Toronto

Maureen Jennings: November Rain

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This is the second entry in Maureen Jennings’ Paradise Café series, set in almost wartime Toronto (1936).  Detective Murdoch’s son, Jack, is now the “Detective Murdoch” in this series, which centers on young Charlotte Frayne, who has joined up with an older private investigator, Mr. Gilmore.  Mr. Gilmore is out of town as the story opens.

Charlotte arrives to open the office and discovers two women waiting for her, both of them in heavy mourning.  As Jennings lays her story parameters out in this first chapter, I think her rare capacity for both breaking a reader’s heart and reaching it have never been more strongly on display than they are here.  The women relate the story of the suicide of Gerald Jessup, the son of one and the wife of the other. read more

Maureen Jennings: Heat Wave

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This book is available on April 30, 2019.

The prolific Maureen Jennings begins a new series with Heat Wave, set in 1936 Toronto, which is experiencing a particularly brutal heat wave.  The main character is young Charlotte Frayne, a fledgling private eye who works for the usually unflappable Thaddeus Gilmore.  When she arrives at work the day the book opens, though, Mr. Gilmore has received a particularly nasty piece of hate mail, and he hurries off.

When he’s away, several things happen.  One of them is that owner of the nearby Paradise Café comes by and asks Gilmore and associates to look into some theft going on at his restaurant. The other is a call from Mr. Gilmore, informing Charlotte that his wife has been taken to the hospital, the victim of some type of attack. read more