A promising mystery setup gets bogged down in an overcomplicated plot.
A murder in an antiques shop sends a woman back to her long-abandoned career as an investigator.
Freya Lockwood’s life in London has already been turned upside down—her beloved only child has left for college in the U.S., and her ex-husband is making her sell their house. Then comes the news that her former mentor, Arthur Crockleford, has died under mysterious circumstances in his antiques shop in the town where Freya grew up. He had trained her to follow his footsteps as an antique hunter: a detective who works for private owners or insurance companies to recover stolen antiques. The two have been estranged for 20 years, though, ever since her career ended in disaster. But Freya, who was orphaned young, was raised by her glamorous Aunt Carole, and Arthur and Carole were best friends. So Freya goes home to Little Meddington, and soon she and Carole find that Arthur has left a welter of clues indicating that he was murdered—and that Freya needs to hunt down not only his killer but an enigmatic object that will explain what really happened two decades before. They’re off to a weekend retreat for antiques and antiquities collectors at a decaying mansion that was the home of a certain Lord Metcalf, an associate of Arthur’s who also died recently. There they meet a contentious group that practically overflows with suspects who might have killed Arthur—and might be involved in the criminal side of the antiques world. Freya’s instinct for investigation comes back to life, but she and Carole are clearly in danger. The book’s setting offers interesting details about the antiques trade, but most of the characters are one-dimensional. And the overstuffed plot and frequent exposition drag down the pacing—at one point, a character says, “Shall we recap?” And does so, for several pages.
A promising mystery setup gets bogged down in an overcomplicated plot.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781668032008
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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