rich history and social commentary: the experiences of the Australian Aboriginal peoples with the police, the legal persecution of Australia’s gay men, Dior’s new look, London as it climbs out of from the Blitz, Paris as it tries to recoup, and so much more. The author has done her research, and it shows—in the best possible way. Moss does slam on the brakes, and the book rattles to a quick close, but that’s O.K. We’re happy where we’ve landed, and would follow Billie Walker anywhere.

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Review

Blackout

by Henrietta Thornton

It’s 1939 and a vicious serial killer is pursuing his bloody wont in Berlin’s trains. Assigned to these cases, which his superiors in the Kriminalpolizei, or Kripo, think are unrelated accidents, is Inspector Horst Schenke, a former racecar driver who’s embarrassed that injuries related to his old career have kept him from the front. He’s not one to rock the boat but quietly resists the ridiculous bureaucracy, lawlessness, and brutality of “the party,” even as his thuggish superiors hint and then state outright that he won’t get ahead without a Nazi badge. Glamorous dates (or as glamorous as nightly blackouts, rationing, and lack of fuel allow) with his resistance-leaning girlfriend keep the moral quandaries from eating Schenke up too much, but when the killer goes after a Jewish woman, Ruth Frankel, a surviving witness whom the inspector feels compelled to save, the pressure is on. Nazi higher-ups feel the woman can be used as bait and force a bootlicking rule-follower to shadow Schenke’s every move so he’ll comply. At the same time, the killer continues his spree while attempting to cover his tracks, an effort that puts Ruth and her protector in grave danger. The close calls and chases in this novel are truly scary, and the unusual perspective ramps up the intrigue. Fans of serial-killer mysteries who are looking for something a little different are the audience for this one.

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Review

Murder in Westminster

by Brian Kenney

Vanessa Riley is known for her several series—both historical fiction and regency romances—often featuring diverse casts; her deep research into 18th-century communities of color; and her strong storytelling skills. Roll it all up, add a criminal element, and you have a delightful murder mystery—a first, for Riley— that entertains but also educates. Young Lady Abigail Worthing, of African and Scottish descent, is one strong leading lady, and when her next door neighbor is murdered while Abigail is on her way to an pro-abolitionist meeting, Abigail decides she had better take on the search for the killer—before being accused of the murder herself. Because Abigail, with her skin tone and family history, is all too easy to blame. Abigail’s complex world, a mix of family, Caribbean immigrants, and the ton, is exactly the world readers today are eager to discover—and to return to. Calling all regency enthusiasts, historical mystery fans, and Bridgerton devotees—this one’s for you.

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Review

The Blue Diamond

by Henrietta Thornton

221b Baker St. is home to a new generation, with Sherlock Holmes’s daughter, Joanna, and her husband, Dr. John Watson Jr., son of Sherlock’s longtime sidekick, in residence and solving crimes. In this sixth in the series, Joanna, who’s just as meticulous and insightful as her father, is called by Scotland Yard to help with a series of thefts in hotels around London. Joanna wonders why she and the Yard are required until she learns that the victim of the most recent crime is the governor general of South Africa, and what was stolen from his locked room was the enormously valuable blue diamond, the search for which sets the Watsons questioning everyone from diamond merchants to underworld dealers. In addition, it’s 1917, and the detectives must pursue another stolen item, one that’s crucial to the British effort to win the Great War. This part of the plot sees the famous offspring draw on every ounce of their courage as well as their connections with Sherlock’s Baker St. Irregulars, a gang of ruffian children, to win the day. Along the way, readers will enjoy the many references to Sherlock Holmes’s cases, often the subject of reminiscences by his daughter and her father-in-law; also a pleasure is the relationship between Joanna and John, she a wily sleuth and he an adoring supporter of her eccentricities. For fans of the great detective, of course, but also those who enjoy tales of wartime espionage.

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Review

And By Fire

by Henrietta Thornton

As it destroys, fire creates mysteries in Hawtrey’s past and present-day London. The Great Fire in 1666 is the fulcrum of the historical story. Before the devastation, we find Christopher Wren politicking as he seeks to build his dream dome at St. Paul’s Cathedral, while stingier planners want to continue the never-ending repairs to the existing roof. Initially outsiders to any drama, courtier to the queen Margaret Dove and Etienne Belland, Margaret’s forbidden love (he is both a foreigner and, as the king’s fireworks maker, a lowly tradesman), find themselves drawn into the fray. When their friend is killed in St. Paul’s during the fire, there may have been more to it than met the eye, and the two continue their romance while looking into what really happened. In the modern city, Nigella Parker and Colm O’Leary are police officers assigned to investigate what becomes a deadly series of fires, by an arsonist who arranges both burned wooden bodies and then real charred victims in poses that seem to mock churches. Like Margaret and Etienne, these two shouldn’t be together—they tried it once and nope—and like their 1666 counterparts, they must fight what appearances seem to dictate and what their instincts tell them to be true. Adding to the atmospheric, absorbing mystery is the depth of research Hawtrey has obviously done on both the Great Fire and St. Paul’s and its famous creator. Try this alongside Robert J. Lloyd’s The Bloodless Boy, which also recreates 17th-century London.

