Jill Churchill, Grace and Favor: In The Still Of The Night

In the Still of the Night: A Grace and Favor Mystery by Jill Churchill

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the first I read of the Grace and Favor books, book 2 I believe. It was the only one at the nearest library they had (the other one had most of the others). This one got me hooked, but it isn't my favorite, Someone To Watch Over Me is my favorite.



The plot of this one, if I remember (being a few months ago that I read the one's I've read) was pretty good. It wasn't the easiest one I've read, so that's good.



Again, as with the other Grace and Favor books, you get a bit of a history lesson with your read.





Blurb from Author's site:



In the Still of the Night

Lily Brewster and her brother Robert have all the appearances of being rich even though the family fortune went out the window with the crash of 1929. But thanks to great-uncle Horatio who left them Grace and Favor Cottage, a huge mansion, the Brewsters live in the style which they had become accustomed. To make sure they didn't go back to being society bums, crafty old Horatio attached some strings to his bequest–the poor Brewsters have to work for money to survive When Lily came up with the ideas to turn a profit by luring their society friends to Grace and Favor for a paying weekend, she didn't plan on a who-dun-it with one guest dead, one missing, and Lily and Robert chasing a murderer.


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Jill Churchill, Grace and Favor: Someone To Watch Over Me

Someone to Watch Over Me by Jill Churchill

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I liked this book the best of all the Grace and Favor books. The author enlightened me to even more of 1930's history, such as The Bonus Army, the despicable actions of Hoover and MacArthur (yes, THAT MacArthur) with the somewhat unwilling participation of Eisenhower as well. (this last bit I found out while researching the Bonus Army and the horrid things they went thru due to the mistreatment and disregard of the government...sound familiar?)



Of all of Jill Churchill's books, this one I most recommend. This one has a period of our history that we forgot and need to remember, especially during our own time of war today. We need to make sure, irregardless of our own opinions of the war- for or against- that those that fight and defend us in the USA and other places are treated with respect and dignity and taken care of when they return.



Blurb from Author's Site:



SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME

Lily and Robert each have a murder to solve. Robert’s is discovered when he’s got helpers taking down the old ice house in the woods to reuse the wood. It’s an almost mummified body of a well-dressed man. Robert can’t stand not knowing how and when and why he got there.



Meanwhile, Lily is at the Voorburg Ladies League meeting when Police Chief Walker arrives to tell one of the other women her husband’s been killed. Lily is determined to get to the bottom of this before the Police Chief can.



While lots of people’s old secrets are revealed and picked apart by the brother and the sister, Jack Summer has gone to take a first hand look at the Bonus March going on in Washington D.C. and gets into the thick of the horror there.



There are some surprising twists and turns as all three stories are resolved.


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Jill Churchill, Grace and Favor: Love For Sale

Love for Sale: A Grace & Favor Mystery by Jill Churchill

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
As much as I like the Grace and Favor books, this one just didn't live up to the others as much. But it is still good and I do recommend.



It was a weird, convoluted read, and while you may pick the "bad guy" out early on, and the reasons behind it, it still takes you for a mental rollercoaster of a ride trying to sort out the stories.





Blurb from Author's site:



LOVE FOR SALE

Sister and brother Lily and Robert Brewster raised in the lap of luxury, may no longer have a penny to their names. But at least they have a roof over their heads — which is more than may can say in this bleak November of 1932. And now there’s even some cash rolling in, since the Brewsters have taken part time teaching duties at the local grade school.



But their luck turns sour when a mysteriously and badly disguised stranger comes to Grace and Favor wishing to pay generously to have a very secret meeting there shortly before the national election of either Hoover or Roosevelt. Are they gangsters? Pretty Boy Floyd is rumored to be somewhere near. Worse yet, are they a rabid political group trying to stop Roosevelt being elected at last minute by making up some real dirt about him?



When one of the mystery guests is murdered in his bath, and Mary Towerton’s little boy is kidnapped, the pace becomes hectic. In the end a local woman Lily has made friends with, a secretary from upriver, and one of the children at the school provide the vital clues that allow Lily to put two and two together, but only after a wild car chase with three women drivers.




