Genre: historical fiction

#BookReview: Follow the Stars Home by Diane C. McPhail

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Follow the Stars Home by Diane C. McPhailFollow the Stars Home by Diane C. McPhail
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, U.S. history
Pages: 304
Published by Kensington on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A captivating reimagining of the intrepid woman who – 8 months pregnant and with a toddler in tow – braved violent earthquakes and treacherous waters on the first steamboat voyage to conquer the Mississippi River and redefine America. 
The acclaimed author of The Seamstress of New Orleans brings to life Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt’s defiant journey of 1811 in this lush, evocative biographical novel for fans of Paula McLain, Gill Paul, Allison Pataki, and stories about extraordinary yet little-known female adventurers…
It’s a journey that most deem an insane impossibility. Yet on October 20th, 1811, Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt—daughter of one of the architects of the United States Capitol—fearlessly boards the steamship New Orleans in Pittsburgh. Eight months pregnant and with a toddler in tow, Lydia is fiercely independent despite her youth. She’s also accustomed to defying convention. Against her father’s wishes, she married his much older business colleague, inventor Nicholas Roosevelt—builder of the New Orleans—and spent her honeymoon on a primitive flatboat. But the stakes for this trip are infinitely higher.
If Nicholas’s untried steamboat reaches New Orleans, it will serve as a profitable packet ship between that city and Natchez, proving the power of steam as it travels up and down the Mississippi. Success in this venture would revolutionize travel and trade, open the west to expansion, and secure the Roosevelts’ future.
Lydia had used her own architectural training to design the flatboat’s interior, including a bedroom, sitting area, and fireplace. The steamship, however, dwarfs the canoes and flatboats on the river. And no amount of power or comfort could shield its passengers from risk. Lydia believes herself ready for all the dangers ahead—growing unrest among native people, disease or injury, and the turbulent Falls of the Ohio, a sixty-foot drop long believed impassable in such a large boat.
But there are other challenges in store, impossible to predict as Lydia boards that fall day. Challenges which—if survived—will haunt and transform her, as surely as the journey will alter the course of a nation . . .  

My Review:

Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt clearly did not believe that adventures were things that happened to other people. Because she absolutely had her own adventures for her very own self, in spite of her gender, the times she lived in, the overwhelming number of naysayers, and that she was pregnant. On her second trip, she was, in fact, very, very pregnant.

Follow the Stars Home is a reimagining of her story, fictionalized so that it can be told from her perspective, as she accompanied her husband Nicholas Roosevelt on not one but two history making journeys from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. On her first journey in 1809, she traveled by barge and by flatboat, finishing up in a rowboat after a series of mishaps and outright disasters.

That trip was merely a scouting mission for the trip yet to come, the one that we get to take with her in 1811. The first successful attempt to conquer the Mississippi River with steam power. If their journey was successful – and it was – steamboats plying the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers would change the face of the fledgling United States with the speed of passage both down and UP the rivers against the current, for both passengers and especially – and profitably – cargo.

But the Roosevelts have to succeed to make that future possible. This is the story of that fantastic journey through territory the U.S. had yet to claim, on the way to a Manifest Destiny – for good and ill – that the Founding Fathers could only imagine.

All they have to do is keep the boat, their finances and their marriage off the rocks.

Nicholas J. Roosevelt, wife Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt, and their grandson J. Montgomery Roosevelt Schuyler, ca. 1848

Escape Rating B+: Follow the Stars Home is a story about being in the rooms where it happened – even if those rooms are powering down the Mississippi at the then astonishing rate of 12 miles per hour – and then steaming back up again.

Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt is the kind of unsung heroine whose accomplishments should have been shouted to the skies, but who is instead reduced to merely ‘Nicholas Roosevelt’s wife’ in the accounts of their history making journeys.

Instead, at least according to this fictionalized account – and it’s the version I WANT to believe in – she was as much of a full partner in this venture as the times and social conditions allowed – if not just a bit more. She’s certainly a real-life historical figure that it would be fascinating to know more about. Because she didn’t just marry into history, she was born to it. Her father, Benjamin Latrobe, was the architect of the U.S. Capital and many other buildings in the new capital of the newly formed United States.

A father who did not approve of his daughter’s marriage to his own friend and fellow engineer, a man more than 20 years her senior. (It’s not so much the age gap that gives this reader pause, but rather that they became engaged when Lydia was only 13.Your mileage and your judgment on that subject may definitely vary.)

The story in Follow the Stars Home is one that should be wider known, and I was certainly thrilled to learn about Lydia and her place on both epic journeys and in history.

That being said, her perspective on the events as they happen – at least her fictional perspective on her current situation, past experiences and her misgivings about them both – was a bit more domestically focused than I would have preferred. I was there for the adventure, the journey itself, and for the changes that happened after.

I fully recognize that’s a ‘me thing’ and may not be a ‘you thing’. In fact, I believe that a LOT of readers will be all in on that domestic perspective, because it was clearly damn difficult to manage a household, keep her toddler Rosetta occupied and more importantly out of trouble, AND give birth to her second child – at a scheduled stop in Louisville and NOT actually ON the steamboat – as history was being made.

I came to Follow the Stars Home for the history, but I stayed for this terrific portrait of a female adventurer who just plain isn’t as widely known as she ought to be. I sincerely hope that this marvelous story helps bring Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt to the more prominent place in the historical record where she truly belongs.

#BookReview: Saving Susy Sweetchild by Barbara Hambly

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Saving Susy Sweetchild by Barbara HamblySaving Susy Sweetchild (Silver Screen Historical Mystery #3) by Barbara Hambly
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Silver Screen Historical Mystery #3
Pages: 293
Published by Severn House on September 3, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Welcome to Hollywood of the 1920 a world filled with glamour, fake names . . . and the occasional felony!

July, 1924. After nine months of living in Hollywood and working as a companion to her beautiful silent-movie star sister-in-law, young British widow Emma Blackstone is settling into her new doctoring film scenarios whenever the regular scenarist is overwhelmed with work, which seems to be most of the time.

Shoots for the Western movie Our Tiny Miracle are in full swing, with little seven-year-old Susy Sweetchild playing the lead and acting most professionally. Maybe too professionally, Emma thinks, shocked to the core when the child star is nearly killed in a stunt scene and her mother - former screen siren Selina Sutton - seems only to care that Susy gets the job done.

But Emma's concerns only worsen when news reaches her that Susy and her mother have been kidnapped. The ransom note says to keep the cops out of it, so it's up to Emma and Kitty to find them before the unthinkable happens and Emma is forced to rewrite Our Tiny Miracle with a far more tragic ending . . .

New York Times bestselling author Barbara Hambly once again brings the glamour and intrigue of Hollywood to life! An unputdownable mystery for fans of female-fronted historical mysteries set in the roaring twenties.

