AN EXCELLENT THING IN A WOMAN

A wartime betrayal provides the solution to a 1947 murder.

Iris Sparks—who’s coping with the death of her lover, Archie, by drinking all the wine he left behind—has moved to a small canal boat and is back to working full-time at The Right Sort, a matrimonial bureau she owns with her best friend, war widow Gwen Bainbridge. Gwen’s just begun a relationship with Salvatore Danielli, who works at the BBC and has known Iris since their days at Cambridge. Sally and Gwen are both deeply concerned about Iris. The Right Sort’s newest customer is Laurence Haight, Sally’s BBC colleague, who knew Iris during the war; both of them, along with Sally, had to sign the Official Secrets Act forbidding them to talk about their wartime activities. As a radio man, Laurence wants to meet someone with a melliferous voice. When Frenchwoman Jeanne-Marie Duplessis, who needs to be married by next Sunday, says she’ll take anyone, the partners reluctantly agree to look for a match for her. Then, during a visit to the BBC that Sally arranged for Iris, Gwen, her son, and a friend to watch rehearsals for a new puppet show, a few sentences spoken by the puppeteer in German strike a chord with Laurence, causing him to pull Iris aside and ask her to meet him later to discuss it. Turns out he recognizes the voice of the puppeteer as that of a German who murdered one of the agents he monitored during the war. When Sally and his guests make a stop at a theater owned by the BBC, they find Jeanne-Marie Duplessis’ dead body near a collection of props. The man in charge of the case, DS Mike Kinsey, Iris’ former fiance, suspects Sally. In order to solve the murder and exonerate Sally, Iris must return to her wartime days and uncover clandestine information.

A riveting, fast-paced mystery full of wartime secrets, romance, and psychological trauma.