‘It’s not a fair world I’m afraid. Beauty or fortune carries the day. You have the beauty and I the fortune, so there’s every chance we’ll succeed’ In Regency England, marriage is everything. For young widow Sybella Lovatt, the time has come to find a suitable husband for her sister and ward Lucie. Male suitors are scarce near their Wiltshire estate, so the sisters resolve to head to London in time for The Season to begin. Once ensconced at the Mayfair home of Lady Godley, Lucie’s godmother, the whirl of balls, parties and promenades can begin. But the job of finding a husband is fraught with rules and tradition. Jostling for attention are the two lords – the charming and irresistible Freddie Lynwood and the preternaturally handsome Valentine Ravenell, their enigmatic neighbour from Shotten Hall, Mr Brabazon, and the dangerous libertine Lord Rockliffe, with whom the brooding Brabazon is locked in deadly rivalry. Against the backdrop of glamorous Regency England, Sybella must settle Lucie’s future, protect her own reputation, and resist the disreputable rakes determined to seduce the beautiful widow. As the Season ends, will the sisters have found the rarest of things – a suitable marriage with a love story to match? Purchase
Author Bio – Jane Dunn is an historian and biographer and the author of seven acclaimed biographies, including Daphne du Maurier and her Sisters and the Sunday Times and NYT bestseller, Elizabeth & Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens. She comes to Boldwood with her first fiction outing – a trilogy of novels set in the Regency period, the first of which is to be published in January 2023. She lives in Berkshire with her husband, the linguist Nicholas Ostler.
My thoughts: if, like me, you’re a fan of Regency romances and Bridgerton, then you’ll love this – trust me.
Sisters Bella and Lucie are headed to London, to stay with Lucie’s Godmother, “Lady God” as Bella’s hilarious son puts it, for The Season. Having lived out in the countryside, they’re both feeling a bit like fish out of water. Even with their neighbours Mr Brabazon and his cousin Lord Lynwood as acquaintances and increasingly friends.
Of course every man they meet has a reputation and most of them bad. Bella might be a widow but she’s a bit naive, not willing to just believe the things she’s told and besides, her husband was a paragon. A Dragoon captain he died in the Peninsula War (the endless fight against Napoleon’s global ambitions) and few could measure up.
And that brings us to my favourite character – Bella’s totally hilarious, very adorable little son, who loves horses more than almost anything else. He’s also the source of the funniest lines, having learnt most of his speech from the groom Gem and his late father’s batman George. Not exactly Society speech. But he’s brilliant. I want whole books featuring him and his many horse based interactions. He reveals the softer side of many of the dashing rakes the sisters meet, most of them are horse lovers too and can’t resist a small pudgy hand asking to have a ride.
This book was really enjoyable, lots of fun, and quite funny. So do yourself a favour and return to the Regency and the Ton.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
A 1970s debate on equality is overshadowed by a deadly secret… Spring 1970. Sussex University is hosting a debate about equality for women. But when one of the debating group goes missing, attention turns away from social injustice to something more sinister. It seems every one of the group has something to hide, and when a second tragedy occurs, two of the delegates – amateur sleuth Janie Juke, and reporter Libby Frobisher – are prepared to make themselves unpopular to flush out the truth. Who is lying and why? Alongside the police investigation, Janie and Libby are determined to prise answers from the tight-lipped group, as they find themselves in a race against time to stop another victim being targeted. In A Notable Omission we meet Janie at the start of a new decade. When we left Janie at the end of The Invisible Case she was enjoying her new found skills and success as an amateur sleuth. Here we meet her a few months later, stealing a few days away from being a wife and mother, attending a local conference on women’s liberation to do some soul-searching…
Isabella is never happier than when she is immersing herself in the sights, sounds and experiences of family life in southern England in past decades – specifically those years from the Second World War through to the early 1970s. Researching all aspects of life back then has formed the perfect launch pad for her works of fiction. It was during two happy years working on and completing her MA in Professional Writing when Isabella rekindled her love of writing fiction and since then she has gone on to publish seven novels, six novellas and two short story collections. This latest novel, A Notable Omission, is the fourth book in her successful Sussex Crime Mystery series, featuring young librarian and amateur sleuth, Janie Juke. The early books in the series are set in the late 1960s in the fictional seaside town of Tamarisk Bay, where we meet Janie, who looks after the mobile library. She is an avid lover of