My Review:

Emma Blackstone, after nearly a year in Hollywood as her sister-in-law’s friend, confidant, dog handler and general factotum, as well as serving as a script doctor for Foremost Studios for almost as long, has learned the way that things work in Hollywood – no matter how often she wishes she didn’t.

Because she sees entirely too much, and is all too aware that she can’t fix ANY of it. Although she certainly does what she can, as shown in the first two books in the Silver Screen Historical Mysteries, Scandal in Babylon and One Extra Corpse.

But Susy Sweetchild’s situation still pierces her straight to the heart. Because the child is clearly – and justifiably – frightened to death. And is just as clearly aware that no one can help her or save her no matter how much they want to.

It’s 1924, and Hollywood is still the ‘Wild West’ when it comes to rules and regulations. Prohibition is in full swing, but bootlegged booze is openly everywhere. OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, won’t exist for another 45 years and child actors like Susy have no rights whatsoever – not even to the money they make.

Especially not to the money they make.

Susy is only seven years old, she’s one of Foremost Pictures biggest moneymakers, and she’s supporting her stage mother, her alcoholic father, her mother’s business manager and her mother’s succession of lovers and THEIR failed businesses as well as her father’s drinking habit. And quite possibly the partridge in the pear tree.

The only person on Susy’s side is her cat Mr. Gray, and poor Mr. Gray is even more of a hostage than she is. If Susy ‘misbehaves’ in any way, Mr. Gray is done for. And Susy is all too aware of the threat.

Possibly so is Mr. Gray. The cat seems both smart and sober, which is more than can be said for a lot of the humans in this story.

Emma would like to rescue Susy, but she has entirely too many hostages to fortune of her own to step that far out of line. She also knows it won’t do any good, as the powers that be in Los Angeles are all too aware of the side on which their bread is buttered, and that the studios are the ones doing the buttering.

But the status quo of Susy’s dreadful situation and anyone’s ability to help her out of it goes from bad to worse when the child star and her mother are kidnapped, along with Mr. Gray – a ginormous clue that should have occurred to more people an awful lot sooner.

Someone is extorting $100,000 from the studio for Susy’s safe return. (That’s something like $18,000,000 in today’s dollars!) There are multiple ransom notes being delivered, quite possibly from multiple sources. The police are not involved in the case, but the gossip columnists and the bootleggers are.

Considering how frequently the adults – including Emma and her Scooby Gang – are misdirected, as reluctant as the studio is to pay all that money to rescue a child star who is rapidly growing out of her cute and winsome phase, it looks like the princess is going to have to rescue herself in this one.

Escape Rating B: There are two stories going on in Saving Susy Sweetchild, and I have to admit that one interested me considerably more than the other.

The first is, of course, the mystery of who kidnapped Susy Sweetchild and whether the poor child can be found before it’s too late. The investigation of Susy’s abduction and ransom is the stuff of which Keystone Cops movies were made. No one covers themselves in glory in this part of the story – either because they are in on it, they intend to exploit its outcome, because they’ve been paid to look the other way or merely because they are simply incompetent but photogenic at the job they’re supposed to do.

Emma at least has a damn good excuse for not catching on right away – she’s not a professional detective, either police or private. It isn’t her job – she just cares about the kid and wants to help her.

But underneath – although often in plain sight – is the glimpse under the glitter and tinsel of Hollywood in the mid-1920s, before the Hays Code crackdown on ‘immorality’, before the talkies, and before the Great Depression.

We still read horrific stories about the treatment of child actors in Hollywood, and a lot of those stories are terrible to children and other living creatures. Susy will probably remind a lot of people of Shirley Temple, but by Temple’s time 15 years later, the situation had actually gotten a bit better. For select versions of ‘better’. Maybe less awful.

One of Susy Sweetchild’s contemporaries would have been another child actor named Jackie Coogan – who might be more familiar to readers as Uncle Fester in the 1960s Addams Family TV series. His relevance to Susy Sweetchild is that It was his lawsuit against his own mother in 1938, after he turned 21 and discovered that his mother had squandered his entire fortune, that finally put laws in place about the treatment of child actors AND the provision to put a portion of their income in trust for their adulthood.

All of the above tells readers that as much as I was following Susy’s fictional case, it was the factual underpinnings that truly had my attention for much of the story. The split in my attention wasn’t great for my absorption in Susy’s actual story, but the research dive was a lot of fun.

Howsomever, I did love the ending of Susy’s story. She was pretty much the only person who deserved a happy ending, and I was very relieved to see that she – and Mr. Gray – got exactly what they deserved – as did a whole lot of others who deserved something considerably less…happy.

#BookReview: The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
#BookReview: The Ghost Cat by Alex HowardThe Ghost Cat by Alex Howard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cat stories, cozy fantasy, historical fantasy, historical fiction, magical realism
Pages: 272
Published by Hanover Square Press on August 27, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A charming novel for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and How to Stop Time , following a cat through his nine lives in Edinburgh, moving through the ever-changing city and its inhabitants over centuries
Early morning, 1902. At 7/7 Marchmont Crescent, Eilidh the charlady tips coal into a fire grate and sets it alight. Overhearing, Grimalkin the cat ambles over to curl up against the welcome heat and lick his favorite human's hand. But this is to be his last day on earth…before he becomes the Ghost Cat.
Follow Grimalkin as he witnesses the changes of the next 120 years, prowling unseen among the inhabitants of an Edinburgh tenement while unearthing some startling revelations about the mystery of existence, the unstoppable march of time and the true meaning of feline companionship.

My Review:

Grimalkin is dead, to begin with. (The opening line to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a gift that just keeps on giving.)

Grimalkin is a house cat, in fact THE house cat, at 7/7 Marchmont Crescent, born in 1887 and dead at the rather battered age of 15 in 1902. The thing about Grimalkin’s death that makes the story work is that the cat gods, in the person of Cat-Sìth who comes to visit Grimalkin upon the occasion of his death have to admit that they’ve fallen down on the job. As a cat, his spirit if not his body is entitled to nine lives, and he’s been shorted out of eight of them.

Something must be done in redress.

Grimalkin is given a choice even if the full measure of it isn’t clear to him at the time. He can go to his eternal sleep – or – he can have his eight remaining lives as a ghost cat. He’ll be able to experience the world, but generally not affect it – at least until his final three lives. He’ll be granted two more lives to ‘stay’ as he did in his first, corporeal life, three lives to ‘stray’ and three lives to ‘play’ as a poltergeist.

He’ll get to see how his human, Eilidh, is doing even if he won’t be able to actually be with her. He’ll get to see how the place he lived is getting on over the years. He’ll experience a bit of the world as it changes. But only for one day in each life.

