Category: Reviews

Britain’s Greatest Private Detective by Nell Darby

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As someone who enjoys detective novels, I was naturally drawn to this non-fiction book about a real life private detective who achieved fame and success in the late Victorian era. His name (at least the one by which he was best known) was Henry Slater and he was the owner of Britain’s leading detective agency. This new book by Nell Darby explores Henry Slater’s life and career and looks at the world of the early private detective in general – the backgrounds they came from, the type of cases they dealt with, the methods they used and the problems that could arise from those methods.

The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 is one of the key factors that gave rise to the private detective in the second half of the 19th century. This made it possible for people to request a divorce through the law courts (rather than through a private Act of Parliament as previously) as long as they could prove their spouse had committed adultery. Women would also need to prove one other offence, such as desertion or cruelty. But how could people obtain evidence to show that their partner had been unfaithful? By employing a private detective, of course, and asking them to shadow their husband or wife and look for proof of infidelities. And what do you think happened if the detective couldn’t find any proof – and their client was paying them to deliver results?

Slater’s Detective Agency, who operated from offices in London’s Basinghall Street, advertised all sorts of detective work, but most of their business relied on divorce cases. It was one case in particular that brought about their downfall. Having been hired on behalf of a Mrs Kate Pollard to help her divorce her husband, the agency resorted to underhand methods to get the evidence they needed and were betrayed by a former employee with a personal grudge against Henry Slater. This led to a trial which damaged Slater’s business and exposed his true identity. The Pollard case and the trial which followed form a large part of the book, although Darby moves back and forth between that story, a personal biography of Henry Slater himself and a general history of private detective agencies.

This is a fascinating book and has clearly been very well researched (there’s a long bibliography and an extensive section of notes), but it wasn’t quite what I expected. I thought there would be details of more of Slater’s cases than just the Pollard one and more discussion of the other types of work the agency carried out as well as divorces, but maybe there just wasn’t enough information available to do that. I can’t agree with other reviews saying the book reads like a detective novel as there’s very little actual ‘detecting’ being done and certainly not much similarity between Henry Slater and Sherlock Holmes, whose adventures were appearing in print during the same period that Slater was operating. The jumping around from one topic to another also disrupts the flow of the book and meant I couldn’t become as immersed in it as I would have liked.

Still, I enjoyed learning about Henry Slater and how he established his agency, how he found work first through advertising and then through the strength of his fame and reputation, and how he faced challenges from rival companies. It seems that although Slater can be admired for what he achieved in building his business up from nothing and reaching the very top in his chosen profession, he was less skilled in handling his personal relationships with friends and employees – and this, together with his determination to keep his perfect record in winning divorce cases, is what led to his demise.

I was intrigued by the occasional mentions of the women detectives Slater employed, particularly the ones described as ‘cyclist detectives’ who followed their suspects by bicycle. I’ve discovered that Nell Darby has written another book, Sister Sleuths: Female Detectives in Britain, which sounds like a good companion to this one and I’m sure it would be an interesting read as well.

Thanks to Pen & Sword for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer

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I loved this! I remember enjoying Belinda Bauer’s first two books, Blacklands and Darkside, around the time they were published in 2009 and 2011 respectively, but I seemed to lose track of her work after that. When this one caught my eye, I decided to give it a try and I’m very pleased that I did. The plot is completely different from any other crime novel I’ve read.

The Impossible Thing is a novel set in two different periods almost one hundred years apart and linked by the same crime – the theft and illegal trading of wild birds’ eggs. In 1926, gangs of ‘egg-climmers’ gather on the Yorkshire coast and lower each other from ropes over the cliffs to steal eggs from the seabirds nesting there. Traders and collectors are willing to hand over large sums of money for the most rare and beautiful eggs, so when little Celie Sheppard from Metland Farm makes the dangerous descent through a crack in a ledge of rock and obtains a perfect red guillemot egg, it creates a sensation.

In the present day, in rural Wales, Patrick Fort decides to visit his friend, Nick, and arrives just in time to discover that both Nick and his mother have been tied up and robbed. The only thing stolen is an old wooden box containing a red egg. Nick had found the egg in the attic and put it on eBay, only for it to be taken down almost immediately for breaching eBay’s policy on selling illegal items. It seems that, even in the short space of time it was advertised, someone saw it, tracked it down to Nick’s address and decided they must have it no matter what. Although Nick had no idea that owning birds’ eggs was illegal, he is afraid to admit to the police that he had one, so he and Patrick set out to find the thief themselves.