Agatha Christie stories – in particular Hercule Poirot. Janie uses all she has learned from the Queen of Crime to help solve crimes and mysteries. This latest novel in the series is set along the south coast in Brighton in early 1970, a time when young people were finding their voice and using it to rail against social injustice. As well as four novels, there are six novellas in the series, set during the Second World War, exploring some of the back story to the Tamarisk Bay characters. Isabella’s love of Italy shines through all her work and, as she is half-Italian, she has enjoyed bringing all her crime novels to an Italian audience with Italian translations, which are very well received. Isabella has also written a second series of Sussex Crimes, set in the sixties, featuring retired Italian detective, Giuseppe Bianchi, who is escaping from tragedy in Rome, only to arrive in the quiet seaside town of Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, to come face-to-face with it once more. Isabella’s standalone novel, The Forgotten Children, deals with the emotive subject of the child migrants who were sent to Australia – again focusing on family life in the 1960s, when the child migrant policy was still in force. Find out more about Isabella and her books by visiting her website.
My thoughts: having been raised by a feminist (hi mum!) who was a young woman in the 70s, and probably aware of similar events as the one Janie and Libby attended, gave me some idea of what it would be like. Some of the rights we take for granted were still being hashed out at this time and the women (and men) who campaigned for them are to be commended.
However, this particular group doesn’t seem that focused on women’s rights but on their own complicated connections – most of the group have known each other since school and not always been exactly friends. It’s all a bit messy and after one member disappears, and another has a potentially fatal accident, Janie and Libby start asking questions. The answers lie somewhere in the group’s past, but who’s telling the truth and who has plenty to hide?
A clever and engaging read, Janie and Libby are an interesting pairing, the married mother, happy in her library job, worrying about her family, and the no strings attached journalist, intent on building her career and seemingly happy to be single. Their respective skills and insights into human nature make them a good crime solving team and friends too.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
December 1962. EleanorO’Dowd, a middle-aged piano teacher, is found stabbed and bludgeoned to death. As the Great Freeze of 1963 takes hold, local vicar’s daughter Daphne Morgan finds herself forced to navigate the confusing currents of the adult world, where she must face up to her own crimes and what she knows about the murder. A novel about memory and the power of the imagination…
SiânCollins was born in Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire. An Edinburgh graduate, she taught Anglo Saxon and Medieval Literature in South Africa, worked as an assistant editor on The Lancet, and ran English and Drama departments in several well-known London secondary schools. She returned to Carmarthenshire to teach, write, and relish life in the beautiful Tywi Valley. Her debut novel, Unleaving, was published in 2019.
My thoughts: seen through the eyes of a child, following the murder of her much disliked piano teacher, this charts the life of a small Welsh town, reeling from the tragedy. The police are convinced a local man – deaf mute Johnny – is their perpetrator, and his inability to communicate makes it all too easy to point the finger at him. But Daphne knows that’s not true, she saw something, or did she?
Meanwhile she and her school friends have worries of their own, have they been cursed? Are they responsible for the village’s recent troubles?
Told with a kind tone and full of the misunderstandings and tiny concerns of children, as well as the growing awareness of the unfairness of life, this is a gentle but moving story of a place and its people.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
A fatal jump. A missing suffragette. An inexplicable murder. London, 1920. When she catches news of a big story, reporter Iris Woodmore rushes to the House of Commons. But it’s a place that holds painful memories. In 1914, her mother died there when she fell into the River Thames during a daring suffragette protest. But in the shadow of Big Ben, a waterman tells Iris her mother didn’t fall – she jumped. Iris discovers that the suffragette with her mother that fateful day has been missing for years, disappearing just after the protest. Desperate to know the truth behind the fatal jump, Iris’s investigation leads her to Crookham Hall, an ancestral home where secrets and lies lead to murder… Purchase
Michelle Salter is a historical crime fiction writer based in northeast Hampshire. Many local locations appear in her mystery novels. She’s also a copywriter and has written features for national magazines. When she’s not writing, Michelle can be found knee-deep in mud at her local nature reserve. She enjoys working with a team of volunteers undertaking conservation activities.