His body will no longer feel pain, and he’ll be incapable of being harmed. But harm to the body isn’t half as painful as harm to the heart and the soul. There will be times when the world will have moved too fast for him to cope with. There will be occasions that will break his heart. There will be times when he’ll want to give up and go to his final, eternal catnap right meow.

But he’ll also have a few opportunities to change the world – not in a big way – but in small and important ways to make sure that a person or two gets EXACTLY what they deserve. Whether what they deserve is salvation – or damnation.

In Grimalkin’s case, the old saying proves to be absolutely true. “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”

Escape Rating B: First, let me admit the obvious. I’ve been picking a lot of books with cats recently because I miss Lucifer something fierce. Each person deals with their emotions in different ways – for me it’s books.

(The above comment does not apply to Junkyard Roadhouse. I’ve been following that series for four years now and would have grabbed that audiobook the minute it arrived no matter when it came. The series is totally awesome. Review coming later this week.)

Pivoting from my digression, I also have to say that I’m glad I read this AFTER the trip to Glasgow and not before – even though this is set in Edinburgh. There are a few things – like the ubiquitous presence of IRN BRU – that just had a bit more immediacy and resonance after such a recent trip to Scotland – and Britain more generally – than they would have before.

As a story, The Ghost Cat feels like a timeslip story mixed with quite a bit of magical realism as well as a touch of the musical Cats and just a hint of the cat wizards in Diane Duane’s The Book of Night with Moon.

I loved Grimalkin as a character, even though his particular existence conflicted with the laws of the universe in ways that are detailed in the rather long Reviewer’s Note at the end. Grimalkin the cat displays the feelings that we all hope that our companion animals have for us, specifically that he has chosen his person and loves her unconditionally. His primary motivation for accepting the option of ghost lives is to follow her through the years – not understanding the heartbreak that will inevitably follow.

What makes him interesting to follow is the way that he dips into time – rather like Brigadoon – but at much shorter intervals. He gets to see just a bit of the changes in the world, and it’s particularly poignant that he is present for both Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation AND the announcement of her passing. Also a tad ironic, as at her coronation he assures himself that she’ll be just a ‘flash in the pan’ compared to the eternal Victoria who was Queen for his entire life – and of course he’s so very wrong about that.

But right about many other things – not so much about eras and the increasing pace of life and what appears to be its equally increasing lack of civility and manners – but rather about his insights into the hearts of people. Human nature, for good or ill, doesn’t change all that much over a mere century or so.

In the end, Grimalkin’s story is a lovely little collection of observations and snippets, grounded in a bit of the author’s life, however fictionalized – and with additional magic. It’s a charming slip through the high points of a century, as seen through the often floor-level eyes of one very intelligent – but ultimately soul-weary – cat.

If, like this reader, you’re looking for a story that will reassure your heart and soul that the cats who leave us behind love us even from the Rainbow Bridge or wherever it is they go next, Grimalkin’s story may also serve as a bit of a balm to a wounded heart.

Reviewer’s (REALLY LONG) Note on feline genetics as applied to Grimalkin, the tl;dr version of which is that Grimalkin is genetically impossible and the story didn’t cover that over with even a bit of handwavium.

The ‘ghost cat’ of the title, Grimalkin, is very explicitly described as a rather prolifically reproductive tortoiseshell tomcat – and that is an actual, honest-to-goodness contradiction in terms. Due to the peculiarities of feline genetics as they apply to coat color and gender, tortoiseshell and calico cats are nearly always female. It is possible, but very rare for a male tortie or calico to be born – only a 1 in 3,000 or .033% chance. (That’s not 33% or 3%, that’s 3 one hundredths of one percent. In other words, the chance exists but it’s TINY.) And due to the genetic anomalies that allow this to happen, male tortoiseshell and calico cats are always sterile.

Now and very much on the other hand, the book of The Ghost Cat definitely falls into the category of magical realism – meaning that magic could make Grimalkin exactly what he is in the story. In the Victorian Era, when Grimalkin was born, science and the ‘Cat Fancy’ hadn’t yet figured much if any of this out, although detailed observation would have led to a conclusion that male torties were rare indeed. Howsomever, the cat gods or deities or powers-that-be or whatever that magic black cat with the white heart marking was could easily have known just how special Grimalkin was and commented upon it – as that cat spirit did so many other things. A mention would have taken care of the incongruity and kept it from tripping me – and probably other readers who are even slightly familiar with cat genetics – out of the story every time Grimalkin’s appearance was detailed.

I understand completely the desire for Grimalkin to possess both a tomcat’s machismo AND a heaping helping of tortitude, I just needed a bit of handwavium (or plot armor) to get there that wasn’t present in the story.

Your reading mileage, or percentage in this case, as always, may vary.

A- #BookReview: Hell Bay by Will Thomas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Hell Bay by Will ThomasHell Bay (Barker & Llewelyn, #8) by Will Thomas
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Barker & Llewelyn #8
Pages: 304
Published by Minotaur Books on October 25, 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Better World Books
Goodreads

When two people are murdered during a secret government conference on a secluded island estate, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker must find the killer among the guests before it’s too late.
At the request of Her Majesty’s government, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker agrees to take on his least favorite kind of assignment—he’s to provide security for a secret conference with the French government. The conference is to take place on the private estate of Lord Hargrave on a remote island off the coast of Cornwall. The goal of the conference is the negotiation of a new treaty with France. The cover story for the gathering is a house party—an attempt to introduce Lord Hargrave’s two unmarried sons to potential mates.
But shortly after the parties land at the island, Lord Hargrave is killed by a sniper shot, and the French ambassador’s head of security is found stabbed to death. The only means of egress from the island—a boat—has been sent away, and the means of signaling for help has been destroyed. Trapped in a manor house with no way of escape, Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, must uncover which among them is the killer before the next victim falls.

My Review:

In this eighth entry in the Barker & Llewelyn series, after the private enquiry agents’ immersion in the deepest of London’s hells in pursuit of Jack the Ripper in Anatomy of Evil, Cyrus Barker finds himself far outside his usual stomping and stalking grounds, caught literally between Scylla and Charybdis, at the furthermost west point of the Scilly Isles maneuvered into a case he’d really rather not have taken.

But Scylla in the person of the woman who holds his heart, Mrs. Philippa Ashleigh, has conspired with her dear friend Lady Hargrave to invite Barker – with Llewelyn as his aide-de-camp, assistant, general factotum and whatever other jobs Barker needs him to turn his hand to – in tow. Mrs. Ashleigh has been attempting, for months if not longer, to drag Barker to a country house party in spite of how little he desires to attend such a thing.

