The Latest Installments

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.

Author Spotlight: Allison Montclair, AKA Alan Gordon

• The First Book in the Sparks and Bainbridge Series

I’ve gobbled up all five books in the Sparks and Bainbridge historical mystery series by Allison Montclair. To catch you up, here’s a re-post of my review of the inaugural book, which you should be sure to read first!

The Right Sort of Man     Allison Montclair      (2019)  In the wake of World War II, women who had taken on substantial roles in the war effort were often expected to walk away from stimulating, remunerative work to become housewives. Recently, a number of nonfiction titles, novels, and films have been exploring the ramifications of this cultural shift. For example, in the PBS series The Bletchley Circle a cast of brilliant (fictional) female codebreakers become freelance detectives, solving murders after the war. On this blog, I’ve reviewed several novels treating the issue of women adjusting to wartime and to the post-war economy and society; see links at the end of this post.

In the novel The Right Sort of Man, Iris Sparks can’t reveal her wartime work because of Britain’s Official Secrets Act, but she clearly was a spy for the Allies. The story starts in 1946, and Iris demonstrates her chops through her contacts in high places, her sharp intellect, and her ability to wield a knife against an aggressor. She has met Gwen Bainbridge, a wealthy widow who was so devastated by the loss of her husband in the war that she was confined for several months to a mental institution and lost custody of her young son. Iris and Gwen decide to become partners in establishing a marriage bureau—Iris to have gainful employment as a single woman, and Gwen to reclaim her place in the world. The services that Iris and Gwen offer are in demand as Britons return to civilian life and seek the comforts of home and family.

Alas, after only a few months of operation, The Right Sort Marriage Bureau loses one of its female clients to murder, and a man whom the bureau has matched her with is charged with the crime. Iris and Gwen have vetted their clients thoroughly and are convinced that the wrong person has been arrested. To see justice done and save the reputation of their firm, they set out to find the real perpetrator. In the course of their investigation, they run into black market gangs finding ways around Britain’s strict war-related rationing laws, which were not fully phased out until 1954.

The action moves forward, and the personalities develop, primarily through dialogue, and that dialogue is quick-witted, reflecting Iris and Gwen’s intelligence and perceptiveness.  These two women have Sherlockian powers of observation and deduction as well as skills in subterfuge and in the discernment of the truthfulness of those they are interviewing. Some complex sub-plotting centers on Iris’s sex life, which is, to use Gwen’s descriptor, “adventurous.”

Who is the novelist? Allison Montclair is a pseudonym for an experienced fiction writer who’s venturing into the 20th-century-mystery genre with The Right Sort of Man. It’s a highly successful venture, capturing the immediate post-war period in London and unveiling the lives of two women who survived and thrived.

For other excellent fictional treatments of women’s roles in Britain in World War II and afterwards, see my reviews of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs mysteries (2003-present) and of Anthony Quinn’s Freya (2017). On the American side of the Atlantic, check out Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach (2017), and for women in post-war Germany see Jessica Shattuck’s The Women in the Castle (2017).

• The Next Four Books in the Sparks and Bainbridge Mystery Series

Although each of these titles has a separate murder mystery for Iris and Gwen to solve, there are through-lines that develop over the course of the series. Iris tries to figure how her espionage experience will fit into the post-war world, and her romantic life gets more and more complicated. Gwen keeps struggling to have her commitment as a “lunatic” legally reversed, so that she can regain custody of her young son and become independent from her in-laws. In each of the books, post-WWII London is the vivid backdrop. For best results, read the novels in order of publication.

A Royal Affair     Allison Montclair     (2020)  Iris and Gwen are hired to investigate a potential problem with the engagement of Princess Elizabeth to her prince.

A Rogue’s Company     Allison Montclair     (2021)  In another rollicking, intricately plotted mystery, the two protagonists end up in back alleys with desperate criminals.

The Unkept Woman     Allison Montclair     (2022)  Iris’s past associations as a spy for Britain during World War II intrude on her postwar job at the marriage bureau.

