This mystery channels the Golden Age of British mystery and combines reality and fiction with the true, unsolved murder of Florence Nightingale’s goddaughter and the famous Mitford sisters and weaves these historical figures with fictional characters in a twisty plot set in post WWI sooty, dangerous London and a safe, serene English manor house. Trains are another nostalgic touch and transport the reader back to another time, the scared, determined Louisa who escapes from a train, Harry the railway policeman investigating the murder, Nancy Mitford who travels between the family estate to London by train it ends up linking these three together – so different and so important to each other’s growth, they form the core of the story.
This mystery is also very much a story about post-WWI British society as it moves into the exciting 1920s with characters from the lower middle class, the poor, the landed gentry and veterans of the Great War, the healers, the officers and the soldiers. It has elements of fun and romance but even those are twisted and blighted by the long shadows of WWI which affect so many of the characters indirectly and directly. It’s also about how ambition can elevate but also distort, how poverty can twist friendships and family ties, the difficulties for single women trying to be independent all figure into the plot and motivations.
What impressed me most was the originality and the energy of the story, it blended melodrama, suspense and history into a wonderful story that posed a solution to an unsolved, infamous mystery and brought the past into the present.
I enjoyed it and would rate it 4 train tickets using elements from the story!
- Plot: ***
- Characters: ****
- Setting: ***
- Romance: ***
- Humor: **
- Social themes: ****
Based on the SHELL GAME review I’ve ordered the book — sounds like “just my cup of tea”! I’ve read Paretsky before — she was a favorite of my English-professor father from Chicago — and I quite enjoy her Warshawski character. Sounds like Victoria will have her hands full dealing with the tangled up affairs of Immigration agents, Russians and Syrians and offshore corporations and tax shelters and stock swindles…. fascinating!