Mrs. Ashleigh’s manipulations, however, have dovetailed all too neatly with those of the government, the monstrous Charybdis of this analogy. Lord Hargrave has planned a secret meeting with his old friend – and his daughter’s godfather – the French ambassador, at a house party on his estate in the Scilly Isles. Hargrave commissions Barker and Llewelyn to provide security for the clandestine meeting. While Barker protests, and rightfully so, that this is not the sort of work at which his agency excels, because two men simply are not enough to get the job done, the combined machinations of his government and his lady have forced his hand.

At first, Barker dreads the prospect of endless boredom and terrible attempts to make – or avoid – small talk with the other guests. His hopes (or fears) of that boredom are dashed before the end of the first evening, when his host is killed by a sniper, the French ambassador’s head of security is stabbed to death and the only means of leaving the remote island are destroyed.

The country house party swiftly changes from a pleasure trip to a siege, as the guests and staff are picked off one by one in a multitude of methods that seem deadly and/or devastating by capricious turns.

The killer clearly has an agenda, and its up to Barker and Llewelyn – in spite of the distrust they face from ALL of the guests – to figure out who has meticulously planned to eliminate every single person on Godolphin Island until there are none left.

Escape Rating A-: First, it may seem like I picked this one up much too soon after Anatomy of Evil – and it’s true that this one does suffer a bit in comparison. But in truth I read the earlier book on the plane home from San Diego last month, and took my trip to Hell Bay on the plane home from London last week.

At least it wasn’t a boat on MY return trip.

I did enjoy Hell Bay for its character development, but it did suffer a bit in comparison to Anatomy of Evil, which, with its deep dive into London’s Whitechapel district and its nail-biting hunt for Jack the Ripper – as well as its plausible solution to that historical conundrum – was an absolutely compelling read.

Hell Bay, which provided some fantastic insights into the relationship between Cyrus Barker and Mrs. Philippa Ashleigh – and do I ever wonder where that’s going after this book – was quite a departure for the detective duo.

And not in the best way, as this story takes Barker & Llewelyn out of their London setting and puts them in a place that is not suited to them or their methods. These particular fish, in spite of being in the middle of the ocean, are very much out of water.

The place they were out of that water, storywise, was all too similar to Erik Larson’s No One Goes Alone, and of course Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – even if the means and motives for both of those stories turned out to be different. Also, I was a bit disappointed with No One Goes Alone so the resemblance between the stories did not serve as a pleasant harbinger for my read of this one.

One of the things that I did like about this one – and it’s something that has been true with other stories in this series where Barker is on the case – is the way that the crimes and their motives turned out not to be the seemingly obvious ones, but those more obvious possibilities turned into rather tasty red herrings for the detectives.

And, as stated earlier, while we still don’t know as much as Thomas Llewelyn would like about Cyrus Barker’s background, he did observe a great deal about the relationship between his ‘Guv’ and Mrs. Ashleigh and it’s clear that she is going to be having, perhaps not exactly second thoughts but certainly some serious rethinking about that relationship and where she thinks its going vs. where Barker will ever be willing to go – and not just because I seriously doubt the man will EVER be willing to attend another country house party.

We’ll certainly see in the books to come, as my catch up read of the Barker & Llewelyn series continues with the short story An Awkward Way to Die and the following full-length novel, Old Scores, the next times I need a book that is guaranteed to pull me in and sweep me away – as this series always does – even if, on this particular occasion, it also swept me a bit out to sea.

A- #BookReview: The Naturalist’s Daughter by Tea Cooper

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Naturalist’s Daughter by Tea CooperThe Naturalist's Daughter by Tea Cooper
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Pages: 368
Published by Harper Muse on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

1808 Agnes Banks, NSW
Rose Winton wants nothing more than to work with her father, eminent naturalist Charles Winton, on his groundbreaking study of the platypus. Not only does she love him with all her heart, but the discoveries they have made could turn the scientific world on its head. When Charles is unable to make the long sea journey to present his findings to the prestigious Royal Society in England, Rosie must venture forth in his stead. What she discovers there will change the lives of future generations.
1908 Sydney, NSW
Tamsin Alleyn has been given a mission: travel to the Hunter Valley and retrieve an old sketchbook of debatable value, gifted to the Public Library by a recluse. But when she gets there, she finds there is more to the book than meets the eye, and more than one interested party. Shaw Everdene, a young antiquarian bookseller and lawyer seems to have his own agenda when it comes to the book – and Tamsin. In an attempt to discover the book's true provenance Tamsin decides to work with him.
The deeper they delve, the more intricate the mystery becomes. As the lives of two women a century apart converge, discoveries rise up from the past and reach into the future, with irrevocable consequences...

My Review:

There have been plenty of hoax animals and artifacts in the histories of archaeological and biological discoveries. But the platypus was not one of them – no matter how skeptical scientists initially were about the creature found – and only found – on the wet eastern riverlands of Australia.

But it’s easy to understand why scientists in Britain, presented with a preserved specimen of an animal that had fur like a mammal, a bill like a duck, a poison spur like a reptile, that laid eggs like a bird but nursed its young as mammals do treated the specimen with a HUGE dose of skepticism.

Even the platypus’ early scientific name, ornithorhynchus paradoxus – paradoxical bird-snout – makes the confusion of all who observed the animal exceedingly clear.

This illustration by Frederick Polydore Nodder is the first published illustration of a platypus. It accompanied George Shaw’s 1799 description of the animal in the Naturalist’s Miscellany, or Coloured figures of natural objects”. London:Nodder & Co.

The story in The Naturalist’s Daughter is wrapped tightly around the paradox of the platypus, both its discovery across two centuries – about the history of its first introduction to the preeminent 19th century naturalist Sir Joseph Banks and then the early 20th century discovery that perhaps the attribution for that first discovery had been misplaced in the midst of a series of tragic family secrets and devastating lies.

It’s a story that goes full circle, from young Rose Winton, a budding naturalist in her own right – or at least she would have been if she had been born either male or in a later century – and the origin story that had been hidden from her – to Tamsin Alleyn a century later, an independent young woman determined to chart her own course – a course that leads her back to a family and a history she never knew was hers.

Along the way, the story of the platypus spurs its poison and lays its eggs, from the manipulations of a wealthy family that abused, transported, lied and cheated Rose’ mother to descendants that hid her heritage and did their damndest to do it all again.

Only for the truth, at last, to make so many injustices finally come ‘round right and correct the mistakes of history in a story that combines the thrill of scientific discovery with the sins of avarice, the desperation to escape not one but two legacies that are too difficult to bear and a romance weighed down with secrets on all sides.

