by Allison Montclair
Overall: The fifth book in the Sparks and Bainbridge mystery series, The Lady from Burma finds our heroines – the resourceful Iris Sparks and the sympathetic Gwendolyn Bainbridge – pulled into another pair of mysteries. When a new client comes to The Right Sort Marriage Bureau to consult with the ladies about finding a new wife for her husband, Gwen and Iris are intrigued. The woman has terminal cancer and wants to make sure her husband finds the best possible future mate – and then she dies, rather unexpectedly. Was it suicide, as it initially appears? At the same time, Gwen must cope with the fallout from her own struggles with mental health. When the nasty man serving as the conservator of her considerable assets is found dead, Gwen becomes the prime suspect. Can the duo keep Gwen out of jail, find out what happened to their client, and keep their business afloat?
Likes: I love snappy dialog, and this series delivers in spades. Think “The Thin Man” or any Bogart-Bacall movie and you’ll have the right idea. The setting, London immediately after World War II, is a less-covered historical period, and all the details are spot-on. The book credibly inserts Gwen and Iris into the investigation via a sympathetic young policeman, which is always a challenge with amateur detectives. Both main characters are fully developed and compelling in different ways, and there’s a full cast of interesting supporting characters. Mental health treatment in this era was often brutal and dehumanizing, and the book doesn’t shy away from describing the consequences of Gwen’s struggles with depression. And finally, the mysteries kept me reading through the very end, with plenty of entertaining twists and turns.
Dislikes: Iris is dating a gangster? I don’t love bad boys in my fiction, so this wasn’t my favorite choice. But this is a very minor criticism of a charming period mystery that I would highly recommend.
FYI: murder, suicide, depression, terminal illness, cancer, violence.
Thank you to the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, and to NetGalley for the advance copy. All opinions are my own.
Liz Helfrich 