Tag: WWII-Set

Review: James Kestrel’s FIVE DECEMBERS

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Five_DecembersWhen I saw Kestrel’s Five Decembers won the Edgar for best novel, I wanted to read it. On a whim I requested it on Edelweiss+ and I don’t know what gods are “for my unconquerable [reading] soul,” but Hard Case Crime was kind enough to grant my request. I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to read such a great novel. It kept me glued to the page and surprised me by making narrative about-turns I never anticipated. It had depth and sweep and the blurb, quoted below, doesn’t encompass it, but it’s a start:

December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever. Because the trail of murder he uncovers will lead him across the Pacific, far from home and the woman he loves; and though the U.S. doesn’t know it yet, a Japanese fleet is already steaming toward Pearl Harbor.

To start, Five Decembers is symphonic in narrative structure, with hero Joe McGrady, like Odysseus, trying to make his way home; it has four distinct yet concentrically interconnected movements. Unlike Homer’s hero, however, Circe’s cave is a transformative interlude of peace and love where Penelope and Circe merge and become one. History precedes it, encroaches on it, and history ends it, but while it lasts, it turns Joe McGrady from hard-boiled detective to a man stripped of everything except his word and honour. (more…)

MINI-REVIEW: Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White’s ALL THE WAYS WE SAID GOODBYE

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All_Ways_We_Said_GoodbyeI love these three authors and looked forward to reading their joint effort, All the Ways We Said Goodbye. While I enjoyed the multi-narrative-threaded novel, I prefer the Co. of Williams, Willig, & White seule over ensemble. There was so much here and not quite enough; the novel’s last quarter was stronger than its first half. Overall, a mixed-bag with a mixed response from me: bits I loved, characters I adored, and, in the best lingo from The Great British Bake-Off, a soggy middle (okay, “bottom” for them, but you get my drift).

All the Ways We Said Goodbye is ambitious, I’ll give it that. Three women, three stories, intertwined by war, betrayal, passion, love, and honour, the male protagonists following likewise in their wake. One narrative follows WWI-set Aurélie de Courcelles, the Demoiselle, whose family heirloom/talisman is a cloth seeped in the blood of Ste. Jeanne d’Arc. Aurélie leaves her mother ensconced at the Paris Ritz and makes her way to the ancestral home, now behind enemy lines. She carries the talisman with her, legendary because as long the Demoiselle holds it, France cannot fall. Given that most of the Great War was fought on French soil, a symbol of French hope and pride. Aurélie finds her home occupied by some nasty German officers. She machinates to protect her people and finds herself embroiled with one kind, handsome German officer …
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REVIEW: Tessa Arlen’s POPPY REDFERN AND THE MIDNIGHT MURDERS

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Poppy_Redfern_Midnight_MurdersI have droned on and on, to your great boredom, about how I love romance and how my second love is the mystery-romance-historical combo, like Deanna Raybourn, or Susanna Kearsley, C. S. Harris, Jennifer Ashley … *sobs* and the no-longer-writing-new-Renegades-of-the-Revolution Donna Thorland. Let’s face it, I love the hybrids as much as I love romance, so let’s let that second love thing die. Now, with Tessa Arlen’s first in A Woman of WWII series, I’m adding another much-anticipated series to the beloved list. Given the stay-at-home state of things, Arlen’s Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders made for the perfect comfort read: with a Christie-Foyle’s-War-inspired English village + eccentrics setting and intrepid, engaging, loveable heroine, the eponymous Poppy, a too-charming-for-his-and-Poppy’s-own-good American Army Air Force hero …  and no less than a Midsommer Murders corps of village-body-count! While I toiled away at WFH and dabbed lipstick for Zoom meetings, I enjoyed, in the time-interstices, my reading of Poppy, her American hero, and their joint sleuthing. (more…)