Time for scary books!

Title: The Queen's Accomplish by Susan Elia MacNeal
Publisher:  Bantam, 386 pp October 4, 2016
Genre: mystery, cozy, English historical, WWII fiction, series
4+ stars
Author:
MacNeal is the NYTimes best selling author of the Maggie Hope (#6) series. Her novels have been nominated for many awards, with her first, Mr Churchill's Secretary winning the Barry award. Her  first job was assistant to novelist John Irving, she graduated cum laude and with departmental honors from Wellesley College, cross-registered for courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and attended the Radcliffe Publishing Course at Harvard University. Her stories are well researched, which rich historical detail. There is significant character development between books, although it seems each ends where the next begins. I enjoy reading about strong, independent, capable women and Maggie makes a fascinating seasoned spy/special agent. Her exploits vividly portray the blackout, terror, everyday life of war torn London.
Story line:
We have another chapter in Maggie Hope's wartime experiences, this one darker than most. It also represents a dark time, especially to the reader who knows three more bleak years are ahead. And darker still with the blatant rampant sexism which still exists today. There are several story lines, involving characters from previous books, so it is useful to read them in order. Primarily, Maggie is to aid DCI Durgin of Scotland Yard in tracking down a serial killer, a copycat Jack the Ripper. The victims include many of the women Maggie has trained to become agents, so the hunt becomes very personal and potentially very dangerous. It is a quick intriguing read, one that is thought provoking and informative. I look forward to Maggie rescuing her half sister in Paris.
Quotes:
Something was wrong. Maggie Hope was sure, but she couldn’t yet put her finger on it...
Maggie was working as a girl Friday in a dim reception room at 64 Baker Street, one of the Special Operations Executive’s offices.
Only twenty-seven, Maggie had already performed any number of missions as an agent for SOE, but had taken a desk job in London while she was waiting for the arrival of her German half sister, Elise Hess, a Resistance worker in Berlin.
After all, she’d been secretary to the P.M. himself—as well as saving the life of the Princess Elizabeth, parachuting into Nazi Berlin, teaching at a paramilitary camp, and keeping the First Lady of the United States of America safe from scandal. How hard could managing an office be? And it was only temporary, until her half sister arrived in London and settled in.
When she’d arrived in London from Boston, four years ago, all she’d wanted to do was settle her grandmother’s estate, then return to the United States to pursue doctoral studies in mathematics at MIT, one of the few top universities to allow women as graduate students.
“It’s like … an accident of number theory. With enough data points, patterns will emerge that point to the place where the murders took place.”
“Are ye daft, woman?” Durgin exploded. “That’s the looniest idea I’ve ever heard of! We don’t use humans as live bait! This isn’t some Highland huntin’ party!”
I can’t fight everything, Maggie realized. But I can do some things. And those I’ll do to the best of my ability and strength.
Read on:
Jacqueline Winspear Maisie Dobbs series
Nicola Upson Josephine Tey series
Rhys Bowen Royal Spyness series
Emma Jameson Marriage can be Murder
I intend to look up Sarah Sundin who evidently also writes WWII novels. MacNeal,also has an excellent bibliography at the end of this book.

Received as an ARC ebook from Netgalley.

Spring Forward, into action!

Title: Murder in the Queen's Wardrobe by Kathy Lynn Emerson
Publisher: Severn House
283 pp.
Genre: cozy, mystery, historical mystery, Elizabethan spy mystery, English mystery
3.5 Stars ****
Author: aka Kate Emerson, Kaitlyn Dunnett, Kaitlyn Groton, author of over 50 novels, generally reflecting her long interest (45 years) in British history. She has a BA from Bates College and currently lives in Maine. Emerson won an Agatha Award for Mystery Nonfiction (2008) for "How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries". She is a member of Historical Novel Society, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime.  Emerson's Liss MacCrimmon Scottish American Heritage Mystery series is very popular (Kaitlyn Dunnett)- I was given multiple copies one year when she first published Kilt Dead (2007).   I have read several of her Face Down in.... Series. These are also Elizabethan tales with Lady Susanna Appleton, gentlewomen, herbalist and sleuth. In fact, the current series heroine is the illegitimate daughter of Sir Robert Appleton, and several characters will reappear.
Story line:
Interestingly, this is a work of fiction based on real events. It is the first book in a new series that will feature Mistress Rosamund Jaffrey, who eloped at 16 to escape the family; an inheritance has made her independent but she is estranged from her husband of two years. Rob is a merchant's son, (and she thinks him beneath her??), but now in Russia. It is 1582, London is embroiled in political machinations and an interesting character of itself in this book, vividly described. Rosamund is clever, at languages and codes, and is recruited by Nicholas Baldwin (Lady Appleton's lover) ((working for Sir Francis Walsingham)) to spy on Lady Mary Hastings, the Queen's cousin. Lady Mary is expected to be the bride of Tsar Ivan (the Terrible) of Russia, a prospect which terrifies her, but which also threatens her life. Acting as a lady's maid, Rosamund encounters intrigue, danger, murder and poisons. She has a devoted Polish maid Melka who saves Rosamund more than once.
Rosamund seemed self centered and self important, at a time that women were neither. The ability to throw off social constraints strained credibility. But it you don't  take it too seriously, it is an entertaining read. And perhaps perfect as we await spring. The series continues with Murder in the Mercery (March 2016).
Read on:
To her other series, Face down in.... And Secrets of the Tudor Court series
If you like Sarah Woodbury, Fiona Buckley, Margaret Frazer
Quotes:
Parts of her disguise had begun to itch, and she was hungry despite gorging herself on hazelnuts.
"Most women would have run screaming from a room at their first glimpse of an intruder." "...that thought never crossed my mind." "You barely thought at all."
...the beard was a thing of beauty, as were Laski's clothes.
Rosamund was far from satisfied and it struck her suddenly that although she would be wise to comply with the principal secretary's orders, she didn't not have to do so with meek obedience.

