Historical Mystery Review: Deanna Raybourn’s A GHASTLY CATASTROPHE (Veronica Speedwell #10)

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I’ve had the pleasure of reading two series mysteries lately: the Sparks-Bainbridge and now, another and much-awaited Veronica Speedwell from Raybourn (which, at this point, should be renamed Speedwell-Templeton-Vane; if you read it, you’ll get the quip, but no spoilers!). Like my experience of reading the latest Sparks and Bainbridge, I enjoyed A Ghastly Catastrophe because I spent time with beloved characters, Veronica and Stoker, Mornaday, J. J. the various dogs, a quite amusing appearance by Lord Rosemorran’s feral daughter, but the best “sighting”? Of Lady Julia and Nicholas Brisbane! The blurb details will orient us for further commentary and, hopefully, avoid any spoilers to the mystery:

When the corpse of an entitled young man is found entirely drained of blood in a carriage next to Highgate Cemetery, Veronica’s interest is piqued. And then a second victim is found, his death made to look like a suicide—and Veronica and her intrepid beau Stoker know the hunt is on. The two men share one link: they were both members of a society so secretive that only a singular mention of it can be found anywhere.

Thirsty for more clues, Veronica and Stoker hear that a young Romany boy may know more about their first victim, and the only way to the boy is through an old acquaintance of Stoker’s, Lady Julia Brisbane. Lady Julia and her dashing husband, Nicholas, occasionally track down murderers and are only too happy to help. But as it becomes clear that the secret society is a dangerous sect looking to entice immortality seekers, Veronica and Stoker find themselves ensnared by a decidedly more sinister couple.

The professed leader of the society claims to be a creature of the night; his partner practices witchcraft and they both fancy themselves emissaries of the otherworldly. Just as Veronica and Stoker get closer to learning the true purpose of the society and unraveling this macabre mystery, another body turns up, and they quickly discover they’ve gone from being the hunters to the hunted. . . .   (more…)

What I Read During March Break

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The January to end-February school year is the hardest one for teachers: our Canadian winter is long; weather, crap; commute, fraught with potholes and black ice. We’re tired, the young are peevish, and our solace is looking forward to March break. When it arrives, my best-laid-reading-plans never quite pan out, mainly because I tend to accumulate pending tasks a-plenty, doctor’s appointments, tax prep, cleaning, amid other tedia. When I plunge into what needs be done, reading is left by the wayside. But this year, I was resolved this wouldn’t happen. Did I succeed? Hm, no, the reading appetite is never fully satisfied, but I managed to get some much-desired titles off the TBR and into my head, the first of these being Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad.  (more…)

Contemporary Romance Review: Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s AND THE CROWD WENT WILD (Chicago Stars #11)

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I’ve loved Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s romances since I started reading romance in the early oughts (and I will stand by Kiss An Angel as a great romance no matter what you might throw at it. And there’s plenty you can lob.) I love Phillips because she breaks her protagonists to build them up, while they grapple with love, intimacy, and commitment. (I think Cecilia Grant, one of the greats, could also do that, but way more subtly than SEP, who really lets them have it.) In And the Crowd Went Wild‘s case, her heroine, Dancy, publicly humiliates herself while wearing a dress which lights up, rendering her inebriated humiliation all the more…well, mortifying. SEP’s hero, Clint, is falling apart internally but keeps it together to all appearances; cracks are showing and he won’t be able sustain the faux-with-it-ness. A nod to the publisher’s blurb to clarify details:

After a mortifying—and very public—humiliation, Dancy Flynn is desperate to find sanctuary far from the crowd. But where can a washed-up sex symbol hide? How about making an unannounced appearance at the secluded lake house of the sweet, sensitive high school boyfriend she hasn’t seen in almost twenty years?

But Chicago Stars quarterback Clint Garrett is no longer the kid Dancy remembers. Now he’s a gridiron superhero, still holding a massive grudge against her for breaking his teenage heart. With no room in his life for either complexity or distractions, he banishes Dancy to a refurbished old railroad caboose tucked away in the woods…and out of his sight.