Escape Rating A-: Before I get to the story, I have to say that to this reader, at least, the original Australian cover (pictured at left) does a much better job of conveying the heart of this story – which lies in the land that gave birth to the platypus – than the US cover. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, etc., etc., etc., but the well-dressed somewhat generic figure on the US cover doesn’t ring true for either Rose or Tamsin – but the land and its creatures are definitely the heart of the thing.

The Naturalist’s Daughter, like several of the author’s other works, is a dual timeline story. In the 1808 timeline, we have Rose Winton, the titular naturalist’s daughter, as her father teaches her his craft even though she has no chance of being a professional or respected scientist. When he is struck down, she finds herself taking up as much of his mantle as the society of the time will allow.

In the 1908 portion of the story, we have Tamsin Alleyn, a young librarian and archivist who has come into contact with a sketchbook that once belonged to Charles Winton. A sketchbook of somewhat mysterious provenance – and an even more uncertain fate – that contains some sketches that the reader is already aware were drawn by Rose and not her father.

For much of the story, it seems that the sketchbook is the connecting link, but as Tamsin continues to investigate the path that the sketchbook has taken through the intervening century, it becomes clear that there is more to connect the two women than it first seemed.

Readers may find one or the other character easier to empathize with. Rose faces more danger, but Tamsin has more freedom of action. Rose is closer to the beginning of the mystery, but Tamsin is the agent who uncovers the whole of it.

Personally I found Tamsin’s story the more satisfying approach, but Rose’s story certainly has its own appeal.

The way that the two stories turn out to be the same story after all turned into a fascinating web built out of secrets and lies, told by multiple less than reliable narrators, which made it that much more fascinating and difficult to suss out the truth before the final – and imminently satisfying – conclusion.

A+ #BookReview: Anatomy of Evil by Will Thomas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Anatomy of Evil by Will ThomasAnatomy of Evil (Barker & Llewelyn, #7) by Will Thomas
Format: eARC
Source: purchased from Amazon, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Barker & Llewelyn #7
Pages: 327
Published by Minotaur Books on May 12, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In London of 1888, Private Enquiry Agent Cyrus Barker takes on his biggest case ever—the attempt to find and stop the killer terrorizing Whitechapel: Jack the Ripper
Cyrus Barker is undoubtedly England’s premiere private enquiry agent. With the help of his assistant Thomas Llewelyn, he’s developed an enviable reputation for discreetly solving some of the toughest, most consequential cases in recent history. But one evening in 1888, Robert Anderson, the head of Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), appears at Barker’s office with an offer. A series of murders in the Whitechapel area of London are turning the city upside down, with tremendous pressure being brought to bear on Scotland Yard and the government itself.
Barker is to be named temporary envoy to the Royal Family with regard to the case while surreptitiously bringing his investigative skill to the case. With various elements of society, high and low, bringing their own agenda to increasingly shocking murders, Barker and Llewellyn must find and hunt down the century’s most notorious killer. The Whitechapel Killer has managed to elude the finest minds of Scotland Yard—and beyond—he’s never faced a mind as nimble and a man as skilled as Cyrus Barker. But even Barker’s prodigious skills may not be enough to track down a killer in time.

My Review:

Private Inquiry Agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn have been on a collision course with this particular date with destiny since the very first book in this series, Some Danger Involved, opened in 1884 with Barker taking Llewellyn on as his apprentice.

This seventh book in the utterly riveting series of their adventures has reached the ominous year of 1888, the year that “Jack the Ripper” terrorized the streets of London’s most desperate and notorious neighborhood, Whitechapel.

Every single police agency – and there were plenty of competing jurisdictions and agencies in London in the autumn of 1888 – wanted the glory that would come from catching the killer – and zealously guarded their patch and every single scrap of evidence they managed to acquire.

In this compelling take on the investigation into the Whitechapel Murders, Scotland Yard, reluctantly and with a ridiculous number of caveats and restrictions, deputized Cyrus Barker and his apprentice-turned-assistant Thomas Llewellyn into the Metropolitan Police Department in order to avail themselves of Barker’s much vaunted expertise in investigation and manhunting.

And, in all probability, if all else failed, to have him on hand to use as a scapegoat if they couldn’t manage to close the case.

Which, or so history tells us, they didn’t. Unless one of the many conspiracy theories had it right after all, and the truth would have lit a powder keg that Scotland Yard was incapable of putting out.

Escape Rating A+: I picked this book when I did because I was on a long flight and needed something that was guaranteed to take me away from my current circumstances. I was one hundred percent certain that Barker & Llewelyn were the men for the job.

Which they absolutely were.

The fascinating thing about this particular entry in this long-running series is that its focus isn’t on the lurid details of the crimes, but rather on the intricate details of the investigation – including the interdepartmental rivalries, the political shenanigans, the conflicting social mores of the time and the various factions that needed protection – or demanded it – as well as the potential consequences of any of the various possible resolutions.

Barker and Llewelyn find themselves in the one place neither of them ever expected to be. They’re not just in the thick of the investigation, but they are embedded firmly into the Metropolitan Police. Barker prefers to be his own boss and run his own show, and Llewelyn is an ex-con. While neither of them expected to be welcomed in the Met with open arms, they’re continually astonished that they are there at all.

At the same time, the experience fosters respect on both sides that honestly neither side believed was possible. It will be interesting to see how and even whether that continues in future stories.

But the Ripper killings took place at the dawn of forensic science – and many of the techniques were still being hotly debated – even as “Jack” cut a bloody swath through Whitechapel and left damned few clues behind him – while the gutter press did their damndest to gin up readership with sensationalism.

The story runs at a compelling, page-turning pace as Barker and Llewelyn gather and discard clues and theories even as they walk the streets of Whitechapel night after night in an attempt to learn the territory so they can spot anything out of place – while they observe the day-to-day and night-to-night life of this district that most well-heeled Londoners would just as soon forget with understanding and empathy instead of the judgment and derision exhibited by their current colleagues and their usual clientele.

In the end, Barker gets his man – with Llewelyn’s able assistance – just as he always does. That the solution seems plausible even though justice can’t truly be served feels right, true to the circumstances, and even surprisingly satisfactory – in spite of the lack of historical closure.

Saying that I had a “good” reading time with Barker & Llewelyn this time around feels wrong – because the whole Ripper case is awful. I appreciated the way that the story dealt with the evidence of the actual killings without sensationalizing them more than has already been done elsewhere and plenty. The in-depth details, very much on the other hand, of the investigative processes of the police and the sheer amount of manpower they devoted to the case were fascinating.

And of course, I love these characters, so taking them out of their familiar haunts and watching them still get the job done added new layers to them, their association and their story. Which means that I will definitely continue my journey with Barker & Llewelyn with the next book in the series, Hell Bay, the next time I need to be swept away to Victorian London.

