CBR15 Book 64: "Gods of Jade and Shadows" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Caseopea Tun is basically treated as a servant by her grandfather, cousin, and extended family because her mother ran away and made an ill-advised marriage. Caseopea suffers the indignities mainly because her tyrannical grandfather has promised to leave her some money once he dies. However, during another turbulent row with her spoiled cousin Martín, he reveals that their grandfather has no intention of leaving anything to Caseopea. She feels furious and rebellious, which leads to her opening the forbidden chest at the bottom of her grandfather's bed, hoping to possibly find some treasures she can steal. 

Instead, Caseopea finds a lot of old bones and having pricked her finger on one of them, they reassemble into a man, the embodiment of the Mayan death god Hun-Kamé. Apparently, Caseopea's grandfather aided the god's brother, Vucub-Kamé in imprisoning him, and he now needs to go on a quest to reclaim certain stolen body parts to regain his full power and battle his brother for dominance of the Mayan underworld. Caseopea has no choice but to accompany him, as a tiny bone shard is lodged inside her and she and Hun-Kamé are linked, and the god is siphoning life force from her. If they don't succeed within a reasonable time frame, Hun-Kamé will become fully human, and Caseopea will die.

This is set during the Jazz Age in Mexico, but apart from the occasional mentions of short skirts and flapper haircuts, it doesn't really come into the action all that much. Caseopea eventually gets a short haircut, but it's to clean up the remains of her hacked-off hair after Hun-Kamé required her hair to burn in a magic ritual to summon ghosts. Because of the historical setting, our protagonists travel by ship and train, rather than airplane, and obviously, this means they get to spend more time together in small quarters. 

Caseopea is an engaging heroine. She is clever and resourceful, and dreams of a life in the city away from her controlling relatives. Nonetheless, she's also pragmatic and while upset about the dangers her quest with Hun-Kamé exposes her to, possibly even ending in her own death, she accepts it as a consequence of her rather impulsive rebellion. Luxury and beautiful clothing are things that Caseopea has only been able to dream about. Hun-Kamé is a god and travels in style, and Caseopea, who has been a poor relation her whole life, enjoys the change in circumstances, knowing it might not last very long.

Hun-Kamé starts out as very imperious and distant, with little care for his companion, but as their quest progresses and he remains connected to Caseopea, he takes on more and more human aspects and even gains the ability to dream, something he claims no gods can do. His brother is convinced that this added humanity is the thing that will ensure his downfall, but in the end, he comes to love Caseopea and be loved in return, and that is one of the elements that eventually defeats Vucub-Kamé. 

The book has multiple POVs, and I understand why the author chose to tell the story like this, but also admit that I felt my interest waning every time the perspective changed to that of Martín, who is tasked by Vucub-Kamé to track down his cousin and try to persuade her to abandon Hun-Kamé, or the chapters where we follow Vucub-Kamé (although it gave some interesting insight into Xibalba, the Mayan underworld. 

This is the first novel I've read by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and while I didn't love it, I found it an entertaining read, where I learned more about mythology from another culture. I have many more of Moreno-Garcia's books on my TBR shelf and look forward to reading more of her stories in the future.

Judging a book by its cover: I think this is a lovely cover, and Ms. Moreno-Garcia always seems to luck out with her cover designers, because I'm hard-pressed to remember seeing a single bad cover for one of her books. This cover is absolutely one of the things that drew me to the book in the first place. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Book 50: "A Botanist's Guide to Parties and Poisons" by Kate Khavari

Page count: 365 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

CBR15 Bingo: Guide (it's right there in the title)

Official book description, because I'm still reviewing books I read in JULY):

London, 1923. Newly minted research assistant Saffron Everleigh attends a dinner party for the University College of London. While she expects to engage in conversations about the university's large expedition to the Amazon, she doesn’t expect Mrs. Henry, one of the professors’ wives to drop to the floor, poisoned by an unknown toxin.

Dr. Maxwell, Saffron’s mentor, is the main suspect, having had an explosive argument with Dr. Henry a few days prior. As evidence mounts against Dr. Maxwell and the expedition's departure draws nearer, Saffron realizes if she wants her mentor's name cleared, she’ll have to do it herself.