Read as an ARC from Netgalley

A picture is worth....

A picture is worth...
Nina Siegal The Anatomy Lesson
2014
At least 290 moving pages of this stunning novel. It took Siegal  6 years to write, and I am so glad she persevered. It is a fascinating account of the history behind Rembrandt's first painting to give him international fame (and the first he signed using only Rembrandt, no initials). The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicholis Tulp, was commissioned by Amsterdam's Surgeons' Guild 1632. The novel has an intriguing cast of characters in the painting, each voiced in alternating chapters, each very distinctive and true to the period.

There is Aris, (the body), the one handed coat thief, who becomes the corpse of the painting. Flora (the heart) is pregnant with his child, and knows he didn't commit the crime and presents this information to Rembrandt. Jan Fetchet (the mouth) is a curio collector who also acquires medical cadavers. Dr Tulp (the hands) is a prominent surgeon, intent on debunking William Harvey's new circulation theory while harkening back to roman Galen. He does one public dissection a year, on an executed criminal. Rene Descartes (the mind) is a foreigner who attends the dissection to understand where the human soul resides. Pia (the story/narrator/discoverer) is a 21st century contemporary art conservator examining the painting, and making astonishing discoveries in the paint.

Rembrandt (the eyes) here is an unknown, in Amsterdam, an outsider and indentured, here because he impressed some burghers with biblical paintings. But he speaks in colour and texture, with humour and insight, and finally, painting/living with truth and justice. After hearing Flora "I want to make him whole again." he changes the initial painting, covering the scars and restoring the severed hand! He did not want the painting to glorify man's cruelty, brutality. Instead it is filled with the emotion of loss, while the book describes the power of love. I have seen a copy (unknown artist) in the University of Edinburgh's Fine Art Museum which shows an extraordinary, ambitious painting. Someday perhaps a journey to see the original.
This will appeal to any one interested in the history of medicine, art history or historical fiction.

Quotes
"Some sons are easier to love than others."
"We are working in allegory my dear."
"He will go on painting until he gets it all right."
“She had loved him, Fetchet bought him, Dr. Tulp had claimed him for science, and I had wanted him for art. All of us sought his flesh. All of us have wanted to make something of this man’s body. But he did not belong to any of us. He was only Aris the thief.”
“This, I thought, was a portrait of human cruelty. It told of how men ravage one another in search of truth. How they carve each other up in the name of justice, and how they fail to see their own brutality.”

Read On
Vanora Bennett Portrait of an Unknown Woman
Elizabeth Kostova The Swan Thieves
Donna Tartt The Goldfinch
Cathy Marie Buchanan Painted Girls
See also WG Sebald 1999 The Rings of Saturn
Laird Hunt 2006 The Exquisite
Siegal has also written A Little Trouble with the Facts (2008)
4 stars
I felt the ending was very rushed, but perhaps I just wanted more. Particularly the voice of Rembrandt. Fetchet also had some wonderful lines. It was also immediately evident that it was of the Iowa Writers workshop ilk.
RPL has a copy, reserve now!

