{"id":4155,"date":"2021-08-15T09:10:30","date_gmt":"2021-08-15T16:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4155"},"modified":"2021-08-15T09:10:30","modified_gmt":"2021-08-15T16:10:30","slug":"anna-lee-huber-murder-most-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/anna-lee-huber-murder-most-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna Lee Huber: Murder Most Fair"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This book will be published on August 31.<\/em><\/p>\n

The fifth novel in Anna Lee Huber\u2019s Verity Kent series finds Verity surprised by the appearance of her German great aunt, Ilse.\u00a0 She\u2019s surprised for one thing because it\u2019s 1919, and in England, Germans weren’t especially beloved; and for another, she knows her aunt is elderly and fragile and wonders why she\u2019s made the arduous journey to her niece\u2019s side.<\/p>\n

The two have always been close, and during the war, when Verity worked for British Intelligence, she even placed a German deserter at her aunt\u2019s home for a time.\u00a0 Verity is still wracked with guilt over this.\u00a0 Her aunt has appeared with a new and beautiful young maid, as her long time maid has died of the Spanish flu.<\/p>\n

While this book is very much set in 1919, it\u2019s also echoed in today\u2019s universe, where we are dealing with a pandemic that\u2019s not quite over and that has caused a massive amount of loss.\u00a0 While Huber doesn\u2019t specifically deal with the 1918-1919 pandemic, she deals very much with the emotional aftermath.\u00a0 She frames it in terms of her 1919 characters, but the contemporary grief many of us are feeling is there on every page. This is a beautifully written and observed depiction of grief in its many forms.<\/p>\n

We see it in Ilse’s missing of her homeland; in Verity’s mother’s tartness and resentment, covering her grief for the loss of her son; and most of all in Verity’s stiff upper lip, stick your feelings deep down inside attitude.\u00a0 She\u2019s spent her time, instead of grieving, working for British intelligence, something, thanks to the official secrets act, she can\u2019t discuss. For a time, she\u2019d thought her beloved husband, Sidney, was dead. \u00a0Happily Sidney is alive, but Verity\u2019s brother Rob did not survive the war and she has not been able to force herself to return home since his death.\u00a0 It\u2019s caused a large rift between Verity and her mother.<\/p>\n

Because Ilse is so elderly and so fragile, and because Germans are so reviled in London, Verity decides the best place for her would be her parent\u2019s home in the Yorkshire Dales. Verity is returning home after a long time away. As anyone who returns to their childhood home after a long absence has found \u2013 things have changed.\u00a0 Verity\u2019s surviving brothers, Freddy and Tim, are also veterans dealing with the war\u2019s aftermath in different ways.\u00a0 Freddy is a physician with a wife and a child; Tim seems aimless and distracted.\u00a0 Her mother is angry that Verity has been away for so long.\u00a0 And Sidney is acclimating himself to Verity\u2019s childhood home.\u00a0 As he\u2019s a certified war hero with a medal to prove it, things are easier for him, though there\u2019s still a bit of a gulf between him and Verity as she refuses to give in to her grief.<\/p>\n

When her aunt\u2019s maid is discovered murdered, Verity and Sidney snap into detecting mode, making an appealing and intelligent sleuthing couple.\u00a0 While I enjoyed the mystery and the clever threads that lead to a solution, what I thought was so strong about this book was the depiction of Verity\u2019s grief.\u00a0 Reader, she does let it out, and the meticulous character delineation that is a hallmark of Huber\u2019s writing makes it all the more powerful.\u00a0 This is a beautifully written and told story.<\/p>\n

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This book will be published on August 31. The fifth novel in Anna Lee Huber\u2019s Verity Kent series finds Verity surprised by the appearance of her German great aunt, Ilse.\u00a0 She\u2019s surprised for one thing because it\u2019s 1919, and in England, Germans weren’t especially beloved; and for another, she knows her aunt is elderly and … 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":[656,89,655,162,657,653,654],"class_list":["post-4155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1919-pandemic","tag-anna-lee-huber","tag-britain-1919","tag-kensington-books","tag-murder-most-fair","tag-verity-kent","tag-yorkshire-dales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155","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=4155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4157,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155\/revisions\/4157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}