A frothy retro cocktail with a whodunit chaser.
A carefree cadre of Australian artists probe a shocking murder in war-torn 1935 Shanghai.
Despite his status as the family’s renegade, suave Sydney artist Rowland Sinclair is tapped by his starchy elder brother, Wilfred, to go to Shanghai to handle international wool negotiations for Sinclair Holdings. Intrigued by the city’s vibrancy and turmoil, Rowland’s friends—poet Milton Isaacs, artist Clyde Watson Jones, and sculptress and model Edna Higgins—accompany him and take up residence in the posh Cathay Hotel. Gentill opens each chapter with a short news item from the time, adding welcome context to the story by describing the dangerous encroachment of Japan, the threat of Communism, and the influx of Russian refugee women and German Jews, weaving each development into the story. Making lively banter and diving into local culture are high on the visitors’ agenda. On a night out at The Jazz Club, Rowland dances twice with beautiful Russian Alexandra Romanova, and they make a date for tea the following afternoon. The next day, he’s horrified to discover Alexandra’s corpse in his suite. Grim Inspector Randolph regards him as the prime suspect. Rowland's peril, coupled with the deep grief of Alexandra’s brother, Sergei, prompts the party to investigate, leading to even more elaborate explorations of Shanghai. A subplot that should delight series fans brings Rowland and Edna within a whisker of progressing from the friendship zone to unabashed romance.
A frothy retro cocktail with a whodunit chaser.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4642-1361-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
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Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Demands a careful reading and knowledge of the Victorian lady detective’s history.
A mystery that unwinds in reverse adds new twists to Thomas’ Sherlock Holmes–inspired series.
The new Charlotte Holmes novel continues the tense chess game that the gender-flipped Sherlock is playing with Moriarty and an incarcerated acquaintance turned villain. The events are narrated as a series of flashbacks interspersed with an interrogation in which Charlotte is under suspicion of murder. While her friend Inspector Treadles nervously observes, a senior policeman grills the unflappable detective about her recent movements. Even as she gives him a bland account of why she’s crisscrossed the English Channel in recent weeks, readers get drips of information about what she and her family and friends have been up to, all building to a reveal. Two other seemingly unrelated mystery subplots enter the picture, but it’s evident that new events and characters are connected to familiar ones from the past. With allusions to previous novels in the Lady Sherlock series and hat tips to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem” and the Guy Ritchie movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the plot can be hard to follow, especially for new readers. The consistently well-drawn characters serve as an anchor, and the occasional glimpse of Charlotte’s love for her family and her lover, Lord Ingram Ashburton, adds a needed touch of warmth to the clever but clinical jigsaw structure of the mystery.
Demands a careful reading and knowledge of the Victorian lady detective’s history.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780593640432
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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