My thoughts: this was a very enjoyable historical crime thriller. Iris is trying to cover a story but the one she really wants answers to is that of her mother’s terrible death, falling into the Thames. But now she has new evidence from a witness – her mother jumped, but why? And where did the other woman, a fellow suffragette, disappear to? Iris is determined to get answers, even if they’re painful to hear.
Two women are contesting an MP’s seat, for the first time and one of them knew her mother. But there’s a lot more going on in this electoral race. Digging into a complicated nest of secrets gives Iris the truth and plenty to cover too. A great start to a new series.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
A dead body. A hoard of forged banknotes. A gangster out for blood. Newcastle, December 1955. Returning home after a weekend away, singer and amateur sleuth Rosie Robson discovers a man lying on a baggage trolley with his throat cut. After the police get involved, an attack on Rosie and her boss prompts Inspector Vic Walton to find a safe house for the pair. But the bad guys seem to be one step ahead of them and Rosie is forced to track down a possible witness to the murder in a bid to learn the truth. Can the canny crooner solve the mystery before a Newcastle gang boss catches up with her? Set on Tyneside, Blood on the Tyne: Red Snow is book #3 in the Rosie Robson Murder Mysteries series. Purchase Link
True-born Geordie Colin Garrow grew up in a former mining town in Northumberland and has worked in a plethora of professions including taxi driver, antiques dealer, drama facilitator, theatre director and fish processor. He has also occasionally masqueraded as a pirate. Colin’s published books include the Watson Letters series, the Terry Bell Mysteries and the Rosie Robson Murder Mysteries. His short stories have appeared in several literary mags, including: SN Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Grind, A3 Review, Inkapture and Scribble Magazine. These days he lives in a humble cottage in Northeast Scotland.
My thoughts: this is a fast paced thriller set during one snowy winter in 1955. Without mobile phones or CCTV, the race is on to find a killer. All they can go on is Rosie’s memory and the evidence, all of which points in one direction but the prime suspect says it wasn’t him and scarpers.
Is there a new gang boss making a play for Newcastle? Rumours of a woman with a penchant for red hot pokers and a man with a scarred face have Rosie running scared, nowhere is safe and her friends are at risk too. Can Vic arrest the villains before anyone else gets hurt?
I was totally gripped, the pacing was relentless and I could not put this down. Rosie is a compelling protagonist and her friends and colleagues are a great bunch.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
“Welcome to the Brennenbach of Midnight! The Curse Hours have begun.”
West Germany, 1968
When ten-year-old David Saidel’s parents are murdered, he is sent to live with his grandfather in the anti-Semitic village of Brennenbach. Miserable and lonely, David finds solace in his kindly Grandpa Ernst, who has one strict rule: never go out after midnight.
When David breaks curfew to search for his missing dog, he discovers why Ernst is so serious about his curfew: Brennenbach is cursed. When midnight strikes, the town is thrown back to 1943, the height of Hitler’s reign.
The Nazi ghosts that infest Brennenbach are just as dangerous as they were in life. They’re hunting for David, thinking he is the last member of a family they’ve been ordered to destroy.
Through the help of a little girl named Maria Rahm, David sets out to end the Curse before it claims more victims.
Award-winning author Elyse Hoffman has crafted an expertly woven tale of World War II’s horrors – perfect for readers of Marcus Zusak’s “The Book Thief,” or Michael Reit’s “Beyond the Tracks.”
Check out the wonderful reviews on Goodreads and grab a copy today!
Elyse Hoffman is an award-winning author who strives to tell historical tales with new twists. She loves to meld WWII and Jewish history with fantasy, folklore, and the paranormal. She has written six works of Holocaust historical fiction: The Barracks of the Holocaust five-book series and The Book of Uriel. Elyse’s books are the way to go if you love history and want to read some unique stories.