Grade A #BookReview: A Vengeful King Rises by Sophie Barnes + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: A Vengeful King Rises by Sophie Barnes + GiveawayA Vengeful King Rises (House of Croft) by Sophie Barnes
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, historical romance
Series: House of Croft #1
Pages: 492
Published by Sophie Barnes on July 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The only thing more lethal than his need for revenge, is the woman who's tasked with bringing him down.
Adrian Croft dreams of quitting the shady business he stands to inherit, of settling down, and of raising a family free from a life of crime. But when tragedy strikes, this fanciful dream is destroyed. All he wants now is revenge. His anger, however, threatens to cloud his judgment, making it harder for him to recognize danger when it approaches in the form of a beautiful woman.
Trained for covert operations as part of a secret government program, Samantha Carmichael's mission is to give British law enforcement a reason to prosecute the most powerful man in the country. But when common sense and duty begin to blur, can she remain steadfast in her goal, or will her loyalties shift as she gradually loses her heart to the one man she cannot afford to love?
One series, one couple, and the brutal challenges they must face
If you like What Angels Fear, Silent in the Grave, and Murder on Black Swan Lake, you’ll devour Sophie Barnes’ thrilling new series.
Buy A Vengeful King Rises and start this adventure today!

My Review:

The vengeful king that rises in this first book in the House of Croft series is Adrian Croft, the new ‘King of Portman Square’. It’s a position that Adrian never wanted, but has now been thrust upon him – willing or not.

The ‘King of Portman Square’ – at least when that powerful but unofficial title was held by his father or any of the Crofts who came before him, is a title of ill and dangerous repute. A repute that Adrian vowed to set aside after the death of his father.

The Crofts have controlled most of the criminal underbelly of London – if not all of Britain – for generations. During his father’s lifetime Adrian Croft became all too acquainted with everything dirty and dangerous that his father owned – because he was the one who visited each and every establishment to mete out his father’s justice.

Adrian wants to walk the straight and narrow, and for the family to make and maintain its fortunes through legal enterprises instead of gambling, prostitution, and blackmail.

But there are forces raised against his plan in all quarters. There’s a serial killer targeting young women of the aristocracy, killing any that he believes are only pretending to be chaste and virginal. He leaves his victims with a slit throat and a note attached to their corpses with one word – WHORE.

Scotland Yard can’t seem to find the killer, the pressure from above is mounting, and a decision is made to go after Croft – not because he’s the guilty party in THIS crime but because bringing down the vast Croft criminal empire will divert attention away from their inability to stop the gruesome murders.

The government sends in one of their best and most covert agents, Samantha Carmichael, part of a cadre of young female orphans trained as spies in case Napoleon had managed to invade Britain. Her job is to get close to Adrian Croft by any means necessary, find where he keeps his secret blackmail files, and procure rock-solid evidence of his criminal activities.

Even if she has to bed him and/or wed him to make it happen. Even if they both manage to take leave of their senses and lose their hearts in the process.

Escape Rating A: I picked this up because the author is one that I read whenever she has something new – and this book is very new indeed. Meaning that if you are expecting one of her signature frothy Regency romances you’re going to be surprised. A lot. And be utterly captivated and compelled.

This series opener worked well for this reader, because the House of Croft series is what you’d get if two of my favorite historical mystery series, C.S. Harris’ Sebastian St. Cyr and Andrea Penrose’s Wrexford & Sloane, had a book baby – possibly midwifed by Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series. St. Cyr and Wrexford & Sloane expose the gritty, grimy underbelly of the glittering Regency, take place in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, all of their heroes are dark and brooding, and all of the relationships begin on a knife edge of secrets and lies, distrust and betrayal. While Maiden Lane, although set a century earlier, dives deeply into the same mean streets where the House of Croft holds sway.

But  St. Cyr, Wrexford & Sloane and the House of Croft work from different positions. Sebastian St. Cyr is an aristocrat who operates in the halls of power, of which he is not a member, quite, at least not yet., but certainly will be upon the eventual death of his father the powerful and well-connected Earl of Hendon. Wrexford focuses more on scientific advancement and the kind of technical and industrial espionage that leads to grandiose promises and economic crashes. Although both began their secondary interests in investigation after being falsely accused of crimes, they are otherwise completely legit.

Adrian Croft is none of the above. He has no title, but has a great deal of mostly illegally obtained wealth. He has power but seemingly no check on it. He doesn’t merely expose the Regency’s dark underbelly – he has the ability to control it.

Which means that each of these series may be set in the same time and place but they are not looking at it from the same direction.

Adrian comes to his investigation of the serial killer from the perspective of a victim. His young unmarried sister was one of the murderer’s kills. Not because she actually had sullied her reputation but rather because someone put her in the frame in order to force Adrian to take back the reins of the Croft criminal empire in order to hunt down her killer.

That nefarious person is still hiding in the shadows. Although now that he has achieved his objective I can’t help but wonder when we’ll see him again so that loose thread can be tied off – possibly into a hangman’s noose – in a later book in this series.

On the other side of this book’s equation there’s Samantha Carmichael. Because she is not, by any means, a typical Regency heroine. And yet, she’s not anachronistic. That Britain might create a spy program for undercover agents who can hide in plain sight is not implausible. It’s a bit early, historically, but if it were top secret enough we wouldn’t know, would we?

Just as this case is a test for Adrian, it’s also a test for Samantha. Her government handlers expect her to obey orders and yet are forced to give her considerable autonomy in order to carry out her mission. And in that autonomy, and the training to think for herself that it requires, Samantha starts to see the truth about her circumstances and begins to wonder if Adrian Croft is even a quarter as bad as he’s painted.

It’s clearly all going to end in tears and betrayals. The question that will hopefully be explored in the next books in the series, A Tainted Heart Bleeds (October) and A Ruthless Angel Weeps (January) is the question of whether they can find a way past the events that brought them together, or whether they will shatter, separately, together and with shrapnel flying all around.

I’ll be waiting with the proverbial bated breath for the next book, but in the meantime there’s a prequel novella, A Wounded Bird Sings, to tide me over.

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

About the Author

USA TODAY bestselling author Sophie Barnes writes historical romance novels
in which the characters break away from social expectations in their quest
for happiness and love. Having written for Avon, an imprint of Harper
Collins, her books have been published internationally in eight languages.
With a fondness for travel, Sophie has lived in six countries, on three
continents, and speaks English, Danish, French, Spanish, and Romanian with
varying degrees of fluency. Ever the romantic, she married the same man
three times—in three different countries and in three different
dresses.

When she’s not busy dreaming up her next swoon worthy romance novel,
Sophie enjoys spending time with her family, practicing yoga, baking,
gardening, watching romantic comedies and, of course, reading.

