An excellent 1920s-set whodunit with not a (cropped) hair out of place.
In Graves’ historical mystery, a librarian in post-WWI London investigates a murder.
Eden Brior works as a librarian on the edge of a London that’s rapidly expanding in the years after World War I. She’s having a rough day, forced to stay late to close up after her colleagues have left—her frustration is compounded when she’s locked in the rare books vault overnight with Simon Cross, the rich, handsome, hard-living veteran who insisted on helping her on his way out. When Eden and Cross emerge the next morning, they find the police present, since a corpse has been discovered. Isabelle Jalbert, an actress and former paramour of Cross’s—and a Frenchwoman, no less—has been strangled, and her fancy, beaded dressed has been turned inside out and replaced on the body. Eden is convinced that the timeline proves Cross couldn’t have killed Jalbert, but the police are less certain, even speculating that the pretty, bookish Eden might have been in on it with Cross. To the annoyance of Inspector William Garrett, Eden teams up with Cross’ sister, Margaret Drake, to plumb the depths of Jalbert’s personal and professional entanglements. Man-mad Jalbert had been set to star in a financially precarious production of The Duchess of Malfi, in which the titular duchess is also strangled; was the assassin Jalbert’s fame-hungry (and catty) understudy? Or the victim’s producer and husband, counting pennies and hoping for an inheritance? It could be any of the many men linked to Jalbert—perhaps the admirer who sends her anonymous flowers.
This novel consistently delights, from the spicy title to the last page. Graves excels at throwing in small details (especially regarding apparel) to ground readers in 1923, vividly rendering feathered headbands and cunning silver bugle beads while observing that England is really not the ideal climate for the new, sleeveless fashions. While not written as a gut-busting comedy, the book’s laugh lines land well, as in the description of a disapproving woman who has a face “so filled with Edwardian displeasure, it appeared to be folding in on itself.” A particular treat is the description of the late-Victorian drawing room Eden and Margaret briefly visit while on the trail of a suspect, lumbered with the trappings of an empire at its peak. Most relevant for a mystery, the novel plays fair with the solution—none of the tampered-with clocks or improbable disguises of Agatha Christie at her worst. The motive is credible and the answer clear, with no need to flip back, brow furrowed, to try to understand a convoluted solution. Readers are likely to clock the killer just before the characters do, which is just fine: They’ll get to feel clever while watching the pennies drop for the sleuths. A few minor plot points read as setups for a sequel or series, and if this novel gets the readership it deserves, those follow-ups will surely come. The denouement is perfectly timed, hinting at the possibility of happy endings for the innocent survivors without overselling them. Cozy mystery fans and those eager for an escape to interwar London will find just what they’re looking for in these pages.
An excellent 1920s-set whodunit with not a (cropped) hair out of place.Pub Date: May 3, 2026
ISBN: 9798195332266
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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