Joined by enigmatic Alexander Ashton, a fellow researcher, Saffron uses her knowledge of botany as she explores steamy greenhouses, dark gardens, and deadly poisons. Will she be able to uncover the truth or will her investigation land her on the murderer’s list?

While I'm no longer able to read a lot of mystery, because it know either squicks me out or just plain upsets me, I am still fond of historical mysteries with lady sleuths. The first book about the plucky Saffron Everleigh is set in the 1920s, a lovely change of time period from the Victorian-set mysteries I tend to default to. This means that our heroine is slightly less constrained than her Victorian counterparts, but she is still a woman working in a wholly male-dominated environment so mustn't try to advance too far, no matter how clever and capable she may be.

Saffron's father was a famous botanist and Dr. Maxwell, her mentor, was one of his close friends. So he treats Saffron kindly and fairly, and she's determined that he not go to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people at the party and a large majority of them would have access to the same greenhouses where the police suspect the poison was grown, so Saffron's search is not an easy one. She also has to try to conduct her investigations without arousing the suspicion of the real murderer or aggravating the police who are actually on the case. 

I'm always a fan of a romantic subplot and Alexander Ashton is an excellent love interest. Clever and capable in his own right, he's exasperated by Saffron's tendency to heedlessly throw herself into dangerous situations, yet doesn't seem to feel threatened by her intelligence and doesn't actually try to stop her, just figure out how he can best keep her from getting herself killed, which isn't always easy (although how can you not root for a woman who decides to test the suspected poison on herself to note down what the various side effects are?) This is the first book in the series, and whether I feel like reading more of this series really is determined a lot by whether Mr Ashton is going to feature in future books, because we didn't exactly get a lot of romance here, and I don't want to waste my time investing in handsome gentlemen if Saffron's going to have a new love interest in each new book. 

Judging a book by its cover: The title of the book is rather misleading, but I can see why the author/publisher was tempted by the alliteration. There is only the one party, where the crime takes place. There is however rather a lot about poisons. I like the medicine bottle and the plants, there is a lot of poking around greenhouses as part of the story. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 36: "Subtle Blood" by K.J. Charles

Page count: 290 pages

Rating: 5 stars

CBR14 Bingo: Scandal (the book features corruption, blackmail, kidnapping, and murder - not to mention gay people in the 1920s. Gasp!)

Spoiler warning! This is the third book in a trilogy. While you can absolutely read this book without the others, you will not get all the beautiful payoff from various earlier storylines that way. Also, this review will contain mild spoilers for earlier in the series. Start with Slippery Creatures. 

For the last few months, Lord Arthur "Kim" Secretan and Will Darling have actually been a couple, and nothing bad or dangerous has threatened them in any way. Kim has been helping Will get his bookshop in order, and seems to enjoy finding book treasures at estate sales, but it's clear that a part of him misses his cloak-and-dagger duties for the special service, and he still feels very guilty about how his engagement to Lady Phoebe dissolved. Obviously not because of anything romantic, but because revealing her father's crimes to the world and his subsequent death threw Phoebe's life into chaos. Off in Paris, launching Will's best friend Maisie's fashion line seems to be keeping her both happy and busy, though.

The peace was unlikely to last long, and when there's a brutal murder at Kim's former gentleman's club and it seems like Kim's older brother is the murderer, Kim feels obligated to try to clear his name. Kim would happily see his odious brute of an older brother hang, but if he dies, Kim would become his father's heir, and that's a fate so loathsome that he'd rather try to investigate and hopefully get his brother exonerated, even if it means having to spend time with his estranged brother and father. Obviously, the more time they spend among Kim's upper-class peers, the more out of place Will feels. Already insecure about their class differences, the murder investigation and its potential outcomes place a lot of strain on Kim and Will's relationship. Can they actually have a future together, when they come from such different worlds?

Obviously, in romances, there's supposed to be a HEA (happily ever after), yet because this is a trilogy, the previous two books in the series were more of a HFN (happy for now) conclusion. In this book, however, despite their increasingly challenging odds, Kim and Will actually get their happy ending. There's a lot of drama, intrigue, danger and near-death experiences before they get there though. 