Contact Links

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#BookReview: Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Lady Macbeth by Ava ReidLady Macbeth by Ava Reid
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Gothic, historical fantasy, historical fiction, retellings
Pages: 320
Published by Del Rey on August 13, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ava Reid comes a reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her.
The Lady knows the stories: how her eyes induce madness in men. 
The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his warrior ways behind when he comes to the marriage bed.  
The Lady knows his hostile, suspicious court will be a game of strategy, requiring all of her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive. 
But the Lady does not know her husband has occult secrets of his own. She does not know that prophecy girds him like armor. She does not know that her magic is greater and more dangerous, and that it will threaten the order of the world. 
She does not know this yet. But she will.

My Review:

This is another story we think we know.. We certainly do know how it ends, thanks to the Bard and “ Out, damned spot! out, I say!” although we usually get it wrong and misquote it as “Out, out damned spot!”

But do we really know anything at all? Shakespeare certainly played fast and loose with any history he got near, whether for dramatic license or to please the current monarch or, if at all possible, as much of both as he could cram into four acts.

Lady Macbeth observes King Duncan (Lady Macbeth by George Cattermole, 19th century)

Lady Macbeth, as a character in the play, comes off as an evil, villainous, witch – whether she actually practiced witchcraft or not. But was she really – and whether or not she was, how would Shakespeare know?

Because as much as we tend to think that all the past is just jammed together in a big ball of timey-wimey bits, the reality is that FIVE CENTURIES separate the historical Lord and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare’s dramatically licensed interpretation.

In other words, he didn’t actually know a damned thing and neither do we, making his version entirely fictional and this book a thoroughgoing reinterpretation of that well-known fiction. This is a case where we don’t even know what we think we know.

So what do we have here? Lady Macbeth, the book in the hand and not the play in the mind, is part of the phenomenon of telling – or rather reinterpreting – a well-known story from the perspective of a female central character. A character who was either silent or just hard done by  in the male-centric version that put a man in the center of a story that may not even have been his in the first place – and didn’t bother to reckon with the restrictions and assumptions that hedged around women’s lives.

This Lady Macbeth, while she is certainly a schemer, is mostly scheming for her own survival in a world that makes her the property of her scheming father until he sells her to her murderous husband.

To put it another way, she’s doing the best she can to stay alive with the tools she has – her beauty, her position to a VERY limited extent, and the reputation her father has created for her as a powerful witch.

Which she might very well be, after all.

Escape Rating B+: I picked this one up and surprised myself by getting immediately stuck into it and couldn’t put it down. So definitely tick off the box for compelling. At the same time, I had the feeling that I’d read this one before. Not exactly this book, but something very much like it in its reinterpretation of a familiar character, and its female-centric but not feminist perspective.

(If you’re wondering – as I was – it reminds me of The Nightingale’s Castle by Sonia Velton, which gives Countess Bathory a similar treatment. Also, her portrait of Lord Macbeth reads like it owes a lot of its physical description to Henry VIII of England – which was just a bit weird. Plausible based on the limited information about the historical ‘King Hereafter’, but still odd to read.)

On the one hand, what makes this work is that we’re inside Lady Roscille Macbeth’s head, so we see her motivations and her mistakes, and intimately understand why she does the things she does. At the same time, we see her inexperience and naivete, because the poor girl is only 17 and a stranger in a strange land at that, when she is forced to marry Lord Macbeth.

One thing that her perspective emphasizes very clearly is that his is the power, not hers, no matter her reputation. Her choices are always circumscribed by his complete power over her very existence. He has all the choices – at least at the beginning. Towards the end it’s his previous acts that constrain those choices, not hers.

(Her angst over the things she has done, and their effect upon her ‘soul’ may go on just a bit too long for 21st century readers as it certainly did for this one. The past is another country, they did things differently there.)

In the end, she was the dagger, often, but he was always the hand wielding it, which is not at all what the play would lead one to believe. And has led most readers and viewers, over the centuries. Seeing that possibility, that perspective, through the eyes and mind of that dagger, kept me riveted to the story – as if at knife point.

#BookReview: The Nightingale’s Castle by Sonia Velton

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Nightingale’s Castle by Sonia VeltonThe Nightingale's Castle by Sonia Velton
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fantasy, historical fiction
Pages: 320
Published by Harper Perennial on July 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In the vein of riveting historical novels such as Hamnet and Circe—with a touch of Dracula—a propulsive, feminist reimagining of the story of Erzsébet Báthory, the infamous sixteenth-century Hungarian aristocrat known as the “Blood Countess”, who was rumored to have murdered hundreds of peasant girls and bathed in their blood.
In 1573, Countess Erzsébet Báthory gives birth to an illegitimate child. Secretly taken to a peasant family living in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, the infant girl is raised as their own. Years later, a young woman called Boróka—ignorant of her true history—is sent to join the Countess’s household.
Terrified of the Countess’s murderous reputation and the brutally cruel women who run the castle, Boróka struggles to find her place. Then plague breaches the castle’s walls, and a tentative bond unexpectedly forms between the girl and the Countess. But powerful forces are moving against the great lady whose wealth and independence threatens the king. Can the Countess trust the women seemingly so close to her? And when the show trial begins against the infamous “Blood Countess” where will Boróka’s loyalties lie?

My Review:

The name Erzsébet Báthory (or Elizabeth Bathory as it’s often anglicized), invokes one hell of an image. An image that literally belongs in Hell, that of a depraved serial killer who literally bathed in the blood of her victims to maintain her youth and beauty. Countess Bathory, popularly known as the “Blood Countess”, lives in infamy as a kind of pseudo-Dracula if not an actual vampire – although some popular tales even go that far.

That is not the person at the heart of The Nightingale’s Castle. Instead, this reimagining of the life of the infamous alleged serial killer takes an entirely different approach to a historical figure we all think we know.

And thereby, as the saying goes, hangs a tale.

The Nightingale’s Castle begins with young, naïve, reluctant Boróka, press-ganged into the Countess’ service, arriving at the castle to find that the castle is just a castle and not the house of supernatural horror that the reader imagines it will be.

What she finds instead is a place where the upper servants and overseers are cruel and malicious, and the Lady of the Castle, the Countess herself, is wealthy beyond a poor orphan girl’s dreams, but also a bit cool, entirely distant, and not really involved in the day to day running of her castle.

As it turns out, Bathory is much too busy dealing with other matters. She’s wealthy, powerful, and well educated, a force to be reckoned with in spite of her gender because of that same wealth and the lands she controls.

Land and wealth and titles the widowed Countess holds alone – much to the dismay of both the Church and the Crown. Which is where all her problems begin, and her independence eventually ends.

