A frothy retro cocktail with a whodunit chaser.
A carefree cadre of Australian artists probe a shocking murder in war-torn 1935 Shanghai.
Despite his status as the family’s renegade, suave Sydney artist Rowland Sinclair is tapped by his starchy elder brother, Wilfred, to go to Shanghai to handle international wool negotiations for Sinclair Holdings. Intrigued by the city’s vibrancy and turmoil, Rowland’s friends—poet Milton Isaacs, artist Clyde Watson Jones, and sculptress and model Edna Higgins—accompany him and take up residence in the posh Cathay Hotel. Gentill opens each chapter with a short news item from the time, adding welcome context to the story by describing the dangerous encroachment of Japan, the threat of Communism, and the influx of Russian refugee women and German Jews, weaving each development into the story. Making lively banter and diving into local culture are high on the visitors’ agenda. On a night out at The Jazz Club, Rowland dances twice with beautiful Russian Alexandra Romanova, and they make a date for tea the following afternoon. The next day, he’s horrified to discover Alexandra’s corpse in his suite. Grim Inspector Randolph regards him as the prime suspect. Rowland's peril, coupled with the deep grief of Alexandra’s brother, Sergei, prompts the party to investigate, leading to even more elaborate explorations of Shanghai. A subplot that should delight series fans brings Rowland and Edna within a whisker of progressing from the friendship zone to unabashed romance.
A frothy retro cocktail with a whodunit chaser.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4642-1361-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Cannily sets full-blooded fantasies of female empowerment blooming in a thicket of stifling masculine rules.
The further adventures of Lady Augusta and Lady Julia Colebrook, those twin Wonder Women of Regency England.
Things have continued to move rapidly in the three weeks since Gus and Julia spirited Lady Hester Belford from the asylum in which she was imprisoned in The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (2023) and stashed her and her companion, Elizabeth Grant, in their home. Lady Hester’s brother and guardian, Lord Deele, is on the hunt for her, and her other brother, Lord Evan, can do little to protect her, since he’s still supposed to be banished for a duel he fought 20 years ago. And the fugitives’ presence has to be kept secret from the twins’ dunderheaded brother, Lord Duffield, who’s more than eager to help his old friend Lord Deele. As if their sense of oppression by the patriarchy weren’t intense enough, Gus and Julia soon get the word that their guests’ woes may be linked to the Exalted Brethren of Rack and Ruin, a gentleman’s club that treats women in the vilest ways imaginable, and that thief-taker James Mulholland is hot on the trail of Lord Evan, whose romance with Gus glows all the brighter for the dangers that beset it. Although the twins’ adventures reach an early boiling point only halfway through, they’re best treated not as a standalone or even as a sequel to their splashy debut, but as the latest installment in what’s likely to be a long-running period soap opera, one that the closing episodes promise to continue in France.
Cannily sets full-blooded fantasies of female empowerment blooming in a thicket of stifling masculine rules.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593440834
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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