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Review

Miss Aldridge Regrets

by Brian Kenney

We’re in 1936 London and Lena Aldridge has had her share of troubles. Alfie, her beloved father and only parent, has recently died. Alfie was a gifted musician, and Lena has followed in his footsteps, eking out a living as a nightclub singer. Until a gig in a worn down Soho nightclub, when her best friend’s husband, also the club owner, is poisoned and dies right in front of her. Time to get out of town! Fortuitously, Lena has been approached by a stranger, who claims to represent an old friend of Alfie’s, with a remarkable offer: come to New York and headline in a Broadway musical. With nothing to lose, days later Lena’s traveling first class on the Queen Mary. But she hasn’t left all her troubles behind. As a mixed-race woman (Alfie was African American, unknown Mom was white) who passes as white, Lena is anxious about her reception in the U.S., and when there’s another murder on the boat that’s all too similar to the nightclub homicide, her anxiety really ramps up. Hare does a wonderful job of depicting the era, including the big themes—like the rise of Nazism and the pervasiveness of institutionalized racism—as well as the small details, like Lena’s wardrobe. And in Lena, she has created a compelling and empathetic hero whom I would love to follow as she disembarks in NYC. Readers of female-led, historical mysteries from Rhys Bowen, Victoria Thompson, and Mariah Fredericks will be pleased to meet Lena Aldridge.

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Review

A Rip Through Time

by Henrietta Thornton

In too many historical mysteries and science fiction novels, other times and places are strangely devoid of anyone who’s not straight and white. Not so the science-fiction-tinged Victorian era envisaged by prolific author Armstrong (A Stitch in Time series). The book opens in 2019, with Vancouver, BC detective Mallory Atkinson visiting Scotland to tend to her dying grandmother. Hearing a woman cry out for help in an alley, she intervenes in what turns out to be an apparition of an attack, only to enter the vision and wake up in 1869 as a teenage housemaid. She lands in the Edinburgh home of undertaker Dr. Duncan Gray, who’s using his trade to become an early forensic scientist. Gray and his widowed sister, Isla, are somewhat cut off from society, Gray because he was born from an affair his father had with a woman whom the family believed to be Indian—it was all kept hush-hush—and his sister because she’s a Victorian woman of means, expected to stay home. Readers will enjoy watching Mallory as she struggles to fit in and help Gray find the man—a serial killer, though that term is unknown—who’s posing bodies in sensational ways around the city. For those who enjoy Julie McElwain’s Kendra Donovan series, in which an FBI agent time travels to 1816 London.

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Review

A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons

by Henrietta Thornton

University College London, just after the Great War, is where bright young Saffron Everleigh pursues her botany studies and, as an assistant researcher, is the only female employee in her department. While Saffron’s beyond enthusiastic about her field and a gifted botanist, she endures sexist put-downs and even a lewd attack by a professor who has retired in place and lives on pipe smoke and sexual harassment. The botany department’s men are gearing up for a research expedition to the Amazon (the gentlemen never mention seeking input from any Brazilians as to local flora, adding to the musty flavor of the academic setting). Before they leave, disaster strikes: a professor’s wife collapses at a department party, perhaps a victim of poisoning. This series debut, also the author’s first foray into historical fiction, sees Saffron and her love interest, Alexander Ashton, sleuthing their way through department politics, botanical facts, and the sadder aspects of human nature as they figure out whodunit and learn more about their field along the way. Readers will learn more too, but unobtrusively while they cheer for Saffron and Alexander to for God’s sake have that kiss. Especially recommended for fans of Sujata Massey’s Perveen Mistry series, which stars another pioneer, the only female lawyer in 1920s Bombay.

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Review

The Mitford Vanishing

by Henrietta Thornton

The Mitford sisters, six eccentric socialites and political renegades in the interwar years in England, encountered a frightful number of murders in their day, at least as told in Fellowes’s glamorous historical series, now in its fifth installment. This time, Decca, second-youngest daughter of patriarchal Lord Redesdale and his long-suffering wife, Sydney Bowles, is missing. The family suspects that the 18-year-old has run off with her second cousin, Churchill’s nephew Esmond Romilly, to marry him and fight on the side of the anti-facists in the Spanish Civil War (which Decca and Esmond did in real life). Enter the Mitfords’ former maid Louisa and her husband, Guy, proprietors of the Cannon & Sullivan detective agency. Hired to look for Decca, Louisa nervously embraces the fledgling rights of women in 1937, using her maiden name for work and leaving the couple’s baby with sitters. Indeed, she’s far more advanced than the Mitford “girls,” whose blithely colonial ways color their every move. Fellowes’s at times very sad, often funny story stands out for its unusual, Spanish Civil War backdrop; it also offers pleasingly scathing treatment of Nazi sympathizers, exciting chases from England to Spain and back (repeatedly!), and an extraordinarily tense closing scene. While this works as a standalone, go back to the earlier books for a treat.

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Review

The Key to Deceit

by Henrietta Thornton

Á la Anna Lee Huber’s Verity Kent and Stephanie Graves’ Olive Bright, Electra (Ellie) McDonnell has taken on a “man’s job” while much of the male workforce is away fighting World War II. Ellie is a heroine with a difference, though: she’s a former thief, from a London family that has called its safe-cracking ways to a halt. They’re now working as locksmiths and, in Ellie’s case, using those skills to aid the war effort. Ellie’s government handler, posh Major Ramsey, comes calling again in this second in the series (after A Peculiar Combination, 2021) when a young woman is found dead wearing an unusual, locked bracelet. Locksmithing again comes into play when a key turns up as part of the case, but it soon takes a back seat to Ellie’s other skills. This memorable, tough sleuth continues her investigation into the young woman’s death and her own mother’s long-ago imprisonment as the Blitz starts and a cousin at the warfront hasn’t been heard from. Happily, romance enters the picture, with Ellie pursued by both the major and a more down-to-earth family friend, Felix Lacey. The mysteries, danger, and emotional hills and valleys that are life in wartime will keep readers rapt here and wanting more from this almost-honest woman and her loving, protective circle.

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