Spring 1937: Teresa, a young Basque girl, is evacuated to London in the wake of the Guernica bombing. She thinks she has reached safety in the lofty halls of Rochester Place and the soothing arms of Mary Davidson, but trouble seeks her out wherever she goes…
Autumn 2020: Corrine, an emergency services operator, receives a call from a distressed woman called Mary. But when the ambulance arrives at Rochester Place – the address the woman gave them – she is nowhere to be found. No matter how hard she tries to forget, memories of Mary’s raw fear haunt Corinne and secrets, long-hidden in Corinne’s family tree, begin to surface.
Is Mary calling from beyond the grave? And what actually happened at Rochester Place all those years ago?
Set between the dusty halls of Rochester Place and the bustling streets of modern-day Tooting, this emotive, intricately layered mystery tells the spellbinding story of two people, separated by time, yet mysteriously connected through an enchanting Georgian house and the secrets within its walls. The perfect escapist read for fans of Kate Morton, Eve Chase and Lulu Taylor.
My thoughts: inspired by the author’s family, this is a moving and clever timeslip book, set between now and events in the Spanish Civil War and Second World War.
Sadly Spain’s horrific 1930s War is not taught much here, and what little I know I’ve learnt as an adult. But it was the precursor to the horrendous events of WW2, especially the massacre of Guernica. Which is where little Theresa is fleeing from.
Sent to safety in England by her elder sister, Theresa travels by sea with other refugee children. Offered a home by the kind and intriguing Mary, an Irish woman who speaks Basque and lives with her English husband in Rochester Place, she finds herself in a world unlike that she’s known. But Mary has secrets and a past too.
How these two are connected to Corinne, who works as an emergency services call handler, while her wife and sister-in-law run a family restaurant, selling the delicious food their mum used to make. After a strange phone call shakes her, Corinne and her historian uncle Robin look into Rochester Place and its occupants. Then she’s called to Ireland, where her grandmother is ill. And secrets are about to be revealed.
Moving and rather lovely, with several love stories mixed into the history, this is a heartwarming tale of found family, survival and love.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
1933. Hannah Snow is fleeing her unhappy marriage when she finds herself in a small hotel on the banks of Loch Ness. But when a monster is spotted in the depths of the waters, the press descends – and Hannah finds her hiding place is discovered. Someone has been looking for Hannah, and when they find her events will take a devastating turn…
Present day. True crime podcaster Scarlett finds herself intrigued by the mystery of Hannah Snow, wife of a promising government minister who disappeared in 1933 – just months before her husband also went missing, presumed dead. As Scarlett works to uncover the truth, she discovers a tragic family secret, and a story as murky as the depths of the loch where Hannah and her husband were last seen…
My thoughts: I really enjoyed this, Hannah flees her unfortunate marriage for a new life in Scotland on the banks of the Loch Ness, just as monster fever sweeps the land. Can she stay hidden or will someone from her past show up?
True crime podcaster Scarlett is on Hannah’s trail years later. Did she and MP husband Laurie end up in the Loch or did they manage to disappear to new lives back in the 1930s, before the internet and social media would make that impossible?
As Scarlett digs through the archives and talks to locals, falling for a monster hunter and fellow podder along the way, she learns not just some secrets from the past but ones from the present that might make her horrible ex Charlie finally go away.
Fun and cheering, I loved Hannah, a very modern woman who wants to be a journalist and not a trophy wife and certainly not in a sham marriage. Her adventures in Scotland lead to a whole new life and I cheered her, and Scarlett, who also needed a new start, on.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
The King has fled London with the drums of war ringing in his ears. Across the country, lines are being drawn and armies raised.
Influential royalist Lady Carlisle switches sides and presses spice trader Thomas Tallant and his partner Elizabeth Seymour into Parliament’s service.
Soon Thomas faces double-dealing in his hunt for a lethal hoard of gunpowder hidden on the river, while Elizabeth engages in a race against time to locate a hidden sniper picking off Parliamentary officers at will in the city.
The capital also witnesses a vicious gang of jewel thieves take advantage of the city’s chaos to go on the rampage, smashing homes and shops, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. They hand pick their targets but refrain from selling any of their loot. There are more questions than answers.