The Lady from Burma     Allison Montclair     (2023)  A woman dying of cancer contracts with the marriage bureau to find a second wife for her husband, a renowned entomologist. But is her subsequent death a suicide or a murder?

• About Allison Montclair/Alan Gordon

How did author Alan Gordon became Allison Montclair? Here’s the story: https://www.jungleredwriters.com/2022/07/introducing-real-allison-montclair.html

Under his own name, Alan Gordon has published the eight delightful medieval mysteries in the Fools Guild series. Theophilos and Claudia, a married pair of jesters and acrobats, travel widely and solve crimes in the time of the Crusades. 

From the Middle Ages to 1946 London, Alan/Allison is an author all historical-mystery lovers will want to take a look at.

Strong Women of Yore

By chance, I recently checked out from my local library three very different novels, all of which featured smart women who refused to be pushed around.

• In sixteenth-century Ireland:

My Lady Judge     Cora Harrison     (2007)

Mara is a “brehon”—a combination of investigator, prosecutor, judge, and law professor—in the west of Ireland in the sixteenth century, when the ancient Celtic laws have not yet been obliterated by English law. With loving detail, Harrison presents the rocky terrain of the area called the Burren (near Galway) and the complex kinships of the inhabitants. The huge ensemble cast moves through a murder-mystery plot that is full of red herrings and that resembles a modern police procedural. This is the first of the Burren Mystery series, which stretches to 14 books; I plan to read more.

• In 1946 London:

The Unkept Woman     Allison Montclair     (2022) 

As I’ve noted in my review of the first book in this historical mystery series—The Right Sort of Man (2019)—Montclair’s dialogue sparkles and moves her plot along at a brisk pace. Once again with The Unkept Woman, we’re in post-WWII Britain. Two enterprising young women, Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge, run a marriage bureau, but they get themselves involved in murder investigations much more often than they’d like. Iris was a spy for Britain during World War II, and her past associations keep intruding on her postwar job. Gwen is a grieving war widow trying to rebuild a life for herself and her young son. See also my reviews of A Royal Affair (2020) and A Rogue’s Company (2021), and please read these four books in sequence.

• In 1950s and early 1960s California:

Lessons in Chemistry     Bonnie Garmus     (2022) 

In this bitingly satirical page-turner, Garmus re-creates a time period in America when women were expected to be compliant housewives who produced plenty of offspring. The lead character in Lessons in Chemistry, Elizabeth Zott, will have none of it. She’s a brilliant chemist at the (fictitious) Hastings Research Institute, where she’s treated like shit by all her male colleagues save one: Calvin Evans. Calvin is also a brilliant chemist, and the two fall in love. I can’t tell you more of the plot without spoilers, but I can assure you that the incidents of discrimination and harassment that Elizabeth endures are not exaggerated. Garmus deserves all the good reviews she’s received.

More Reads for a Persistent Pandemic

Beheld TaraShea Nesbit (2020) The Mayflower passengers who founded the Plymouth Colony were not all religious dissenters. On the ship there were also indentured servants and craftspeople who did not hold with the puritanical ways of the leaders. Nesbit takes us inside the thoughts of two very different women of Plymouth, in the troubled year 1630. (Ignore the author’s failures in archaizing language.) 

A Rogue’s Company Allison Montclair (2021) First, read the previous two entries in the Sparks and Bainbridge series, reviewed here and here. Then dive into this one, which is another rollicking, intricately plotted mystery set in London immediately after World War II. The two protagonists run a staid marriage bureau but often end up in back alleys with desperate criminals.

The Last Garden in England Julia Kelly (2021) Three women interact with the elaborate fictional garden of Highbury House in three different time periods. In 1907 Venetia Smith designs the nontraditional landscape. In 1944, Beth Pedley is a farm worker—a land girl—during World War II. And in the present day, Emma Lovell is hired to restore the site to its long-ago glory. Several romances ensue in this pleasant novel.