This is definitely the first book I’ve read about egg trafficking! It’s an unusual subject for a crime novel, but Bauer builds a story around it that I found completely fascinating and unexpectedly exciting. I assumed that everything in the book was fictional, so I was interested to learn that the red Metland Egg really existed – or to be more accurate, Metland Eggs, as one was collected every year for over twenty years from the same location on the Bempton Cliffs near Bridlington. Something I learned from the novel is that female guillemots lay only one egg a year and if it is stolen, they will return to the same spot the following year to lay an almost identical egg. It made me feel sad to think of the bird that laid the red eggs never actually getting to see one hatch and I’m so glad that the Protection of Birds Act 1954 made egg theft illegal in the UK – even though it hasn’t stopped it completely, it’s a big step in the right direction.

Patrick Fort, the main character in the present day sections of the novel, was apparently introduced in a previous Belinda Bauer novel, Rubbernecker, which I haven’t read. I can see why she decided to bring him back for a second book, because he’s a very engaging, intelligent and likeable character. Patrick has a form of autism which affects his social interactions, but he has a good friend in Nick, who understands why he sometimes behaves the way he does. I loved seeing them work together to hunt down the egg thieves and I must go back and read about their earlier adventures in Rubbernecker!

The historical sections are also very well done and the scenes where young Celie Sheppard is dangled over the cliff in search of the eggs are very dramatic; I can’t imagine how dangerous and terrifying that would be, yet Celie did it year after year from such an early age. At least she was rewarded financially for her efforts, at a time of poverty when her family desperately needed the money. It was interesting to see how big and well organised the egg trafficking industry was in those days, with collectors and traders prepared to go to great lengths – and great expense – to obtain the rarest and most unusual eggs.

I picked a great book for my return to Belinda Bauer after such a long time and am looking forward to reading the others that I’ve missed.

Thanks to Bantam for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Island Song by Pepsi Demacque-Crockett

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Pepsi Demacque-Crockett has had a successful career in music as a backing singer for Wham! and then as a member of the duo Pepsi and Shirlie. Although she was born in London, her parents came to England from St Lucia in the Caribbean, and this forms the inspiration for Island Song, her debut novel.

Island Song is set in the 1950s. Agnes Deterville and her sister, Ella, who live in the village of Canaries on the island of St Lucia, are two very different people. As the quiet, cautious older sister, Ella can’t imagine leaving her island home and knows that she’ll never want to live anywhere else. Agnes is bolder and more adventurous, ready to follow her dreams and seize new opportunities. Working as a housekeeper for an English family, the Chesters, Agnes is captivated by Mrs Chester’s descriptions of her home country and longs to see it for herself. Hearing that people from the Caribbean have been invited to help rebuild post-war Britain, she decides to use her savings to travel to London.

Agnes has two young children from a failed relationship, whom she leaves behind with Ella, and her intention is to return to St Lucia as soon as she’s made enough money to improve the lives of the whole family. However, everything changes when, soon after arriving in England, she falls in love with another new immigrant, Raphael Toussaint. Agnes and Raphael come from the same village and she knows him by his bad reputation, but meeting him again in London he seems to be a different person and assures her that he has changed. Agnes wants to believe him, but how can she know he’s telling the truth?

Island Song is a fascinating exploration of the experiences of immigrants and the way in which people often build up an image of something in their mind that isn’t matched by reality. Having listened to Mrs Chester’s idyllic tales of her life in Dorset, Agnes expects something similar when she arrives in London and is shocked to find that this isn’t the case. Rather than sipping tea in elegant drawing rooms, she’s working in a kitchen making tea for other people, while being bullied by her boss. Similarly, Raphael comes to London hoping to make a fortune, but instead spends several months unemployed before eventually finding a lowly job painting walls for a construction company. They – like the rest of the Caribbean community – face racism, discrimination and even violence, but also make new friends amongst both immigrants and white British people who give them the confidence that not everyone in their new country wants them to leave.

Agnes is a strong character and I did like her, but I found Raphael more interesting because he goes through more growth and development throughout the novel. He has a drinking problem and is easily influenced by his friends, but he also has a kind heart and does genuinely seem to want to change and be a good partner to Agnes. I really wanted them to find happiness, both in their relationship and in their working lives. Ella is another character who grows as a person as the book progresses. Although most of the focus is on the characters who have left the island, we do catch up with Ella now and then and see how she’s gradually able to move on from some bad experiences in her past and gain the confidence to take control of her own life.

Demacque-Crockett writes beautifully about St Lucia and her love for her own heritage shines through in the London sections of the novel as well. The English spoken by her St Lucian characters is peppered with Kwéyòl, a French-based Creole language, and we see the immigrants trying to adapt to British culture while at the same time trying to retain parts of their own culture, such as their favourite foods and music. I really enjoyed this book and I hope Demacque-Crockett will write another one!