When war finally erupts, Elizabeth is caught in the brutalising carnage of Edgehill while Thomas joins the Trained Bands in their defence of the city. As he mans the barricades at Brentford, in a desperate rearguard action to repel Prince Rupert’s surprise attack, he realises the future of London rests in the hands of him and a few hundred troopers.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth believes she has identified the jewel thief and goes underground to trace his hoard.
But all is not as it seems.
Writing has been central to Mike Ward’s professional life. On graduating from university he became a journalist, working in newspapers and for the BBC. He then went into journalism education, teaching and researching journalism practice before becoming head of the UK’s prestigious Journalism School at UCLan. For the last eight years he has run his own content creation company.
My thoughts: we return to Thomas Tallant’s London, in the grips of the English Civil War (Charles I vs. Parliament). London is for Parliament and the King is in Oxford (which he named his capital) with his Royalist soldiers.
Thomas is hired by Parliament to find out where some stolen black powder is being smuggled out of London from, which he does. Getting himself involved with turncoats and conspirators. Can’t see any of today’s MPs on the frontline of a battle wielding a musket somehow!
Meanwhile Elizabeth, Thomas’ friend, has been asked by the King’s physician to assist him in his field hospital. Sickened and saddened by the chaos and death she returns to London angry and traumatised. She’s been tasked to find a jewel thief and us poking around the Goldsmith’s Guild, despite having been warned off. Will this help soothe her after witnessing the brutality of the battlefield?
It was interesting to read about the fighting in Brentford and the taking of Syon House – places I know, and battles that aren’t as well known as Edgehill. The Civil War was a time that saw families divided and brothers on opposite sides. Thomas’ father wants to remain neutral, in the hope that his trading won’t be interrupted, but that’s probably not going to work for long.
The historical facts (the war, the jewel thefts) are real, which adds depth to the story and allows the author to bring things to life that are usually just a list in a textbook. Another enjoyable outing for Thomas and Co.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Forty years in the making, Bob Mantel’s thrilling debut novel challenges today’s social standards with compelling characters while infusing the Big Apple’s unmistakable presence.
In The Velvet Badge: A New York Noir a tasteless nightclub run by a failed JFK assassination co-conspirator brings out the worst in 1970s New York. Songbird Sadasia Trayne runs into a disco-era buzz saw of wine, women, and murder when she hooks up with the Brooklyn-based creator of a notorious TV sitcom. Her frantic SOS to a long-lost love, the Big Apple’s closeted lesbian Chief of Police Detectives, drives this tale of memory and regret, compromise and topiary, politics and a corrupt press, Kris Kringle and twisted acts of love. Will the headline-grabbing sex crime she sets out to solve max out the Chief’s investigative skills or deep-six her career?
The Velvet Badge combines edge-of-your-seat storytelling with stone-cold hilarity and just a touch of holiday ho-ho-ho. A fast-paced novel embedded with elements of suspense and dark humor, The Velvet Badge is perfect for readers who enjoyed Meatpacking by Michael Heslin, The Burn by Kathleen Kent, or Cold Evidence by Robin James.
Mantel creates a world of mystery while infusing dark comedy in a fresh way. “The novel’s New York episodes were inspired by the 1970s city I lived in during my Columbia College days…I was a classic hick, struggling with classes and discovering the highs and lows of the city. Many of these stories found their way into The Velvet Badge,” he said.
Authentically reflecting the sights and sounds of the city he loves, Mantel’s talent for bringing the diversity of New York to life on the page may seem effortless, but it wasn’t always easy. “Like many other writers, I knew what I wanted to accomplish in my first book but didn’t know how to pull it off,” he said. “I worked on The Velvet Badge, off and on for many years, and even completed several drafts, but never to my satisfaction. I took it up again after I retired in 2017 and, this time, all the missing pieces seemed to fall into place–including an ending that I’d previously been unable to conjure.”
Bob Mantel was educated at Columbia College, where he won the Cornell Woolrich Award for Fiction, and the University of Chicago. He lives in New York and enjoys visiting cities that have ballparks and concert halls. The Velvet Badge is his first novel. Learn more at bobmantel.wordpress.com and follow him on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
Bob Mantel Blogger Q&A
How long did it take you to complete The Velvet Badge?
