Sparks & Bainbridge #6
Simply put, the Sparks & Bainbridge historical mysteries are among the best of their kind being written at the moment. In the uncertainty of post-war London, series protagonists odd couple Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge run The Right Sort, a marriage bureau. Iris is a working-class woman who operated as an espionage agent during the war, and Gwen is a titled member of the upper class, a war widow raising a son with the intermittent help of her former in-laws. The yin and yang of Iris and Gwen works perfectly, and they have drawn ever closer through the now six books in this wonderful series.
As the book opens, Iris and Gwen are searching for a space to hold a New Year’s Eve ball for their unmatched clients, but, coming up empty, find themselves forced to turn to Iris’ boyfriend Archie. Archie is what was known back then as a spiv and what would now might be termed a gangster, but he’s actually chiefly a good guy, who, as it happens, has just bought a fixer-up club, the White Palace, which ought to serve quite nicely. The women decide to inspect the premises, and as Gwen takes a look at the work in the basement, a wall collapses and a skeleton pops out. And that’s just the first elegantly laid out chapter. But Montclair is not only great at the set up, but also the follow through, as the story that evolves from this beginning remains just as delightful.
Things take another turn as Iris gradually makes her relationship with Archie public, beginning with the matter of him meeting her mother, a liberal MP. Then there’s a family wedding to attend on Archie’s side, the nuptial couple set up by The Right Sort. Unsurprisingly, disaster strikes at the wedding, and Archie ends up out of commission, leaving the two women to take up the task of discovering who injured him, as well as trying to unearth the identity of the skeleton which was apparently deposited in the club basement sometime in the 1920s.
Gwen, who has recently been set free from the shackles of the “lunacy court” (The Lady from Burma) and starting to recover a bit from the loss of her husband, has decided to start stepping out a bit on her own. She has two very different prospective suitors on tap, one from her own class and one from Archie’s neck of the woods.
The latter, named River, forms a bond with Gwen over snooker (a British form of pool), when she, having been taught by a master, surprisingly trounces him. Montclair often has a topic that’s of interest – in the last novel, it was bugs – in this one, it’s snooker, and there are some wonderful scenes betraying passion and interest on the part of the author, who is skilful enough that these parts advance the story while remaining informative and entertaining. Montclair has also carefully set up and fleshed out the characters in these books, so Iris’ worry over Archie (and what to reply to a certain question he’s asking), and Gwen’s new taste of freedom have extra resonance for those of us who have read the whole series, although you can certainly enjoy this one and its snapshot of gang life in London in the 40s on its own.
As always Montclair’s intelligent wrap up of the story is more than satisfying, with the extra kick of a cliffhanger at the end, making this reader even more eager for further developments in the next volume. — Robin Agnew