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton – #ReadIndies

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There’s clearly something about the paintings of Johannes Vermeer that inspires novelists; first, Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring and now Douglas Bruton’s excellent Woman in Blue, which is published today. This is the second of Bruton’s books I’ve read, the first being 2021’s Blue Postcards and apart from the shared word in the title (Bruton certainly seems to like the colour blue!) and the shared theme of art and artists, I found this one very different in style and structure.

The novel begins in the present day with our unnamed narrator, referred to only as ‘a man in Amsterdam’, visiting the Rijksmuseum to look at a painting. Just one painting, which he has become so obsessed with that he barely notices any of the others. The painting is Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter and the narrator returns to the museum day after day to study the colours and the composition, but most of all just to spend time in the woman in blue’s company and to imagine the human being who inspired the picture. He’s transfixed by this particular painting for its own sake, but also because the woman reminds him in subtle ways of both his wife and another woman he once loved.

In 17th century Delft, we meet the woman in blue herself – or rather, the young woman who sits for Vermeer as he paints her portrait. Her chapters alternate with the present day ones, slowly building up a history of the woman in blue, her life in Delft and her relationship with the artist. In reality, the true identity of the sitter has never been confirmed (Vermeer’s wife, Catharina Bolnes, has been suggested as a likely candidate, but it seems there’s no actual evidence to prove it), so Bruton has the freedom to create his own fictional story for the woman, whom he names Angelieke.

Although the book is set in two different time periods and narrated by two different characters, the lines dividing the two are blurred. Angelieke is a real woman in 1663, but in the modern day sections, she’s aware that she is a painting in a museum and that the male narrator comes to see her every day. She looks forward to his visits and feels a connection with him, just as he feels one with her. This is not the first novel to give a painting a mind of its own (I, Mona Lisa by Natasha Solomons does the same and I’m sure there must be others) but I really liked the way Bruton handles that element of the story, giving it a dreamlike feel and merging the two narratives so that they don’t feel too separate or disconnected.

With it being a real painting rather than a fictional one, it’s easy to google it so you can refer to the picture itself as you read. The narrator’s observations, made during his repeated viewings, helped me to see things in the painting that I probably wouldn’t have noticed for myself. With each chapter, he finds new details to study and focus on – the map on the wall, the letter in the woman’s hand, the blue bed jacket she’s wearing and the question of whether or not she could be pregnant. At times, Bruton returns to a theme he also touched on in Blue Postcards: the idea that a painting offers something different to each individual who views it and that the viewers themselves can almost ‘become’ part of the painting:

What I like about the painting – one of the many things I like – is how cleverly the artist has included me in it and made me complicit in the looking. It is an intimate and private moment and Vermeer intrudes on it without at all breaking it, and we – Vermeer and me – stand silent, breath held, just looking at this young woman turned in on herself.

For a short book – a novella at 144 pages – there’s so much packed into it that I’ve probably only scratched the surface in this review. I would recommend Woman in Blue to anyone who loves art, but even if you don’t, there’s still a lot here to enjoy.

Thanks to Fairlight Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

As this is an independent publisher, I am counting Woman in Blue towards this year’s #ReadIndies event hosted by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy’s Literary Life. You can find out more about Fairlight Books by visiting their website here.

The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie

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This month for the Read Christie challenge we’re reading books with authors as characters. The recommended book, The Thirteen Problems, is one I hadn’t read before so I thought this would be a good opportunity to pick it up. First published in 1932, it’s a collection of short stories featuring Miss Marple and her nephew, Raymond West, who is a writer. It has also been published in the US as The Tuesday Club Murders, so you may know it by that title.

There are thirteen stories in the book. In the first, a group of six friends gather at Miss Marple’s home in St Mary Mead and during the evening the conversation turns to mysteries. It seems that each of them has experienced or been involved in some kind of mystery and it’s suggested that over the next few weeks they should take turns telling their story and seeing if the rest of the group can solve it. Five of the friends have professions which they claim are ideally suited for detective work – an artist, a writer, a clergyman, a lawyer and a retired policeman – so they all agree to the plan and the Tuesday Night Club is born! The sixth member of the group, Miss Marple, is just there to make up the numbers; how could an old lady who has barely left her quiet little village possibly know anything about solving mysteries?

After all six have told their stories, several members of the group – with the addition of a doctor and a young actress – meet again at the home of Colonel and Mrs Bantry, where another set of stories are narrated. You won’t be surprised to hear that it’s Miss Marple who provides the correct solution for all thirteen of them, after everyone else has tried and failed!