An embarrassingly long time–more than 40 years–although I didn’t work on it steadily and often left it untouched for years. One of my problems was taking Ulysses too much to heart and spending nearly a decade badly imitating Joyce’s prose. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, which is why I call that magnificent book “the great crippler of young adults.” Long story short: you may know what you want to write but have no idea how to bring it off. I completed any number of drafts until I finally figured out a decent ending for the book. After that, everything else finally fell into place.
Have you ever experienced writer’s/creator’s block? How do you get out of it?
Writer’s block for me turns out being a function of not having thought through my material to the point where it’s ready to work on. Whenever one crops up, I make a backup copy of the chapter I’m working on, save it as Chapter X-GARBAGE, then write away as well as I can, not expecting to keep much of what I’m producing. If I keep at it, I eventually understand how I need to shape my material and I can get back to my original draft, revise as needed and move forward.
How much of your work is autobiographical?
All of it, just like every first novel is autobiography. I’ve been inspired and stimulated by the places I’ve lived and the people I’ve known and loved. But I’m not out to draw their portraits “from life.” Instead, I’m interested in drawing on the autobiography of the emotions I felt about them to create unique places and characters that I’m free to work with as I choose.
You use a lot of what used to be called “hard jokes” in your fiction. Are you concerned about offending your readers?
No. The Velvet Badge is a hard-edge black comedy/murder mystery set largely in the 1970s. Much of the book’s humor derives from its describing characters in two ways: first, as they’d be seen in the 1970s and then authorially commenting from the present day. There’s shock value in the first and, hopefully, laughter and healing balm in the second. If any of my readers are looking for hate speech, they should track down the TV channels and websites offering plenty of that these days.
The Velvet Badge seems to contain quite a few references to operas and old movies. Could you mention just a few?
Name-dropping like that isn’t surprising when you consider what was going on in New York back when I first knew it. Take the book’s Oscar Wilde/Richard Strauss “Salome” reference. Back in the day, standing room at the Met was three bucks–and didn’t come with subtitles! More importantly, you could get into any number of revival movie house double features up and down Broadway for only $2.50. There’s a big scene in “Badge” that riffs on “The Pride of The Yankees,” after the book previously sang the praises of the talented, ever-lovely Teresa Wright. Of course, a major plot point in “The Velvet Badge” is a direct homage to Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane.” And the book closes with a bit of dialogue straight-up stolen from Alida Valli in Carol Reed’s “The Third Man.”
What’s your favorite book-movie adaptation?
I’d have to say it’s a three-way tie between Raymond Chandler and Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye,” Thomas Pynchon and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” and Larry McMurtry and Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show.” By the way, if anybody wants to buy “The Velvet Badge” movies rights, please give me a call. I’m in the book.
Extract from The Velvet Badge
Faced with life’s deep dish pie of pain, Donny Damon always ordered his slices á la mode. It was a habit he’d acquired from his old man Harry, who’d been born in a land where the streets were paved with gold, days before the Blizzard of ’88 paralyzed the East Coast, and who did little to hang his hat on until 1923, when Harding’s sudden death out west landed brine-faced Coolidge in the Oval Office.
Silent Cal’s pronouncement that “the chief business of the American people is business” was a turning point for Harry Damon, inspiring the colorless street pug to scrape together whatever cash he could, marry the first woman he could fast-talk in front of an altar and make a go of “Damon Truss & Convalescent Supply” on New York’s Lower East Side. The driving force behind this enterprise’s success was the 35-year-old’s decision to have his child bride strut her fine, precocious stuff behind the shop’s plate-glass window, wearing little beyond a leg cast, neck brace and strategically placed Ace bandages. Since such a display was an insult to community standards, it drew the smutty-minded, bogus lame and halt to his establishment from a twelve-block radius and kept its cash register ringing for as long as Olivia Damon continued her risqué showcase.