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Jill Churchill, Grace and Favor: It Had To Be You

Who's Sorry Now?: A Grace & Favor Mystery by Jill Churchill

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really enjoy Jill Churchill's Grace and Favor books, but haven't read nearly enough of them, LOL. I learned a lot of history just by researching some of the social situations she mentions and/or alludes to in her books.



This book was a really good read, but I did kind of wonder about the swastika mentioned in the book. I wondered if that really would have had such an impact before WWII as after. That would be my only real criticism.



Recommended for any who enjoy mysteries set in the depression era, or anyone who loves cozies.





Blurb from Author's site (www.cozybooks.com):



WHO'S SORRY NOW?

Sister and Brother duo Lily and Robert Brewster may not have a penny to their names, but at least they are in good company. Times are bad for the whole country in 1933. The town's post office burned down and wasn't replaced, so the mail gets dumped off in bags by trains going up the Hudson River, and people have to rummage for their letters and packages.



When a shocked Robert hears a group of gossipy old women going through other people's mail and even threatening to destroy it, he knows something must be don. Perhaps the kindly porter at the train station who recently help haul bags and trunks for a young woman and her newly arrived German Grandfather, would sort throught the mail in a orderly and private fashion.



But when the porter is found dead, and a red swastika is painted on the German's tailor's new shop window, Robert knows that something deeper and more sinister is going on. Even back at Grace and Favor, the town's best handymen, Harry and Jim Harbinger, are hired to pull out some dead bushes in front of the house, a very old skeleton is is found tanlgled in the roots, which Lily finds interesting when a visiting archeologist carefully unearths it. Robert's not happy about this.


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Jill Churchill, Grace and Favor: Who's Sorry Now, Bk

It Had to Be You: A Grace & Favor Mystery by Jill Churchill

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I must say, I like the Grace and Favor books better than the Jane Jeffrey books (not that I dislike them). In these books, I learned a bit of history I didn't learn in high school. But then that isn't hard considering that in the south that I grew up in most of American History classes revolved around the Civil War. The era just before FDR came to be president is a bit of a blur. Churchill's books, while fiction, helped fill in some details...and trust me, I checked if some of these were real incidents or not. And they were.



These are not "heavy thinking" books, they are cozies to be enjoyed as a relatively quick read. Despite that, I really recommend these books for history buffs as well as cozy readers.







Here is the blurb from the author's site:



IT HAD TO BE YOU

CIt’s the 3rd of March 1933, the day before Franklin Roosevelt’s inauguration and Robert goes to Washington D.C. for the event. While he’s gone, Lily is visiting a nursing home close to Grace and Favor. The owner, Miss Twibell, an experienced nurse who owns it, is minus an assistant nurse. She wants to hire Lily and Robert.



One of the patients, a nasty old man, Sean Connor, is the only patient who is seriously ill, and not expected to live very much longer. The first day the Brewster’s work there, he goes into a coma and dies. Nobody’s surprised until it’s revealed that he’s been murdered. Chief of Police Walker can’t imagine why somebody would bother to murder old Mr. Connor when he had only hours to live. Several people visited that morning.



Walker also has another crime to deal with. A young man was reported to have been pushed into an almost frozen lake near a town upriver before last Christmas. No body was found. Now, when the ice started the spring break-up, a body came to the surface, so deteriorated that nobody can figure out who it might be. Walker interviews some of the neighbors. Then having given the temporarily disabled chief of police a bit of advice, before going back to Voorburg.



Walker, helped along by Lily and Robert’s snooping, begins to see the patterns in both crimes starting to turn into good theories. But lacking solid proof, he has to call on Lily and Robert to acquire a vital piece of evidence.




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Winspear, Jacqueline: An Incomplete Revenge


Book excerpt: In her fifth outing, Maisie Dobbs, the extraordinary psychologist and investigator, delves into a strange series of crimes in a small rural community.

With the country in the grip of economic malaise, and worried about her business, Maisie Dobbs is relieved to accept an apparently straightforward assignment from an old friend to investigate certain matters concerning a potential land purchase. Her inquiries take her to a picturesque village in Kent during the hop-picking season, but beneath its pastoral surface she finds evidence that something is amiss. Mysterious fires erupt in the village with alarming regularity, and a series of petty crimes suggests a darker criminal element at work. As Maisie discovers, the villagers are bitterly prejudiced against outsiders who flock to Kent at harvesttime--even more troubling, they seem possessed by the legacy of a wartime Zeppelin raid. Maisie grows increasingly suspicious of a peculiar secrecy that shrouds the village, and ultimately she must draw on all her finely honed skills of detection to solve one of her most intriguing cases.