I tend not to be a big fan of short stories, but I do usually enjoy Agatha Christie’s. This collection isn’t a favourite and I think I know why: it’s because the stories all involve mysteries that have already happened or have already been solved, so we don’t get to see Miss Marple or the other characters actively investigating them at the time. It’s a similar concept to Baroness Orczy’s Old Man in the Corner stories where her detective solves crimes while sitting in the corner of a London tearoom. Still, the stories are all interesting and I even managed to solve one or two of them myself!

Some of the stories have a supernatural feel – although the solutions have more logical explanations. My favourite was Colonel Bantry’s story, The Blue Geranium, in which a woman is visited by a fortune-teller who warns her to beware of a blue primrose, a blue hollyhock and finally, a blue geranium, which means death. When the flowers on her bedroom wallpaper begin to turn blue one by one, the woman begins to fear for her life. Another one I enjoyed was The Blood-Stained Pavement, narrated by the artist Joyce, who was visiting Cornwall to paint some picturesque village scenes. She’s sitting outside working on a painting when she notices drops of blood on the ground that weren’t there just a few minutes earlier. These bloodstains turn out to be important when a woman is reported missing two days later.

Although the stories in this book all stand alone, they are not completely separate as there’s also an overarching narrative, with the group of friends discussing the story that’s just been told and deciding whose turn it is to speak next. By the end of the book, Miss Marple has impressed everyone with her detective skills and has shown them that sometimes all that’s needed to solve a crime is a knowledge of human nature. Just as she does in the full-length novels, she draws on parallels with life in St Mary Mead and people she knows who remind her of the suspects or victims in the stories.

I did enjoy The Thirteen Problems, then, and found the stories just the right length. It’s always a pleasure to spend some time with Miss Marple!

The Secrets of the Rose by Nicola Cornick – #ReadIndies

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I like Nicola Cornick’s books because you always know what to expect from them, but at the same time each one is different and has something new to offer. With The Secrets of the Rose, her latest novel published this month, I got exactly what I knew I would get: a dual timeline narrative, strong female protagonists, a search for an historic relic that has found its way into the present, cameo appearances by characters from other Cornick novels, and hints of the supernatural. However, I also had the opportunity to learn about a woman I’ve never read about before – Dorothy Forster of Bamburgh Hall.

In the present day, we meet Hannah Armstrong, an author working on a new book about Grace Darling, the lighthouse keeper’s daughter who became a 19th century celebrity after helping her father to rescue the survivors of a shipwreck. In order to research the biography, Hannah has returned to Bamburgh, the village on the Northumberland coast where she grew up and which she can use as a base for visiting the Darlings’ lighthouse in the nearby Farne Islands. Unfortunately, Hannah is finding that she has very little interest in Grace and her life – the woman she really wants to write about is another local heroine, Dorothy Forster.

Dorothy’s story unfolds in 1715, the year of the Jacobite Rising when supporters of the exiled James Edward Stuart attempted to restore him to the throne. Dorothy, who is living at Bamburgh Hall with her ailing father, is alarmed when she learns that her two brothers, Thomas and Nicholas, have been persuaded by one of the Jacobite leaders, the Earl of Derwentwater to join the rebellion. As the nephews of Lord Crewe of Bamburgh Castle, not only will their involvement put their own lives at risk, it could also leave the whole family in danger. Then Dorothy discovers that the Forsters are the keepers of the Rose, a legendary talisman that both sides in the conflict believe could be the key to victory. Can Dorothy hide the Rose from their enemies and keep her brothers safe?

These two storylines start to come together when Hannah goes to stay at Bamburgh Hall, her stepmother Diana’s home, while researching her Grace Darling book. Here she finds a portrait of Dorothy Forster which appears to be full of Jacobite symbolism. As Hannah digs into Dorothy’s past, she learns about the Rose and its powers and begins to suspect that it may have survived into the 21st century. However, she’s not the only one who has come to that conclusion – it seems that someone else is also on the trail of the Rose and is prepared to go to any lengths to get their hands on it.

As is often the case with dual narrative books, I found that one storyline interested me more than the other and this time it was the Dorothy Forster one. There were a lot of things I liked about Hannah’s story as well – her relationship with her stepmother, a mystery surrounding her brother who seems to have fallen out with everyone in the village, a romance that begins to form with an old friend – but Dorothy’s was more exciting. Legend states that Dorothy rode to London on horseback to rescue her brother Thomas from Newgate Prison after the failed rebellion and Cornick does incorporate this episode into the novel, but also shows that there’s a lot more to Dorothy’s story than that. The Jacobite aspect of the novel plays out mainly in the background, far away from Bamburgh (although I did enjoy the brief appearances of the Earl of Derwentwater whom I first met in Anya Seton’s Devil Water) so the focus is more on Dorothy’s personal life and her relationships with family and friends.