Except Dancy’s not good at staying invisible. Her efforts to rebuild her career clash with Clint’s desperation to regain his focus, all made more challenging by a rescue dog, a local woman in trouble, a meddling mother, an ex with an agenda…and the sizzle of rekindled emotions.

As Dancy attempts to get her life on track and Clint tries to get his groove back, can these two one-time lovers navigate their rocky pasts and complicated present to find themselves…and each other? (more…)

Nonfiction Review: Val McDermid’s WINTER: THE STORY OF A SEASON

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Like McDermid, I love winter. If you’re Canadian and spend six months “wintering”, well, you have to at least like it. I don’t love it because I’m on the slopes or swanning ’round the ice rink: I love it because it’s cozy…Canadian-style hygge, because I get to wear wool sweaters and the days are short (not a sun-fan) and mood perfect for reading. I love a walk in the snow (not the ice which, thanks to climate change, is more frequent than ever) and, more than anything, how the snow muffles everything and makes for peak-quiet. McDermid’s winter isn’t a Canadian one, it’s Scottish, but she doesn’t love it any less; though, for her, it’s bound up with traditions and celebrations.

In her short meditation on the season, McDermid, in limpid, affecting prose, takes us on a winter journey of what she loves about the season, as well as memories from her childhood winters (and McDermid’s childhood was a happy one, so lovely to read about one that was). (more…)

Historical Mystery Review: Allison Montclair’s FIRE MUST BURN (Sparks and Bainbridge #8)

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Montclair’s eighth foray in the Sparks-Bainbridge mystery series is in keeping with a great series in one to seven, a consistently excellent series with two wonderful protagonists, the eponymous Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge. Of the two, this is Iris’s story to enact and tell. Montclair uses third person (thank the prose gods) and alternating timeline between “present-day-1947” marriage bureau partnership with Gwen and a story set in Cambridge 1937, giving us a glimpse into Iris’s past. The publisher’s blurb offers further details:

London, 1947. After recent events have left the normally steadfast Iris Sparks thoroughly shaken, she’s looking forward to some peace. With The Right Sort doing well, she and business partner Gwen Bainbridge are due a holiday. Until Iris’s former boss enlists their help for a secret mission.

Iris, who left British intelligence after the war, is being recruited for her Cambridge connection to one Anthony Danforth. She hasn’t seen Tony in almost ten years, yet she and Gwen must manipulate him into hiring their marriage service.

Tony’s suspected of being a Soviet operative, and an undercover agent posing as his perfect match could discover the truth. Despite her reluctance at being dragged back into the world of espionage, Iris agrees. After all, Tony was once a very good friend. If he’s innocent, she’ll happily prove it. If not? Well, no one ever said being a spy was easy . . . (more…)

Historical Romance Review: Mary Balogh’s REMEMBER THAT DAY

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A blonde, white couple sitting, in relaxed pose, on a green lawn, their heads tilted towards each other. They are dressed in casual white Regency clothes.

I haven’t enjoyed a Balogh romance this much since I read Balogh’s A Matter of Class. Remember That Day is not a slow-burn romance, but a slow-moving romance in which hero and heroine, in an interplay of encounters and internal musings, grow to love one another. If you’re looking for full-on excitement and plot-ish shenanigans, Balogh’s Remember That Day isn’t where you’ll find them. If you’re looking for a dawning realization of pleasurable, warm feelings with doubts and misgivings (as the hero and heroine learn about each other and establish trust), then you’re going to enjoy Remember That Day. After all, it doesn’t deviate from what Balogh has been doing since the 1980s: reaffirming the strangeness and wonder of falling in love, the stumbles of a lack of acquaintance (we’ve seen that since Austen, no?), and the mysteries of attraction and sexual union (though this is a love-scene-devoid romance, unusual for Balogh, or part of her late period? Haven’t read enough of her late work to say). To the blurb for some details:

Winifred Cunningham, the adopted daughter of a portrait painter, hopes that her new close friend, Owen Ware, will soon ask for her hand in marriage. But when Owen introduces Winifred to his elder brother Nicholas, the late Earl of Stratton’s second son, the slow burn between them begins.

