{"id":3371,"date":"2019-11-04T16:40:45","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T00:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3371"},"modified":"2019-11-04T16:40:45","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T00:40:45","slug":"allison-montclair-the-right-sort-of-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/allison-montclair-the-right-sort-of-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Allison Montclair: The Right Sort of Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is one of the most intelligent and funny first novels I\u2019ve read in a long while.\u00a0 Set in immediate post WW II London \u2013 any fan of Call the Midwife<\/em> will be familiar with the setting \u2013 it\u2019s a period of time still governed by rationing and coupons, and people who have suffered some war trauma, be it loss, living through the Blitz, or actually fighting in the war.<\/p>\n

Our two central characters are Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge.\u00a0 Iris has a secret history of resistance fighting and espionage, none of which she can talk about; Gwen, an almost titled member of the upper classes, has lost her husband and is raising her son at her mother-in-law\u2019s after a stint in a mental asylum.\u00a0 She refuses to talk about it.<\/p>\n

Both of them put their smarts and practicality to work to found the Right Sort marriage bureau (apparently an actual phenomenon immediately post war), using their different skills to create a strong partnership.\u00a0 After meeting a client they go through their card files separately to come up with a match.\u00a0 After meeting with a Miss Tillie La Salle, they match her with an appropriate man and send off the necessary letters of introduction.<\/p>\n

Sadly, Tillie is killed and her potential date is arrested, but Iris and Gwen are sure he is innocent and spring into action.\u00a0 Gwen\u2019s mother in law is horrified, but she\u2019d be more horrified if she\u2019d known that Gwen not only visits the man in prison, but she and Iris go undercover to Tillie\u2019s funeral and meet her friends who are not only working class but criminal class.<\/p>\n

While this is not an unfamiliar set up for this type of historical cozy, there are several things that set this novel apart.\u00a0 One is simply the intelligence of the prose and the fast flying wit of the dialogue.\u00a0 One is the pleasantly complicated caper-ish plot, which involves black market stockings and forgeries.\u00a0 The tone is similar to those wonderful Ealing comedies of the 50\u2019s \u2013 most especially it reminded me of The Lavender Hill Mob <\/em>(1951).<\/p>\n

Remarkably, Montclair deftly folds into her clever plot some real depth of emotion and feeling.\u00a0 Iris and Gwen slowly learn to reveal their secrets to one another; their love lives and losses are examined; and all of it is carried off with a humor and wit that is pretty rare.\u00a0 There\u2019s a couple of side bar characters \u2013 Sally, Des and Archie \u2013 who are full blown wonders.<\/p>\n

Mostly there are Iris and Gwen, who between them have all the necessary skills to run a first class detective agency, including knife throwing and lock picking.\u00a0 There was not a moment when I was reading this delightful novel that I was not completely entertained.\u00a0 I\u2019m already looking forward to book two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is one of the most intelligent and funny first novels I\u2019ve read in a long while.\u00a0 Set in immediate post WW II London \u2013 any fan of Call the Midwife will be familiar with the setting \u2013 it\u2019s a period of time still governed by rationing and coupons, and people who have suffered some … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[256,10,254,255],"class_list":["post-3371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-allison-montclair","tag-historical","tag-london","tag-the-right-sort-of-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3372,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371\/revisions\/3372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}