Harry’s missus gave the act the hook during FDR’s first administration and would eventually divorce her husband claiming alienation of affection. But by then the small business owner hardly even remembered being married and had gone all in on racketeering practices that expanded Damon Truss ten-fold during the Great Depression. By the time the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he was piloting a regional wheelchair powerhouse while also heading a body bag monopoly in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. Damon’s stranglehold on these markets, however, couldn’t and didn’t last. America’s entry into World War II gave Feds the excuse they’d been waiting for to nationalize his enterprises rather than let Harry spend the next several years dodging profiteering charges.
Being put out to early pasture may have caught the wheelchair king off guard, but it couldn’t keep him and his enormous wad of buyout cash down for long. Within a few months, Mr. Damon was steering his Studebaker President north along the mighty Hudson to a sleepy river town founded by the Dutch and re-christened by the Brits to honor the neatly trimmed juniper bushes surrounding its village green. Or so the story went.
The actual name change to “Carvéd Hedge” dated only from the 1920s, when those eponymous hedges were first planted. Back then, local politicians and the chamber of commerce decided that a little fudged history would attract new business, along with a better class of people, and make the dusty old place a village to be proud of instead of the shoulder-shrug whistlestop it had been sliding into for decades. This effort hadn’t made much of a difference. But every once in a while, a resident would surprise the neighbors, show some talent or initiative and put the community’s general mediocrity to shame.
Sharpie Bev Boslegovich, for example, parleyed her ability to recognize a born patsy when she saw one into a thriving local real-estate business. So when Harry Damon turned his big sedan onto Main Street in 1942, he couldn’t even put the damn thing in park before “Hiya, handsome! Lookin’ to settle down?” came winging his way from under a mop of Shirley Temple curls.
Since sparkplug Bev believed in telling people what they wanted to hear, she gave a twist to her town’s Jazz Age creation myth that a mark like Damon would be powerless to resist. Namely (“Turn left at this corner!”) that an eyesore property, sitting idle on her books for months, had once been the home of a profligate Tory (“You know, before the Revolution.”) who spent the bulk of his fortune developing a topiary wonderland of trees, bushes and shrubs that a small army of gardeners had stripped, clipped, bent, and chiseled into a stunning array of geometric and animal-shaped confections.
Not a word of this was true, of course, but Bev understood Damon had journeyed to her little piece of heaven on earth because he was in the market for prestige as much as a home. To hear her tell it, the property she was hawking was the true inspiration behind the name of the village that tripped so lightly off her tongue. “Why else would they call it Carvéd Hedge?” Bev demanded as much as wondered.
Moved by the realtor’s aggressive eloquence, Damon’s gullibility made him believe wholeheartedly that the unruly mess he was looking at was precisely the spot where a vital, breathing, European artform had jumped species and taken root in Colonial America. This despite the fact that the “estate,” as Bev called it, was nothing more than a derelict saltbox with a sagging catslide roof, centered on a half-acre lot and thick with oversized, misfit verdure that, if you wanted to believe in it hard enough, at one time might conceivably have served some decorative function. Boslegovich sealed the deal when she told him, “There are some things you just can’t put a price on.” Damon barely flinched when she quoted a ridiculously high ask and bought the place for cash. “None of that buying-on-time crap for me,” he crowed. It was the maraschino cherry topping a forced retirement that had already started to melt.
My thoughts: this was a crazy, black humoured book taking in JFK’s assassination, a nightclub decorated in homage (?) to that event, a singer who might be amazing but who would ever know when she gets involved in the horrific murder of a lesbian TV producer, and turns to her ex – the Velvet Badge of the title – female chief of detectives, Ellia, who grew up in a house with Christmas obsessed parents and is still scarred by her younger brother’s death.
The murder seems fairly straightforward – the laundry delivery man fits the detective’s motive and suspicions very well, maybe a little too well. But as long as there’s no murder similar to this, he’ll do. There are other bodies, but if you can’t find them, are they there?
A local “businessman” has an interesting story to tell, tying up a few loose ends, but the damage is done and various people (like the mayor) just want this all to go away. A wandering, freewheeling format, slowly connecting the characters together is a bit confusing at first but then brings it all together at The Umbrella Man.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 