Having now read the entire trilogy, I can fully admire how K.J. Charles has structured the story. In this final volume, so many of the plot strands left dangling are nicely tied off, and pretty much everything gets a satisfying conclusion eventually. Will obviously has no family left, his "family" such as it is consists of Kim and Maisie. Maisie is off in Paris becoming a famous fashion designer (but you can bet she and Lady Phoebe turn up when she hears of the difficulties Will and Kim are caught up in), but there have been ample hints about Kim's remaining family throughout the series. His younger brother obviously died on the battlefield during World War I, but his older brother Chingford is still very much alive and entirely oblivious to his privilege. In fact, he seems infuriated that anyone has dared accused him of a crime and has no intention of explaining himself or telling the truth about his connection to the dead man, making it seem even more likely that he's guilty. Kim's father is also an upper-class monster, although a smidge more sympathetic than his son and heir. It's very obvious why Kim has done his best to distance himself from them entirely. 

While there are a lot of uncertainties, at least on Will's side, about the future of their relationship, this book is also by far the most romantic of the trilogy. Will may be a bit intimidated by his feelings toward Kim, but the reverse is not the case. Kim loves Will and wants them to build a future together, which is why he needs to make sure he will never end up taking over his father's title and position. He may have been on the shifty and unreliable side earlier in the series, but in this story, he knows what he wants and he's not going to consider a life without Will. I was also very happy that while Maisie and Phoebe were off in France at the start of the book, they return and play a central part in the plot as well, as I love those ladies. If Charles wants to write a book about their future adventures, launching Maisie's career in Paris, I will happily buy and read the book.

I suspect, based on how much I loved this book, that I will enjoy the earlier book in the trilogy more as well. I've clearly been sleeping on Charles' authorship, despite having bought a bunch of them over the years. At least this means I can read more whenever I find the time. 

Judging a book by its cover: I keep getting distracted by the sideburns on the left-hand character, whom I assume is supposed to be Kim. Nice to see that the right-hand character, presumably Will, still has his trusty knife. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 21: "The Sugared Game" by K.J. Charles

Page count: 292 pages

Rating: 4 stars

 

CBR14 Bingo - Shadow (spies and all sorts of murky shenanigans throughout the story)

 

This is book two in a series, and it really doesn't work very well on its own. To start from the beginning, read Slippery Creatures first.

Will Darling has settled more comfortably into his role as a London bookseller but has seen nor heard anything from the mysterious Lord Arthur "Kim" Secretan for several months. He has done his best to forget all about the man and get on with his life, agreeing to take his dressmaker friend Maisie to a nightclub, to dance and drink and forget their troubles. At the club, Will encounters an old army mate, who now works as a waiter after returning from the war. He reveals that not everything is above board at the club, and Will's observations while he's there only confirm the impression. 

It's only after his visit that Kim suddenly appears in his bookshop again, claiming to have stayed away from Will to protect him, but now needing his help to unravel and unmask yet another dangerous conspiracy. Part of Will wants to tell the handsome aristocrat to go to the devil and take his spy plots with him, but another part is pretty thoroughly smitten with both Kim Secretan and the perilous lifestyle he leads, so of course, he agrees to help, keeping the full truth of the investigation from Maisie and Lady Phoebe (Kim's fiancee), at least until the two women find themselves inextricably threatened by sinister forces.

Will is naturally very exasperated and a bit sick of Kim's proclivity for secrecy and double-dealing, but quietly running a bookstore and being a respectable citizen who doesn't end up in fights and break into places in the dead of night is also pretty boring, so when Kim comes knocking, it doesn't take long for Will to agree to help him once more. He has a lot less patience with Kim's secrecy this time around, but once the full truth of the matters Kim has been hiding is revealed, Will can understand why the man has been keeping his card extremely close to his chest, and why he's been worried about endangering others by sharing the secret. 

In Kim's absence, Will's friendship with both Maisie and Lady Phoebe has also further developed and he's come to be very fond of both women, as well as feel deeply protective of them. He thinks it's wonderful that Phoebe wants to go into business with Maisie and give her a chance to take her eye for couture to Paris, yet also worries that interacting too much with the wealthier classes will end in disappointment for his friend. As it happens, the secrets that Kim's keeping this time around very much have a chance to ruin not only Maisie and Phoebe's business plans, but could end up with one or both of them in lethal danger. 