My Kind of People Lisa Duffy (2020) Melodrama oozes off of every page of this novel, set in the present day on a fictional island off the coast of Boston. And you may protest that young architects and freelance journalists are really not as financially solvent as portrayed here. But I came to love the characters, especially Sky (a newly orphaned 10-year old girl), Leo (an architect, her unlikely guardian), and Maggie (a helpful neighbor, with her own troubles).    

The Children’s Book AS Byatt (2009) Sussex (and some London, Paris, Munich), 1895-1919. Socialists, anarchists, suffragists, libertines. Potters, silversmiths, museum keepers, puppeteers, poets, playwrights, scholars, physicians, tellers of dark fairy tales. An old-fashioned, languorous, discursive story with dozens of characters and lots of historical context.  

The Lincoln Highway Amor Towles (2021) Fans of Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow, reviewed here, will find much of the same verve and strong character development in his new offering. In 1954, two young brothers set out on a road trip to find the mother who abandoned them, but they have to take many detours. The ending could have been stronger, but this one is still entertaining.  

Pandemic Reads, Part One

I signed off on my book review blog nearly a year ago (see my Blogger Reflections), but I’ve read so many good books since then that I felt obliged to check in with my faithful followers.

During the 2020-21 pandemic, I’ve gravitated toward two genres:  historical fiction and mysteries. Historical fiction carried me off to times other than my own, letting me escape the distress of current life in the United States. With a good mystery, I could get so wrapped up in untangling the plot that I could forget about case counts, mortality statistics, and vaccine data for a few hours.

Here are seven titles that I recommend:

Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague Maggie O’Farrell (2020) Yes, the title is kind of off-putting during our modern plague, but there’s not a lot of contagion in this fictional imagining of William Shakespeare’s domestic travails. The title character is William’s son, Hamnet, whose name is an alternate spelling of Hamlet; you can make connections to the play of that name. And the writing in this novel . . . it’s just magical. See also my review of O’Farrell’s This Must Be the Place.

Stuck in Manistique Dennis Cuesta (2018) Local color abounds in this well-done mystery set in a small city in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. There’s also the stranger-comes-into-town trope, as the main character, from Chicago, arrives to settle his aunt’s estate. Readers from the Mitten State should especially enjoy this one.

The Voyage of the Morning Light Marina Endicott (2020) In this epic tale set in 1912, two half-sisters sail through the South Pacific on a merchant ship. Canadian author Endicott doesn’t shy away from complex issues such as colonialism, bigotry, and religious arrogance, both in Micronesia and (through flashbacks) at a school for first-nations children in Canada. The scenes on shipboard are really brilliant.

Someone Alice McDermott (2013) McDermott can conjure up New York in the early-to-mid twentieth century better than any other author I know. In this novel, she gives us an intimate portrait of an Irish Catholic woman’s ordinary life, from youth to old age. The beauty here lies in the simplicity and the lovely language. See also my review of McDermott’s The Ninth Hour (2017).

A Royal Affair Allison Montclair (2020) In 1946 London, Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are hired to investigate a potential problem with the engagement of Princess Elizabeth to her prince. This lighthearted mystery is historical, so it hits both of my pandemic requirements! See also my review of the first Montclair novel with Iris and Gwendolyn, The Right Sort of Man (2019).

The Clergyman’s Wife Molly Greeley (2019) I usually steer clear of fan fiction, but this spinoff from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice stands on its own as a gentle historical novel of the Regency period—and the Austen links give it extra resonance. The wife of the title is Charlotte Collins (née Lucas), a friend of P&P’s Elizabeth Bennet who made what Elizabeth considered a disastrous marriage. See how this modern author imagines that Charlotte’s choice  played out.

Moonflower Murders Anthony Horowitz (2020) This offering from one of my favorite mystery writers is a long haul, because it includes within its covers a second complete mystery novel, supposedly written by someone else. Hang in there for the denouement. I’ve reviewed three previous Horowitz mysteries, Magpie Murders (2017), The Word is Murder (2018), and The Sentence is Death (2019). This guy is prolific, and his metafictional mastery is astounding.

More brief reviews of my pandemic reads will be posted in coming weeks!