Rich with Jacqueline Winspear's trademark period detail, this latest installment of the bestselling series is gripping, atmospheric, and utterly enthralling.

This is definitely my favorite so far of the series. Especially considering I found the last one to be most depressing. Hope seems to be returning to Maisie's world, despite her suffering one more loss in this book. And the portent of WWII looms in the not so distant future.

Winspear's books are very much a recommended read, and as I have now caught up with the books so far published, I shall sit here and sulk until another comes out...

For those who know a little as I do about the Depression era in the UK as compared to the US, this would help realize the helplessness and hopelessness and despair of the time.

Here is a passage that I found rather moving:


Quote:
'"In some ways, Maisie, similar work has engaged us of late. We --- my contacts overseas and my colleagues in London --- are most concerned with a growing frustration on the other side of the Channel. The depression we find ourselves in here, and which is causing havoc in America, is allowing people to give weight to that which divides them, rather than to the shared experiences and elements of connection they see mirrored in their fellow man. There are those in Germany who would use discrimination to elevate their politics, which gives us cause for disquiet. And on the continent in Spain, inequities threaten to become incendiary. There are many people, Maisie --- and I confess, I am among their number --- who believe our peace to be only so resilient and who fear another war."
"I pray it doesn't come to that, Maurice."
"Yes, pray, Maisie. Do pray."
And as her beloved mentor regarded the vista before him, his hands clenched on the arms of his chair, Maisie reached across and placed her hand on his.'



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Winspear, Jacqueline: Messenger of Truth

Book cover:

London, 1931. ON the night before the opening of his new and much-anticipated exhibition at a famed Mayfair gallery, Nicholas Bassington-Hope falls to his death. The police declare the fall an accident, but the dead man's twin sister, Georgina, isn't convinced. When the authorities refuse to conduct further investigations and close the case, Georgina---a journalist and infamous figure in her own right---takes matters into her own hands, seeking out a fellow graduate from Girton College: Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator.

The case soon takes Maisie to the desolate beaches of Dungeness in Kent, as well as the sinister underbelly of the city's art world. And while navigating her way into the heart of the aristocratic yet bohemian Bassington-Hopes, Maisie is deeply troubled by the tragedy of another, quite different family in need.

In Messenger of Truth, Maisie Dobbs again uncovers the dark legacy of the Great War in a society struggling to recollect itself in difficult times. But to solve the mystery of the artists's death, she will have to remain steady as the forces behind his fall come out of the shadows to silence her.

Following on the bestselling Pardonable Lies, Jacqueline Winspear delivers another vivid, thrilling, and utterly unique episode in the life of Maisie Dobbs.

Okay, first off, this is an exceptional book. Delving into the mysteries and lives of the art world and the plot line of this story. Great book. Highly recommended.

But.....I think I hated this book. It is so filled with pain and despair that it affected my mood, or maybe it was my mood that affected how I related to the book, who knows. Several of the plot twists I probably could have lived without, personally. But they do not take away from the book, it really just enhances the emotions that the characters in the book are going thru.

But one pet peeve: I know we live in a time of "liberation" and "self-sustaining" lifestyles for women. I'm all for a strong female character. But it seems that time and time again, I am drawn to these series where the female lead is "doomed" "meant to" (whatever) be alone. As someone who is alone, I find it really irritating. It is all well and good to have characters who are so self assured that they don't "need" anyone else to make them whole. That is really great. But it seems to be a trend to have female characters standing alone rather than in a compatible relationship with whomever.

Not to take away from the character of Maisie Dobbs. It is just that by this time you've seen her go thru so much pain and desolation, that you just hope and pray that she finds someone, if not a mate/soul companion, then a truly good friend that she can enjoy life with. She is by now seeming to be so isolated. I hope that in the next installment, she starts living "outside/with-out" herself and has some joy in her life.

Okay, here are some of my favorite passages in the book...