While I found the pacing of this second book somewhat more uneven than that of the first and, like Will, had less patience for Kim's shifty behaviour, in the final third of the book, when everything is revealed (and you understand what Kim has been forced to keep entirely secret, not able to burden anyone with the terrible knowledge he holds) and there's a thrilling race to see how things are going to turn out, I was on the edge of my seat, so to speak, and very excited to see how everything would play out. The actual ending is bittersweet but very realistic. I'm decided a little bit to read the final volume of the series, mainly because I don't want to be done with these characters just yet. However, having now remembered how much I enjoyed the story when writing this review, I suspect book 3 will be moving swiftly to the top of my TBR list. 

Judging a book by its cover: This cover doesn't have me imagining that one of the characters is in a wheelchair, so that's a step up. I like the men in profile, and I very much like the silhouettes of the women at the centre (I'm assuming they're meant to be Maisie and Lady Phoebe). The art deco details are still excellent. Mainly, I find myself annoyed by the huge sideburns on our dude to the right (Will?) Can't tell you why, I just don't like them. 

 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.  

CBR14 Book 18: "Slippery Creatures" by K.J. Charles

Page count: 264 pages

Rating: 4 stars

 

CBR14 Bingo: Snake (SPOILER: being a thoroughly disreputable sort, Kim also turns out to betray Will at least once during the story)

Will Darling has inherited his late uncle's bookshop and is grateful for the fact. After serving in World War I, most of his skills involve killing swiftly and efficiently, not really a commodity on the post-war job markets back in England. Now he just needs to get some idea of all the books actually in the shop and get on with being a bookseller. Then some very shifty people show up and demand that Will give them information, or very bad things might start happening. Will has no idea what information they want, and he certainly doesn't react well to threats.

The thuggish criminals are followed by officious men from the war office, claiming that Will is in possession of secret information and that he'd do well to pass it on to them. Even if he knew what they were talking about, Will isn't in the mood to just be ordered about - it's peacetime now, and he's done being the obedient soldier. He's puzzled by the threats and demands and sets about going through his uncle's very disordered correspondence to find some clues. He also befriends the charming and handsome Kim Secretan, who offers to help with the search for the mysterious and likely dangerous information. 

As Will and Kim grow closer, it becomes obvious that Kim is more than he seems at first, not to mention that there is a mutual attraction between them. Their search for answers uncovers secrets that could mean very real danger for tens of thousands of people, and Will is determined to keep it out of the hands of the criminals. Will's friendship with occasional benefits with Kim comes to a halt as he discovers that the attractive man has betrayed him. He wants nothing more to do with the man, but might not have a choice when he finds himself chloroformed and abducted to a remote house in the country. 

I've seen so many positive write-ups of K.J. Charles' Will Darling Adventures and this summer, I was determined to finally get through the series. Slippery Creatures is the first in a trilogy, with the working class Will Darling as one of our protagonists and the aristocratic Kim Secretan (what a great name for a man who's so full of secrets) as the second. There is a developing romance, secrets, organised crime, violent thugs, officious government agents, any number of dusty books that might hide vital information, kidnapping, loyal supporting characters and more. 

I really liked that Charles has set her books in the post World War I-era, not a time period where you find as many historical romances or mysteries. Will is rather adrift after serving on the battlefields in France for four years, and finding his feet in the new post-war world would be challenging for anyone, even if there weren't sinister thugs and government types badgering you for information you're not even sure exists, or if it does, where in the thousands of books in your store it may be hidden. It's no wonder he turns to the genial, charming, handsome and very helpful Kim, who of course has his own agenda.

I really like both Will and Kim as characters, for all that Kim is a bit of a snake. I love Maisie, Will's seamstress friend from Wales, and lady Phoebe, Kim's bubbly and incredibly friendly fiancee. This was a fast-paced and exciting book, with a very promising developing romance. There is no HEA or even really a HFN, but since this is the first of a trilogy, I wasn't really expecting it. I'm sure that all will be resolved by the end of book three.

