Judith’s Reviews

Iran is in the news these days and the issues are important to us all, so it was with interest that I picked up Libby Fischer Hellman’s new novel, A Bitter Veil, set in the midst of the Iranian revolution that brought Khomeini to power. Two essential themes predominate in this viscerally effective novel: the fate of women when their choices have been taken from them and the banality of evil, to borrow a phrase applied to the Nazis—who also appear in this book if somewhat indirectly.

Berlin, 1931, the year Germany was lost to the Nazis. Hannah Vogel, a crime reporter, wanders into the Hall of the Unnamed Dead to examine the police reports from which she gathers her stories each week. Instead she sees her brother’s photograph on the wall. But her identity papers, and with them her ability to talk to the police, are on their way to America in the hands of her Jewish friend Sarah. Finding out who killed her brother is the least of many traps Hannah will fall into.

The setting of A Killing Season is a fearsome castle in the middle of winter—a castle that “looms like Satan’s shadow” on a wild coast connected to the mainland only by a narrow walkway over jagged rocks and crashing sea. Murders are propagating at an alarming rate. Is some evil plot of men behind these deaths or has the devil come to exact his due? Can Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas stop them or will they fall victim to Satan’s wiles?

What do modern Tibet, Cleopatra’s Egypt, revolutionary France, contemporary Paris, reincarnation, the Chinese mafia, the Dalai Lama, the catacombs, perfume production, and Greek mythology have to do with each other? Read The Book of Lost Fragrances and you will find out.

Kate Quinn knows how to serve up a full-flavored Rome with plenty of spice. Empress of the Seven Hills is driven along by fully-developed characters and skillful dialogue. Her main character, Sabina, from a powerful patrician family, sets out to see the world—and the world of the Roman Empire is a big place!

If you are a fan of Jacqueline Winspear’s mysteries set in London between the World Wars, when you read her last book (A Lesson in Secrets) you might have thought Maisie Dobb’s life was getting comfortably settled. Without any soap opera antics, just Winspear’s impeccable, nuanced character development, Maisie is at sea again in a variety of ways, and she’s solving a mystery of a completely new sort. Eddie is a “slow” man who has a magic way with horses. When he dies in an “accident,” the cockney costermongers of Maisie’s childhood feel justice hasn’t been done and they come to see her. You wouldn’t think this would involve issues of national safety, now would you?

Instead of contemporary England, P.D. James has set her latest book at Pemberley estate in 1803, six years after Miss Elizabeth Bennet has married Darcy. That is, P.D. James takes the prose of Jane Austen as her setting. James plus Austen is a fascinating combination, although there are some difficulties in the marriage.

The Scottish Prisoner is Gabaldon’s latest book in her extended family of books set in 18th century England/Scotland/Ireland. This offshoot from her main Outlander series focuses on Lord John Grey as his life once again tangles with Jamie Fraser, the ex-Jacobite rebel who is now a prisoner at Helwater farm. Great character development and a twisting plot cleverly incorporating snippets of Celtic language and folklore make this a pleasure to read.

J.J. Murphy’s second mystery, You Might As Well Die, starring Dorothy Parker, is a zany, screwball comedy delight set in New York in the 1920’s. People die (well, that’s debatable but I’ll say no more), but you will never feel sad. The witty jokes and cynical appraisals of life’s foibles fly as fast as you can read.

Award-winning Kelli Stanley has come out with the second in her Miranda Corbie mystery series set in San Francisco in the 30’s and 40’s—this time someone’s killing Jewish women, women whose place on the edges of society makes them particularly vulnerable. No one’s going to step up and bring them justice—or so the powers that be hope. They didn’t count on Miranda.