Nicholas is a cavalry colonel—a hardened soldier whom Winifred at first despises. She finds him intimidating and cruel-looking, while he finds her strange and startlingly forthright. During a summer at Ravenswood, however, Nicholas and Winifred are unwillingly thrown together on several occasions, until they realize the passion that drives their disagreements is not due to dislike—it is because of attraction.

Winifred still awaits Owen’s proposal, and Nicholas has made his intention to marry his commanding officer’s daughter quite clear. With allegiances to other marriage prospects and brotherly bonds at risk, not to mention the age difference between them, Nicholas and Winifred know it would be wholly improper to pursue a romance…

And yet, romance is irresistible. Perhaps even inevitable.

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What I Learned During My Digital “Fast”

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My digital fast was more difficult than I’d imagined, which is an indication how addicted I am to my devices, especially because I could not go “cold turkey”. My work requires being on screen…the problem? I used my laptop to complete work tasks, check email, write reports, set up assignments, etc. but the LURE of the screen nabbed me every time and I “wandered off” into sites hitherto unknown and known. (more…)

Lenten Hiatus

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Dear Readers, 

Yesterday was the first day of Lent and I will be taking a screen-free retreat for the duration. I have been feeling blog-malaise and WP has made changes to the long-form writing options that make the platform cumbersome. My blog, no thanks again to WP, has been hit with thousands upon thousands of bizarre views that have nothing to do with human readers and more to do with bots and writing dredged for AI. Moreover, I don’t find in genre romance (genre is dissolving, I’d say) what I did ten years ago. I’ve changed. The genre has changed, to its detriment (please, stop with the first-person-present-tense narration, *flails hands*, etc). It’s time to take a screen-breather. In the meanwhile, thank you for reading, commenting, and the camaraderie and community you’ve always offered me.

Historical Crime Fiction Review: Philip Kerr’s MARCH VIOLETS (Bernie Gunther #1)

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A Kerr omnibus of the first three Bernie Gunther detective novels has been knocking around my apartment for years. Shame to say I’ve only started reading them now because Kerr’s 1936-Berlin-set mystery is fabulous…if you like your detectives hard-boiled, with a soft-belly core of, if not goodness, then integrity and moral boundaries. And femmes who are not fatale, intriguing and fully-fleshed instead. There’s even a bit of a cliff-hanger romance for our Bernie. More than anything, Kerr’s detective novel is historically and metaphorically rich, sharp, of equal parts bathos and pathos. To the publisher’s blurb for some details:

Winter, 1936. A man and his wife shot dead in their bed, their home burned. The woman’s father, a millionaire industrialist, wants justice – and the priceless diamonds that disappeared along with his daughter’s life. He turns to Bernhard Gunther, a private eye and former cop.

As Bernie follows the trail into the very heart of Nazi Germany, he’s forced to confront a horrifying conspiracy. A trail that ends in the hell that is Dachau . . .

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Jean Meltzer’s THE EIGHT HEARTBREAKS OF HANNUKAH and Recent and Not-so-Recent Reading

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Winter and work wallowing have left me without much reviewing energy. Add to that changes WordPress has made to ensure maximum frustration and it’s been a while. I finished Meltzer’s Eight Heartbreaks of Hannukah a few weeks ago, but didn’t do much by way of writing about it. What I can say is how much I enjoyed it. It was my first time reading Meltzer and I was pleasantly surprised at her writing energy and know-how, her great characterization and, most of all, her ability to write equal parts pathos and humour. I laughed out loud at Evelyn’s ghostly encounters and was delighted at Meltzer’s managing to write a Jewish “Christmas Carol”. Two wonderful characters, reunited husband and wife David and Evelyn, make their way back to each other after heartbreak and loss. And I loved that Meltzer’s narrative was unabashedly Jewish, in a religious sense, with a fascinating afterward on Judaism’s stance on marriage, miscarriage, and abortion. I don’t think much of what is coming from romance these days, but Meltzer is one I’d read again and you’ll want to add her to your TBR. (more…)