Judging a book by its cover: I'm really sure if it's just me, but every time I look at this, even thought I know that Will is just sitting on a regular chair, my brain insists, just for a fraction of a second, as seeing it as a wheelchair. Which is a bit odd, no? I think it's because of the dagger, the metal of it makes me want to think it's a wheel. Apart from that, cracking cover design. 

 

Crossposted by Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Book 73: "The Diviners" by Libba Bray

Page count: 578 pages

Audio book length: 18 hrs 14 mins

Rating: 4 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: The Roaring 20s

17-year-old Evangeline "Evie" O'Neill can sense people's secrets if she holds a personal object belonging to them and concentrates hard on it. She becomes decidedly unpopular in her home town when she gets drunk at a party and reveals that one of the town's golden boys knocked up a hotel maid and paid her to have the problem "dealt with". He accuses her of slander and threatens to sue her family. Evie can't very well reveal how she knows the details of the story and isn't exactly unhappy when her parents send her to stay with her bachelor uncle in New York City anyway. Evie dreams of going to parties, seeing shows, and gossipping with her best friend Mabel, daughter of radical socialists, who live in the same building as Evie's uncle Will. 

Before Evie even makes it to the museum that her uncle Will runs, she's been kissed and pick-pocketed by the roguish Sam Lloyd at Grand Central Station. At the museum, she's introduced to Jericho Jones, the tall and deadly serious young man that her uncle has taken under his wing (and who Mabel has a massive crush on). While Jericho seems just as scholarly and stick-in-the-mud as Evie's uncle, he has secrets of his own. Mabel and Evie also befriend Theta Knight, a glamorous Ziegfeld girl, and her "brother" Henry, a talented piano player who live in the same building as them. Important to the story is also Memphis Campbell, who used to have the gift of healing, until his mother was dying.

All of these young people from different social backgrounds and locations in the US meet up over the course of the story, as a comet is about to travel over New York City and a series of gruesome murders with occult connections catch the attention of reporters. The police ask Evie's uncle Will to consult, but it's not until Evie's party life style threatens to have her sent back home that she reveals her psychic powers and how she's able to read objects at the murder scenes (and feel a connection to the creepy murderer). 

This is a big book, with a lot of different point of view characters. It seems impeccably researched, with so many details about city life in the 1920s, complete with period slang (which got a bit confusing at times). January LaVoy, who narrates the book, did an excellent job differentiating between the large cast of characters of both genders. I've heard her narrate quite a few books now, and I really like her.

While I can see that Evie possibly can get on some people's nerves as a protagonist, there really is such a wide variety of significant characters set up in this book that everyone should be able to find someone to identify with. I think I was a lot more sympathetic to Mabel, the shy and bookish best friend rather than with the vivacious party girl Evie - but pretty much everyone in the large cast is well-drawn and interesting in their own right. Obviously, I don't think Evie appreciates a good museum enough (I would love to have access to the museum "of creepy crawlies" that uncle Will manages). 

As far as I'm aware, this is the first of four books of historical fantasy, setting up the various pretty young things we encounter in this book as "The Diviners" of the series title. Evie, Sam, Jericho, Theta, Henry, Memphis, and his younger brother all have unusual abilities of some kind. While the murderer is unmasked and stopped by the end of the story, it's made very clear that the looming evil that is awakening is not vanquished for good and Evie's adventures in the Big Apple are clearly just beginning by the end of this book.

This book has been on my TBR list almost since it came out, but I kept putting off reading it since I knew there would be more books in the series. It's now been completed, and based on the first book, I will absolutely be checking out more installments. I just need to summon up the energy for lengthy books with a fair amount of peril and grisly murders, which I'm not necessarily now. 

Judging a book by its cover: This book has been out since 2012, and as a result, has a number of covers by now, most of them in some shade of purple. This is the cover on my e-book copy, where you see the silhouettes of some of the prominent characters, as well as some background images of 1920s New York, where the book is set. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR10 Book 6: "Speak Easy, Speak Love" by McKelle George

Page count: 432 pages
Rating: 4 stars

From Goodreads, because I'm lazy, and it sums up the book nicely:

Six teenagers' lives intertwine during one thrilling summer full of romantic misunderstandings and dangerous deals in this sparkling retelling of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

After she is kicked out of boarding-school, seventeen-year-old Beatrice goes to her uncle's estate in Long Island. But Hey Nonny Nonny is more than just a rundown old mansion. Beatrice's cousin, Hero, runs a struggling speakeasy out of the basement - one that might not survive the summer. 

