In 2024, new novels by Allison Montclair and Alexander McCall Smith were published, and I hopped on the waitlist for them at my local library. If you are weary of my many reviews of novels by these two authors, please click on another post!

Murder at the White Palace     Allison Montclair     (2024)  In the sixth installment of the Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge Mystery Series, it’s 1946 in London, with rationing still in place and many buildings damaged by the Blitz. Iris was a spy during World War II, but she can’t talk about that because of the Official Secrets Act. She has a complicated romantic life and is currently dating a gangster. Gwen, who became severely depressed after the death of her husband in the war, has finally been released from her court-ordered designation as a “lunatic.” She’s just getting back into the dating scene. The two women are business partners in The Right Sort Marriage Bureau, and they plan to hold a New Year’s Eve party for their clients at an abandoned, bomb-damaged club called The White Palace. When a body is found behind a wall that’s being repaired, we’re off and running, with sprightly dialog and a fast-moving plot. As I’ve explained in a previous post, I think it’s essential that you read the Sparks and Bainbridge novels in order. As I’ve raced through the books, I’ve become very fond of these two plucky women—and of Montclair’s recreation of post-WWII Britain.

The Conditions of Unconditional Love     Alexander McCall Smith     (2024)  McCall Smith is an extremely prolific writer, and I follow several of his series. This novel is the fifteenth in the Isabel Dalhousie Series (reviewed at length here), which relates the adventures of a philosopher in Edinburgh, Scotland, who edits an ethics journal. Isabel is a hoot. She gets herself involved in adjudicating disputes and difficulties that arise among her friends and neighbors, pondering quite deeply the ethical implications of various courses of action. In this novel, the cases include a suspect academic conference and the relationship problems of a woman who is a guest in Isabel’s attic. The admittedly thin plots of the novels are enlivened by Isabel’s domestic situation: she’s married to Jamie, a handsome musician who is fourteen years her junior and with whom she has two young children. Isabel never ceases to appreciate her life with the doting Jamie as she unravels one little problem after another.