A delightful, well-designed ride for readers who enjoy a long journey down a road filled with intriguing detours.
A debut mystery novel delivers an opulent historical setting: Monaco in March 1914.
It is the height of “the season” in Monte Carlo, and the quarter practically overflows with Americans, Brits, Russians, and Germans. Among the wealthy and royal revelers are Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Murphy from San Francisco. As the book opens, Murphy has been found dead in his bed in Monte Carlo’s prestigious Hôtel de Paris, a bullet hole in his back. Mrs. Murphy’s heirloom diamond and emerald necklace is retrieved from Joe’s pocket. But wait! The necklace is “paste,” a cheap duplicate. The original is missing. A German dictionary is found by the body; a mysterious pair of train tickets to Ireland is uncovered. When the coroner later discovers that Murphy died from an allergic reaction to a bee sting, Chief Inspector Gautier wants to drop the case even though poisoned whiskey was also found on the night table—shooting a dead person is not a crime. Mrs. Murphy and her detestable cousin, Ted Wycliffe, want answers, and her American secretary, 21-year-old Lily Turner, the female lead of this drama, wants to recover the stolen necklace to secure the reward money. It turns out that Lily has taken the secretarial position to help fund the budding detective agency she and her friend Fran Jameson have recently established. The primary male protagonist, 40-something Paul Newcastle, a surveillance director of the Monte Carlo Casino, is partnered with Lily to protect the hotel’s reputation. The cast of characters grows; murder suspects multiply, as do the killings; and everybody has a secret back story that is revealed only gradually as the complex novel progresses. Monte Carlo is filled with spies (the lead-up to World War I forms a silent backdrop), not to mention a major arms dealer. Readers will have to stay on their toes to keep track of all the subplots and interconnections. Renfro’s prose is stylized and meticulous despite the occasional missing or misplaced word that should have been caught in editing (for example, “Was it was the one you identified”). The author deftly duplicates the flourishes of early 20th-century language and provides her narrator with a pleasant hint of sarcasm. Here is Lily sizing up Paul, whose top-drawer presentation is many layers removed from his guttersnipe heritage in Liverpool: “This time, Lily focused on the posh accent. Possibly pure gold. Possibly pinchbeck. She was incapable of detecting the slips in diphthongs or variations in vocabulary that betrayed the metal’s baseness.” Paul is the most complicated character, a skillful con man planning his next big score yet haunted by a past tragedy and a betrayal by his nephew. Lily is a formidable heroine—smart, pretty, determined to make her own way in the world. Enhanced with historical tidbits and vivid descriptions of Monaco and its habitués, the narrative is engaging and fun. This is an old-fashioned mystery that is chock full of twists, humor, and sophisticated writing.
A delightful, well-designed ride for readers who enjoy a long journey down a road filled with intriguing detours.Pub Date: Dec. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5201-1393-7
Page Count: 440
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