Along with Prince, a poor young man determined to prove his worth; his brother, John, a dark and dangerous agent of the local mob; Benedick, a handsome trust-fund kid trying to become a writer; and Maggie, a beautiful and talented singer; Beatrice and Hero throw all their efforts into planning a massive party to save the speakeasy. Despite all their worries, the summer is beautiful, love is in the air and Beatrice and Benedick are caught up in a romantic battle of wits that their friends may be quietly orchestrating in the background.

Hilariously clever and utterly charming, McKelle George's debut novel is full of intrigue and 1920s charm. 

In the end notes of this novel, McKelle George refers to Much Ado About Nothing as Shakespeare's most romantic play. I don't think she's wrong, and despite Hero being rather a drip in the play (and the way her storyline resolves isn't really romantic at all - she should have told Claudio where to stuff it), but the banter between Beatrice and Benedick is solid gold and one of the best examples of enemies to lovers I can think of. Back in December 2016, I read a modern YA adaptation of the play, The Only Thing Worse Than Me is You, which I liked a lot. When I saw this reviewed on Forever Young Adult, I was intrigued (1920s America is a time period I really don't know all that much about). What I can tell you (having read the end notes and seen the bibliography at the back of the book), Ms George seems to have really done her research before writing the novel.

The Lily Anderson modern adaptation was obviously a lot more loosely based on the play. Here, every chapter heading is taken from the play, and despite being set in a very different time period than the original, with a much more diverse cast, Speak Easy, Speak Love really does follow the major beats of the play very faithfully. In the original, it's clear that Beatrice and Benedick have a long history of bickering, here they meet for the first time towards the beginning of the novel. Beatrice wants to become a doctor, but money troubles has made it impossible for to complete her schooling. She cannot understand how Benedick can skip out on his final exams and blithely ignore his graduation, throwing away the privilege and opportunity he has because of his dreams of becoming a writer.

Margaret, or Maggie, is not Hero's faithful servant here, but an ambitious young black woman who dreams of becoming a jazz singer. In the play, John is pretty much an irredeemable villain, trying to ruin everything for everyone else for no particularly good reason (as far as the audience is told). Ms George has made him a much more complex character, although his motivations and the reasons for many of his actions are only gradually revealed, but his rivalry with his brother is a lot more nuanced and he's a lot more than just a stock bootlegging mob member. The author even finds a creative way to incorporate Dogberry and Verges, the rather silly comic relief characters in a believable way, which I was rather impressed with.

As I said, the whole "Hero is ruined" story strand of the original play is not one I'm overly fond of, so I was very interested in seeing how Ms. George was going to deal with it. In Lily Anderson's book, the "Hero" character is accused of cheating and temporarily expelled from her fancy prep school. In this book, I really liked the slightly convoluted way it came about that she was accused of faithlessness, and temporarily abandoned by some of her supporters, but even better how she is eventually and much more believably redeemed (no faked deaths here).

This is McKelle George's debut novel and I think she did a really good job with it. I'm absolutely going to keep an eye out for whatever she decides to write next.

Judging a book by its cover: While I'm not entirely sure why the stylised silhouettes dissolve into artful swirls of smoke below thigh level, I generally really like this cover. It's got an art deco feel that suits the Jazz Age/Prohibition/swinging 1920s era the book is set in. I'm not sure which of the characters the silhouettes are supposed to portray (there are three main romantic couples in this book, after all), but I can't imagine that pragmatic tomboy Beatrice would ever wear such an elaborate flowery headdress as the female cover model. Now if she was in overalls, maybe.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 114: "The Man in the Brown Suit" by Agatha Christie

Page count: 288 pages
Audio book length: 7hrs 59 mins
Rating: 5 stars

Anne Beddingfeld's father is a famous archaeologist and anthropologist. He dies, leaving Anne mostly penniless, but hungry for adventure. She kindly rejects the proposal of the village doctor and accepts her father's solicitor's invitation to stay with him and his wife for a time in London. Shortly after her arrival in the capital, she is witness to an accidental death. A man in a large overcoat reeking of mothballs falls onto the tracks of the train station, and a tall, bearded man claiming to be a doctor examines the body. The bearded man in the brown suit loses a scrap of paper, which also reeks of mothballs. Could he have been searching the dead body? The paper reads "17 122 Kilmorden Castle" - what could it mean?