Portrait of Elizabeth Bathory

Escape Rating B: This was totally, utterly, absolutely not what I was expecting. Because I was expecting blood and gore and horror – in other words, the popular image of Bathory. What I got instead was the picture of a woman who was a part of her time – and was punished for not knowing her ‘place’.

Instead of following the lurid ‘female serial killer’ story, or the even more scandalous Dracula variations, the author took a dive into the actual history of Countess Bathory to discover that there wasn’t a whole lot of either of those versions of her crimes in circulation at the time she actually lived.

Not that there weren’t plenty of rumors, because she was a woman who held power in her own right and historically that never goes well, but not the truly crazy stuff. There were deaths in her castle over the years, but not more than can be explained by life in the mid-1500s. The documentation for her ‘show trial’, where the fix was clearly in, contain a few off the wall allegations of the “I heard someone else said that” kind – which aren’t exactly evidence of much of anything.

So instead of the “Blood Countess” we have a powerful and intelligent woman as the victim of a conspiracy to take her wealth and her property by accusing her of, essentially, witchcraft. And wasn’t that at the heart of so many witchcraft trials?

It’s easy to fall into this interpretation, because it makes so much more sense than the popular image. And we’ve seen it before. Bathory’s situation reminded me a lot of many of the more even handed portrayals of Anne Boleyn, who also wasn’t guilty of the crimes of which she was accused, but was very much in the way of some powerful people who wanted her out of their way.

The Nightingale’s Castle also – and even more surprisingly – brought to mind Josephine Tey’s classic mystery, The Daughter of Time, in its similar historical reinterpretation of Richard III and Shakespeare’s equally lurid condemnation of that king for the murder of his nephews – a historical figure whose purported villainy is not supported by documentation that was written at the time – only through much later accounts from people who had their own axes to grind.

While this reinterpretation doesn’t hold up entirely in its details, the idea of it, that so much blood and dirt accreted around Bathory’s name because she was a woman who stood up to be counted, because she refused to keep to her place and hide her intelligence and acumen behind a man, rings considerably truer than tales of bathing in the blood of virgins.

A+ #BookReview: Murder at the White Palace by Allison Montclair

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Murder at the White Palace by Allison MontclairMurder at the White Palace (Sparks & Bainbridge, #6) by Allison Montclair
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Sparks & Bainbridge #6
Pages: 320
Published by Minotaur Books on July 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In post-WWII London, the matchmakers of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are involved in yet another murder.In the immediate post-war days of London, two unlikely partners have undertaken an even more unlikely, if necessary, business venture—The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. The two partners are Miss Iris Sparks, a woman with a dangerous—and never discussed—past in British intelligence and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a genteel war widow with a young son entangled in a complicated aristocratic family. Looking to throw a New Year’s Eve soiree for their clients, Sparks and Bainbridge scout an empty building—only to find a body contained in the walls. What they initially assume is a victim of the recent Blitz is uncovered instead to be a murder victim—stabbed several times.To make matters worse, the owner of the building is Sparks’ beau, Archie Spelling, who has ties to a variety of enterprises on the right and wrong sides of the law, and the main investigator for the police is her ex-fiancée. Gwen, too, is dealing with her own complicated love life, as she tentatively steps back into the dating pool for the first time since her husband’s death. Murder is not something they want to add to their plates, but the murderer may be closer to home than is comfortable, and they must do all they can to protect their clients, their business and themselves.

My Review:

Over the course of the Sparks & Bainbridge series, beginning with The Right Sort of Man, Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge have proven to have a very strange kind of luck. The sort of luck that has them tripping over murder victims – or in this case having a murder victim nearly drop on one of their heads. But that luck of theirs extends to not just finding the body – but also getting into the thick of the police investigation, involving themselves with the mob, AND, most importantly, figuring out whodunnit.

Up until this case, that luck has extended to emerging from each case with all of their friends, colleagues and hostages to fortune – as well as themselves – relatively unscathed at the end.

This case breaks the last bit of that streak, as the body that drops on Gwen’s head at the beginning leads to Iris’ mobster boyfriend near-death as the result of a gunshot in the middle. Center mass, in fact, but enough of a smidgeon of that luck kept that bullet from his heart. Not that recovery from a through-and-through shot to one lung is going to make his recovery a walk in the park – if he recovers.

Iris wants to murder whoever shot her man – but Gwen is there to keep her friend from going off half-cocked on a revenge spree. Leaving Gwen to do most of the investigation and surprisingly all of the derring-do in Sparks & Bainbridge’s very personal quest to figure out who murdered the body that dropped in the beginning AND who is doing their damndest to make sure that Archie Spelling is interred in a coffin beside him.

Escape Rating A+: I was up until 3 am finishing this, so an A+ it most definitely is. I tried telling myself I could finish AFTER breakfast, but myself wasn’t listening. I simply HAD to find out whodunnit!

This entry in the series represents a turning point, as well as a bit of trading places. Up ’til now, Iris Sparks, former spy or whatever secret things she did during the war for whatever secret agency, was always the intrepid and daring partner, rushing in where angels rightfully feared to tread.

Gwen Bainbridge, on the other hand, was the cautious and conservative half, fearing – rightfully so – that if they cocked too much of a snook at the conventions that she would be made to pay for it in ways that have hung over her head like the Sword of Damocles in the previous books in the series.

Their positions reverse here, as Gwen is now out from under the restrictions of both her late husband’s family AND the Lunacy Court, while Iris is searching for approval – or at least understanding – from her disapproving mother and Archie’s extended family – only one of which is EVER likely to be on offer.

The police don’t want to listen to either of them – which is par for the course. Not only do the coppers not enjoy being shown up by a couple of amateurs, but Iris’ relationship with a mob boss and Gwen’s partnership with Iris, her friendship with Archie, and the friendly relations she has with Archie’s gang, tar both women with the brush of criminality.

Also, the police don’t seem to be all that interested in investigating Archie’s shooting. They don’t care much if one mobster rubs out another – they’re only worried about the potential for mob warfare that seems likely to follow.

But the case itself isn’t so much about Archie as it is about Archie poking his nose in places that it doesn’t belong. It’s about the past – and not even Archie’s own. While Archie is fighting for his life in the hospital, and Iris Sparks is emotionally flailing about the potential loss of a future she wasn’t sure that she wanted until it was nearly snatched out of her hands – it’s up to Gwen Bainbridge to get to the bottom of the case that literally dropped on her head.

While the case does get wrapped, the story of Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge and the Right Sort Marriage Bureau screeches to a halt with the pop of a champagne cork as 1947 is ushered in on a tide of desperate hope and wild expectation.

This reader, at least, desperately hopes that the next entry in the Sparks & Bainbridge will drop on her head this time next year. It’s not merely a matter of expectation – I absolutely HAVE to know what happens next.