I thought the novel was interesting enough without the magic talisman element and I’m not sure if it really added much to the plot. Still, Nicola Cornick’s books do usually have some supernatural touches and they’re not as strong here as in some of her others. I did love the setting – although I wouldn’t say I know Bamburgh well, I’ve been there a few times and enjoyed seeing it through the eyes of Hannah and Dorothy in two different centuries. And I was intrigued to find when I read the author’s note that Dorothy’s uncle, Guy Forster, and his wife also appear in Cornick’s previous book, The Other Gwyn Girl, which I haven’t read yet. The relationship between them is fictional, although they share the Forster name, but I do want to read that book anyway.

I really enjoyed The Secrets of the Rose, then, and would probably rank it in my top three Nicola Cornick novels so far, along with The Last Daughter and The Phantom Tree.

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

As Boldwood is an independent publisher, I am counting this book towards this year’s #ReadIndies event hosted by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy’s Literary Life.

The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap

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It’s 1828 and James Willoughby has just arrived in Edinburgh to begin his medical studies at the university. Having found himself completely unsuited to the career in the church that his parents had planned for him, James has decided that medicine is his true vocation. After speaking to some of his fellow students, he discovers that due to the large class sizes the university can only offer very limited opportunities for practical experience. In order to gain the surgical knowledge he desires, it will also be necessary to attend one of the city’s private anatomy schools where he’ll be able to dissect and study the human body for himself.

Although James comes from a wealthy family, they have fallen on hard times since his father’s death. There’s enough money to pay for his lodgings at the Hope and Anchor Inn, but not much else. If he wants to go to anatomy school, he’ll have to find a way to pay the fees himself. Signing up for Dr Malstrom’s prestigious school, James confides in the doctor’s apprentice, Aneurin MacKinnon, explaining his financial difficulties. Aneurin – or Nye, as he prefers to be called – tells him he may have a solution to the problem. And with that, James finds himself drawn into the secretive, macabre world of body snatching – taking corpses from graves under cover of darkness and selling them to anatomists for study and research purposes.

I loved this book! As a debut novel it’s very impressive and I’ll certainly be looking out for more by A. Rae Dunlap. From the very first page she captures the formal feel of the 19th century novel and manages to avoid using the sort of inappropriately modern language that could have so easily pulled me out of the historical setting. As with Ambrose Parry’s Raven and Fisher series, there are lots of insights into the medical world of 19th century Edinburgh, with the focus here being on the study of anatomy and surgery and how progress was hampered by the lack of human cadavers for students to work with. Edinburgh itself provides an atmospheric setting for the novel, especially as most of the action, for obvious reasons, takes place at night. There are lots of suitably Gothic descriptions of lonely cemeteries, dark alleys and disreputable inns, all forming the backdrop to the trade of body snatching.

The Resurrectionist is narrated by James Willoughby, whom I really liked and believed in as a character. He begins the novel as an innocent, well-meaning young man who has led a somewhat sheltered life and who gradually grows as a person as he has his eyes opened to things and experiences he had never imagined. Over the course of the novel, we see a friendship form between James and the more worldly Nye, which eventually develops into something more. I thought the story was already interesting enough without adding a romance, but it does seem to arise naturally from the characters’ interactions rather than being forced in for the sake of it. It also provides an extra sense of danger, as both men are under no illusions as to the importance of keeping their relationship secret and what could happen to them if they are found out.

Although James and Nye and their friends are fictional, several other characters in the book really existed, most notably the infamous Burke and Hare, probably the best known body snatchers – or ‘resurrectionists’ – in history. As competition amongst the city’s anatomists increases and tasked with providing a steady supply of corpses for their employer Dr Knox, Burke and Hare decide that in addition to grave robbing, there could be another way to meet the demand for bodies. I knew very little about Burke and Hare before reading this book, so I enjoyed seeing how things played out for them and how Dunlap seamlessly worked them into James and Nye’s fictional story while also staying true to the historical facts.

The end of the novel wraps things up enough to make this a satisfactory standalone, but also sets up a potential sequel. This one felt very much like a coming of age novel for James, so I would be interested to see what the future has in store for him. If Dunlap has decided to move on and write something different, though, I will be equally interested to read whatever it is!

Thanks to HarperNorth for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.