The newspapers discover a connection with the dead man on the train tracks and a young woman murdered in the house of Sir Eustace Pedler. Not only that, but the man in the brown suit who Anne witnessed is the main suspect for the woman's murder. Then Anne discovers that the Kilmorden Castle is a cruise ship, sailing to South Africa. A first class ticket costs exactly the amount of money she was left after her father's debts were paid off, and Anne sees this as a clear sign that adventure is calling. With cheek and audacity, she gets the owner of the main newspaper hunting for "The Man in the Brown Suit" to agree to hire her on as a freelance reporter if she tracks down more information connected with the crime.

On the ship, the adventurous, but nearly penniless Anne befriends society beauty Susanne Blair and earns the admiration of both Sir Eustace Pedler, on his way to South Africa on a task for the Foreign Office and Colonel Race, a tall and striking gentleman rumoured to be working for the Secret Service. Among the travellers are also the suspiciously untanned Reverend Chichester, who claims to have been working in the depths of Borneo for years; Guy Pagett, Sir Eustace's secretary and Harry Raybourn, a mysterious young man who stumbles into Anne's cabin one night, having been stabbed by unknown assailants in the hallway. Sir Eustace claims the handsome young man is his other secretary, but Anne deduces that he is none other than the infamous "Man in the Brown Suit". After her brief evening encounter with him, she's convinced he didn't kill the woman in England, and becomes determined to clear his name.

The Man in the Brown Suit, along with They Came to Baghdad and Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (the first Christie I ever read), is probably my favourite Agatha Christie book, a fact my BFF Lydia knew very well. So trying to cheer me up when I was unable to read physical books while concussed, she sent me this as an audio book, bundled (really rather strangely) with the eighth Miss Marple mystery, 4:50 from Paddington. I hadn't realised, until I looked it up on Wikipedia to remind myself of the name of some of the secondary characters, that this was only Ms. Christie's fourth novel, which makes it even more of an impressive achievement. Apart from some very clunky info-dumping in the prologue, when two criminal henchmen sit around discussing the many nefarious acts of their employer, the shadowy "Colonel", in a way that no people ever would talk about a person they worked for, this book is a fun thrill-ride from start to finish.

There is Anne, the self-proclaimed adventuress, who loves "The Perils of Pamela" and wants to fall in love with someone strong, silent and dashing. Full of pluck and determination, she throws caution to the wind and travels to South Africa in search of a murderer, with barely a penny in her pocket, just convinced that it'll all work itself out somehow. Some might find her callous disregard for practicalities annoying, but I find her delightful and she's not wrong, things keep turning out in her favour, even if she keeps ending up in near-death situations.

This story has murder; stolen diamonds: abductions; dastardly henchmen; a cunning underworld kingpin; a dashing, wronged and emotionally vulnerable love interest and more. I like any Christie with a romantic subplot and my only gripe with the book is that Emilia Fox, who mostly does an excellent job with narrating, gave Harry Raybourn, our haunted love interest, a voice so dark and gravelly that it mostly reminded me of Christian Bale doing Batman-growling. See, Christian Bale's normal voice - lovely, luscious and sexy as heck. Christian Bale's Batman-growling - just not hot. Which is a shame, cause Harry Raybourn should be passionate and appealing. It didn't detract too much from my enjoyment, but means I can't rate the narration of the audiobook as highly as I'd like.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 38: "Night of a Thousand Stars" by Deanna Raybourn

Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

Penelope "Poppy" Hammond flees her high society wedding with the aid of a charming curate calling himself Sebastian Cantrip and persuades him to drive her to the little village in Devon where her estranged father lives. Poppy's mother, wealthy American stepfather and a large amount of the wedding guests, including Poppy's jilted fiancee follow, up in arms about the scandal she's caused. Poppy's mind is not to be changed, however, she knows she and Gerald are a poor match and that life as a future Viscountess is going to bore her socks off.