Medieval Strife

I know not how the world is went. (John Gower)

I love it when scholars turn their hand to historical novels. Their fiction can breath new life into characters we know remarkably little about. Or indeed some we think we know quite a bit about.  For example, Hilary Mantel (Pulitzer prizes: Wolf Hall, Bringing up the Bodies) Deborah Harkness (Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, Book of Life), Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series).
And now
Bruce Holsinger with A Burnable Book. He is an award medieval literary scholar (University of Virginia) whose debut fiction immerses you immediately into medieval London (1385). This is the world of Chaucer, whom we all recognize for his historical significance if you haven't actually read his Canterbury tales (and really, don't miss them, in almost any translation!). He has been vividly brought to life within these pages, and yet this book is about another poet John Gower and their complex interwoven lives and political intrigues of Richard IIs England. There is a missing manuscript which prophesizes the death of the kings of England.
This is a riveting tale of poets, princes and politics with London as a central character. It is actually three cities, the walled city of London, and Outside: Southwark and Westminster. Several voices from these locations reveal the intricate layers of the story. The time is after the Black Death and the portrayal of medieval life from the slums and stews to clergy and castles is fascinating.  It was also a pivotal year for the aristocratic classes. Holsinger's use of unusual documents to create characters based on actual historical figures makes for a very compelling read.  This is a clever, entertaining literary mystery full of period detail which intrigues you while forcibly repelling you. I have zero desire to live in Chaucer's England. But I had to investigate more on who Gower was, and what he wrote.

"Agnes ....suspects the import of what she holds. A woman has just died for it, a man has just killed.
For what? ....
A cloth, a book, a snatch of verse.
Which was worth dying for?"
"If you build your own life around the secret lives of others, if you erect your house on the corrupt foundations of theirs, you soon come to regard all useful knowledge as your due. Information becomes your entitlement. You pay handsomely for it, you use it selectively and well. If you are not exactly trusted in certain circles, you are respected, and your name carries a certain weight. You are rarely surprised, and never deceived. Yet there may come a time when your knowledge will betray you."
"London often treats the passing of winter into spring with cold indifference. That year was no different. February had been an unforgiving month, March worse, and as the city scraped along towards April the air seemed to grow only more bitter, the sky more grey, the rain more penetrating as it lifted every hint of warmth from surfaces of timber and stone."
"However innocent on its face, no request from Chaucer was ever straightforward."

Book of the Moment

Susanna Kearsley The Winter Sea

I read Shadowy Horses, Mariana and the Rose Garden, quite quickly in succession, charmed by the writing and locations. Historical Scotland, medieval England, magic as well as reminding me greatly of reading Mary Stewart as a teenager. Then I discovered Mary Stewart was one of Kearsley’s favorite authors growing up, and I couldn’t wait to read more. Her first novel Mariana won the Catherine Cookson literary prize, all of her books have become bestsellers. She also writes classic thrillers under the name Emma Cole.

The Winter Sea is her most recent book, and rumour has it her next one is a sequel (you have time to read this one before Firebird is released in June). Prepare to be enthralled: this is a beautiful and engaging work of historical fiction, with a dash of romance, tragedy, mystery in an engrossing story. She has done her research, both in richly detailed history but also in the present day settings – interesting characters, a moody sea, enchanting scottish village and local customs.

Summary: Carrie McClelland moves to Scotland to continue to research her next book on a relatively unknown Jacobite rebellion of 1708. She is drawn to Slains Castle, rents a remote cottage and begins to dream of her characters, creating a parallel story.

If you like Barbara Erskine (Lady of Hay), Diana Gabaldon and Mary Stewart, read on.

Erin Hart, Irish mystery series

I was introduced to a new author Erin Hart, partly because her books are Irish/celtic, partly because the latest one takes place in MN and partly because she has a beautiful way with language. I love this quote: The celts speak in riddles, hinting at things, leaving much to be understood (Poseidonius, Greek Ethanographer of 1st century BC).
These are the Nora Gavin (american pathologist) and Cormac Maguire (Irish archeologist) award winning series that take place primarily in bogs, in Ireland. Haunted Grounds was the first (2003) then Lake of Sorrows (2005) then False Mermaid (2010). The first novel is based on a true story (she first heard of in 1986 when visiting) of finding a severed head of a woman with red hair (probably from the 1650s Cromwell era) in 1955 - she was able to speak to the people involved! She wanted to create a story because so little could be learned of the girl. The haunting descriptions are theirs as well as family experience (her husband is Paddy Orien). "the past is not buried, but lives and breaths" - e.g. peat.
They really need to be read in order, but there's only three (and she is a slow writer, so you are lucky to catch up now!).

Her favourite authors are PD James, Dorothy Sayers, with Elizabeth George and Umbretto Eco in the mix. She would also like to take AS Byatt to lunch at WAFrost. She is currently reading Geraldine Brooks People of the Book as her next novel will involve an ancient manuscript! These remind me a bit of Sharyn McCrumb, whose appalachian series I adore (for Nora Bonesteel), with that local flavour, myth/folklore/historic detail. Some gothic suspense, similar to Mary Stewart (I always wished she had written more novels about the same people). And the chilling forensic details are reminscent of Kathy Reichs and Simon Beckett. Softer story, with rather tumultous love affair, maturing, but with issues.