The owners of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are back, and more determined than ever to bring love matches to the residents of Post-WWII London . . . so something as trivial as a murder investigation isn’t going to stop them!
London, 1947. Spirited Miss Iris Sparks and ever-practical Mrs Gwendolyn Bainbridge are called to action when Gwen’s beau Salvatore ‘Sally’ Danielli is accused of murder!
Sally has taken a job at the BBC studios at Alexandra Palace, but when the beautiful Miss JeanneMarie Duplessis – one of the Parisian performers over for a new variety show – is found dead in the old theatre, a number of inconvenient coincidences make him Suspect No:1.
Just days earlier, Miss Duplessis had arrived at The Right Sort, desperately looking for a husband – any husband – to avoid having to return to Paris. As the plot thickens, Iris is pulled back into the clandestine circles she moved in during the war and it soon becomes apparent that to clear Sally’s name, she and Gwen would need to go on the hunt for a killer once more!
CW/TW – past suicide attempt
Dear Allison Montclair,
I liked this entry into the Sparks and Bainbridge series very much. In the past books, the focus has sometimes been on one partner more than the other but here, both Iris and Gwen are needed to solve what appears to be an unsolvable case.
The first sentence broke my heart. I can’t say that I was too surprised but yes, it hurt to learn this. Iris is now dealing with the fallout and at times not dealing with it well. Good thing that Gwen is her staunch friend. Gwen and Sally are getting closer, close enough to finally reveal some things about themselves that they usually hide from people. This is a lovely scene of two people who care about each other and trust each other enough to bare secrets. As Gwen says, she enjoys being wanted for more than her beauty.
A new client bursts into The Right Sort Marriage Bureau and perplexes both women but as they’re professionals, they set her up with a date. Things go sideways from there as a murdered woman is found and of course Mike Kinsey is the one to catch the case. The amount of possible suspects is high but the one the police have their sights on is someone whom neither Gwen nor Iris want to see arrested for a crime they know he wouldn’t have committed. However he himself admits that his motive is nil but his opportunities – in the eyes of the police – are vast.
Iris’s past, and what she’s not supposed to talk about, figure heavily in unraveling what’s going on. A new client – not the bursting one – is someone Iris knew during the war and he has a peculiar request for any woman he might be set up with. This detail also figures into what’s going on and brings in another person with information to add. The recent war is still casting a long shadow on those who survived it and there are many people who are free who ought, by all rights, to have faced justice for what they did. But things were often murky then and sometimes it’s not clear what side people were on.
The honors here belong to Iris and Gwen for solving the case but I also appreciated the fact that Mike and his fellow officers were thorough and thought through aspects of it that had not occurred to Gwen when she went to visit Mike and lay out her investigation so far. But then she realizes some things that cause her to dig a bit deeper into other things and talk to some people plus make a bet with Mike which he loses. Yes, I’m trying to be deliberately vague. As Iris keeps telling Gwen, Gwen might not have a college degree and might have been brought up to only be a decorative aristocrat but Gwen is far from dumb.
The case is a bit convoluted and there was an early scene that kept dragging for me although I realized that it was probably there for Reasons needed for the case. The villain’s confession was also a bit too easy though. I love that Gwen and Ronnie now have their own place and a household of devoted people to look after them as well as having John still be in Ronnie’s life. I also love that the characters and series keep building and expanding rather than just treading water and repeating. As this book has a degree of callbacks to things in previous ones, I think at this point new readers ought not start here. The penultimate scene is a doozy and promises all kinds of future shenanigans that Iris and Gwen can be caught up in. Plus the chance for more openness among some of the characters if they’re ready for it. I am definitely ready for the next book. B+
~Jayne
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Jayne
Another long time reader who read romance novels in her teens, then took a long break before started back again about 25 years ago. She enjoys historical romance/fiction best, likes contemporaries, action- adventure and mysteries, will read suspense if there’s no TSTL characters and is currently reading more fantasy and SciFi.
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