Poppy's father, the eccentric painter Plum March, allows her to stay with him in his cottage until she makes up her mind about what she wants for her future. After about a month of cooling her heels and pondering her future, Poppy ventures back into London to thank the kind Mr. Cantrip, and discovers that he has disappeared without a trace. She's worried he is in danger, and determines to find him and aid him. Accompanied by her formidable ladies' maid, Masterman, Poppy is able to secure a position as secretary to an old colonel travelling to Damascus, where she's pretty sure Sebastian has gone. Once they get there, it is clear that Sebastian (whose name isn't Cantrip at all) is absolutely involved in some dangerous activities, and before Poppy knows it, she's fleeing ruthless, hunting an ancient treasure in the desert and feeling more alive than she ever dreamed.

Night of a Thousand Stars is set in the 1920s and is very loosely connected to Deanna Raybourn's Lady Julia Grey books. Poppy is the daughter of Eglamour "Plum" March, one of Julia's brothers (who appears as a supporting character in at least one of her novels. As a long time reader of those books, I found it a very amusing conceit that the Victorian mysteries actually appear here as Lady Julia's journals, which Poppy read over the course of the novel. It was fun to discover a little bit about what happens to Julia and Brisbane after the end of their own series, and delightful to see what the new generations of Marches are getting up to.

Poppy, who fairly early on in the novel, starts using her father's name again, never really fit into the mould her proper and ambitious mother wanted to shape her into. While she's fond of her American stepfather and her half-siblings, she's always felt like the odd one out and once she reunites with her father, he doesn't seem the slightest bit surprised, as the Marches never do what society expects them to. He encourages rather than tries to dampen her eccentricities and fully supports her need to find adventure. When she discovers that the dashing Sebastian has disappeared on an unspecified journey to the Holy Land in a hurry, she is convinced he must be in trouble. She gains passage on a ship, accompanying the charming old Colonel Archainbaud as his secretary, fending off the advances of his handsome valet, Hugh Talbot, during the journey. In Damascus, she also attracts the attention of a French comte, without being very impressed with either man.

It's not surprising that several men in the story find Poppy so attractive, although it also becomes clear that some of them are trying to charm her due to more nefarious reasons. She's brave, resourceful, rather stubborn at times and very loyal to her friends. While she only met Sebastian briefly, he did help her out of a very awkward situation and even allowed himself to be punched by her fiancee. She's convinced he is in danger, and wants to help him, even though it's unclear exactly what, except perhaps her wits, she would use in such a rescue operation. Despite several warnings in Damascus that she may be in danger, she doggedly refuses to leave, and when she's finally united with Sebastian again, he is almost unrecognisable as the quiet English curate, disguised as a native Bedouin warrior. She discovers that Sebastian was involved in espionage during the war, spent some time in a Turkish prison and certainly didn't need an impulsive young society woman to rescue him from anything.

The two of them flee murder charges, trying to locate a treasure hoard in the desert before the murderous villains who framed them find it. Disguised as Sebastian's wife, Poppy is intrigued by how different he is from the man she'd first imagined. Even though all evidence points to the contrary, Poppy keeps underestimating Sebastian, thinking he's just as in over his head as she is. It isn't until the very end of their eventful desert adventure that she discovers just how wrong she's been, and discovers the truth not just about him, but about how she came to be on the journey in the first place.

This book was an utter delight to read, and in many ways reminded me of some of my favourite Agatha Christie novels, where there is always a romantic subplot as well as the murder mystery. Books like The Man in the Brown Suit, Why Didn't They Ask Evans? and They Came to Baghdad. Also the early Amelia Peabody mysteries by Elizabeth Peters, like Crocodile on the Sandbank. While the romance is slow burning, I'm not spoiling anything when I reveal that Poppy and Sebastian are clearly made for each other. They have tremendous banter all the way through the book and there is a very good reason why Sebastian refuses to act on his attraction to Poppy. The romance has a very satisfying ending eventually, but I am deducting half a star, as I would have loved some more action between Poppy and Sebastian over the course of the book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.