[Billy] "So, what you're sayin' is that I've just got to swallow it and go on wiv me job."

Maisie nodded. "Look at the world beyond your immediate emotion, the immediate fury of inequality. Choose your battles, Billy."

The sea lapped even closer, though Maisie remained in place, her hands holding her collar to protect her neck. It's because it's the beginning, and also the end. That was what she loved about the place where the water met the land---the promise of something fresh, a suggestion that, even if what is happening now is to be suffered, there is an end and a beginning. I could sail away on that beginning, thought Maisie, as she turned to leave.

Something had been ignited within her in that house. If her soul were a room, it was as if light were now shining in a corner that had been dark. And she'd been touched by something less tangible, something she'd found among people who saw nothing unusual in painting trees on walls. Perhaps it was the freedom to strike out on one's own path, seeing not a risk in that which was new, only opportunity.

---but Nolly is the eldest, and that's almost like being another parent.

Winspear, Jacqueline: Pardonable Lies

Book cover excerpt:

In the third novel of this bestselling series, London investigator Maisie Dobbs faces grave danger as she returns to the site of her most painful memories from the Great War to resolve the mystery surrounding a pilot's death.

Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone. Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe. Every once in a while, a detective bursts on the scene who captures readers' imaginations---and hearts---and doesn't let go. And so it was with Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs, who made her debut just three years ago in the eponymous first book of her series and is already on her way to becoming a household name.

In the third novel of this unique and masterly crime series, a deathbed plea from his wife leads Sir Cecil Lawton to seek the aid of Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator. As Maisie soon learns, Agnes Lawton never accepted that her aviator son was killed in the Great War, a torment that led her not only to the edge of madness but also to the doors of those who practice the dark arts and commune with the spirit world.

Maisie accepts the assignment--determined to prove Ralph Lawton either dead or alive--and in doing so is plunged into a case that tests her spiritual strength, as well as her regard for her mentor, Maurice Blanche. The mission also brings her together once again with her college friend Priscilla Evernden, who served in France and who lost three brothers to the war--one of whom, it turns out, had an intriguing connection to the missing Ralph Lawton.

Following on the heels of the triumphant Birds of a Feather, Pardonable Lies is the most compelling installment yet in the chronicles of Maisie Dobbs, "a heroine to cherish" (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review).

I continue to love this series, but this one is a most troubling installment. Maisie goes thru a "dark night of the soul" that threatens her stability. You travel with her through her roller coaster of a case. Actually, there are 3 cases, and somehow they all have a connection. But the devastation to Maisie herself is really what moves this installment. Her relationship with her late mother is dipped into a little bit more. The spirituality side of Maisie comes thru even more here, and is what helps her deal with her memories of the war, a betrayal of trust, and attempts on her life. Quite an emotional tale, this one.

I have a hard time reviewing these books without giving something away, which is why I include the book cover excerpts. Needless to say, I haven't been disappointed by this series yet, and truly doubt I will be.

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Winspear, Jacqueline: Birds of a Feather

Book cover detail:

Jacqueline Winspear's marvelous and inspired debut, Maisie Dobbs, won her fans from coast to coast and raised her intuitive and resourceful heroine to the ranks of literature's favorite sleuths. Birds of a Feather finds Maisie on another dangerously intriguing adventure in London between the wars. It is the spring of 1930, and Maisie has been hired to find a runaway heiress. When three of the heiress's old friends are found dead, Maisie must race to find out who would want to kill these seemingly respectable young women before it's too late. As Maisie investigates she discovers that the answers lie in the unforgettable agony of the Great War.

This book is as good as the first, and lends even more insight into the world of the time and life after WWI. Details of the times that I first learned about in one of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody books. To reveal it here would be to give away an important plot detail in the book, so read it and find out.

Jacqueline Winspear is rapidly joining the ranks of my favorite authors. I enjoy a good read that requires me to pay attention to even some of the smallest details. She delves into a spiritual level of investigation that insists that we each take stock in our own intuition and instincts. That to deny them or to push them aside as not worthy or notice is to deny part of ourselves, and part of our inherent warning system. Maisie Dobbs is a character that prompts us to use more of our "brain power", our intellect, our observations, our gut urges, etc. Brava!

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