{"id":6483,"date":"2025-06-13T04:58:19","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T11:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6483"},"modified":"2025-06-14T03:41:55","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T10:41:55","slug":"kathleen-marple-kalb-a-fatal-waltz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/kathleen-marple-kalb-a-fatal-waltz\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathleen Marple Kalb: A Fatal Waltz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ella Shane #5<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A Fatal Waltz<\/em> is the fifth book in Kathleen Marple Kalb’s wonderful series about opera singer Ella Shane, set in Gilded Age New York.\u00a0 Ella, a mezzo-soprano who specializes in singing male roles, and is an expert swordswoman, grew up in a tenement.\u00a0 She is the daughter of a Jewish mother and an Irish Catholic father, who both died when she was a child, and she practices both faiths, lighting Shabbat candles on Friday nights and going to Mass on Sundays.\u00a0 After a famous opera singer took her under her wing, Ella went on to have a very successful career, and by now she has overcome the poverty of her childhood, but she has never forgotten it, or the people who were kind to her.<\/p>\n

In the previous books in the series, Ella met and fell in love with Gilbert Saint Aubyn, Duke of Leith, who practiced as a barrister before unexpectedly inheriting the dukedom.\u00a0 Ella was reluctant to give up her independence at first, but she could not deny her deep love for Gil, and now the two are happily married.\u00a0 Ella is not entirely comfortable, though, with her new role as Duchess of Leith.\u00a0 She knows that certain people in aristocratic circles will shun her because of her background.\u00a0 Gil was a widower when they met, and he has two adult sons: Charles, who has stayed in England and refuses to meet Ella, and Jamie, a delightful young man who is now living with the couple in New York and studying criminology.\u00a0 We don’t know yet, exactly why Charles refuses to meet Ella, whether it’s because of her background or because he doesn’t want another woman to take his mother’s place.<\/p>\n

Besides Ella and Gil, the series is full of extremely likeable characters who, if you have read the books from the beginning, feel like old friends.\u00a0 Ella’s cousin Tommy, a closeted gay man and a boxing champion, manages her career.\u00a0 He has protected her since the two of them were children, and fighting off the bullies gave him the skills to be a boxer.\u00a0 Tommy’s “close friend,” as they say, is Cabot, the son of one of New York’s Knickerbocker families, descendants of the original Dutch settlers.\u00a0 They are. as Ella notes, New York’s equivalent of the British aristocracy.\u00a0 Then there is Ella’s friend Hetty, a reporter who wants to write about real news instead of fashion.\u00a0 She and Ella often ride their velocipedes (bicycles) in the park.\u00a0 Another good friend of Ella’s is Dr. Silver, a female physician.\u00a0 In this novel, Ella is concerned that, after several months of marriage, she has not yet gotten pregnant, and Dr. Silver tries to ease her worries.\u00a0 A third close female friend is Marie, a soprano and Ella’s singing partner, who is happily married to Paul, a lawyer, and has several children.\u00a0 It was Marie’s example that convinced Ella that she could have a happy marriage and a career at the same time.<\/p>\n

As this book opens, in 1900, Ella has just made her long-awaited debut at the Metropolitan Opera, to great acclaim.\u00a0 She and Gil are settling into a comfortable married life, despite Ella’s concerns over her failure to conceive a child, when the couple find themselves in the middle of two separate investigations.\u00a0 A friend of Gil’s asks him to investigate what happened when the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) visited New York in 1860.\u00a0 Queen Victoria is old and in failing health, so everyone knows it is likely the Prince will soon succeed to the throne.\u00a0 There is a rumor circulating at the British Consulate, that, when he was in New York, the Prince had an affair with a young woman, and that a child was born from this relationship.\u00a0 It is even said that the Prince secretly married the girl, which means their child would be legitimate, and the whole succession to the throne could be threatened.<\/p>\n

Ella helps Gil with his investigation, but his attempts to protect her cause tension between the two of them.\u00a0 He pretends she is a “typical” wife, whose “sphere” is in the home, so as not to draw attention to her role.\u00a0 She doesn’t know the reason for his comment about her “sphere” at first, and it infuriates her.\u00a0 Of course, he explains, and all is well again.\u00a0 Ella finds out that Cabot’s Great-Aunt Cecily is a friend of Lavinia, the mother of the girl who may have had the affair with the Prince.\u00a0 According to Lavinia, her daughter, Bertha, danced with the Prince at a ball at the Academy of Music.\u00a0 The two of them did indeed fall in love, but Bertha died not long afterwards, while staying with her brother and sister-in-law.<\/p>\n

Of course, Ella suspects there is more to the story than that, and a series of incidents proves her right.\u00a0 She and Gil have a sense that they’re being followed.\u00a0 Then a man from the British Consulate dies suddenly in a fall.\u00a0 At a reception following the dedication of a music collection to Ella, her former admirer, industrialist Grover Duquesne, collapses after drinking poisoned tea.\u00a0 Luckily, he recovers, but Ella wonders whether he was the intended victim or not.\u00a0 Then her acquaintance Colonel Vandergrift, a Civil War veteran whose sister was a friend of Bertha’s and was at the ball where she met the Prince, also suffers a sudden attack, and Ella is sure it’s connected to the case, and that someone is trying to silence anyone who comes too close to the truth. \u00a0Could Ella and Gil become the next victims?<\/p>\n

At the same time Ella and Gil are investigating the Prince of Wales’ affair and possible secret marriage, Ella pursues an entirely separate case.\u00a0 Her friend Marie’s husband Paul is taken by the police in a raid on a house of prostitution, here called a “sporting house.”\u00a0 Luckily for Marie’s marriage, he was not there as a customer.\u00a0 Marie tells Ella that Paul’s sister runs the sporting house, and he was there to visit her.\u00a0 Ella is confused because she knows that Paul’s only sibling is a brother.\u00a0 The brother felt that his soul was born into the wrong body, and that he is really female, so he has changed his name to Alice LaJoy and lives as a woman.\u00a0 Alice’s family, except for Paul, has cast her out, and the only way she can make a living is by running a house of prostitution.\u00a0 She is known to treat the prostitutes as well as she possibly can.<\/p>\n

Alice has paid protection money to the police, so no one knows why the house was raided, unless it was an attempt to blackmail Paul, which proves to be the case.\u00a0 To discover who could be behind the blackmail, Ella accompanies Tommy into the red light district, where they have connections among the criminal underworld.\u00a0 Ella disguises herself as Tommy’s younger brother Eddie.\u00a0 Connor Coughlan, a gangster who was a schoolmate of Ella and Tommy, and who has a soft spot for Ella, warns them of danger, but offers his protection.\u00a0 Even so, Ella knows someone is following her.<\/p>\n

Without giving too much away, I will say that the two cases come to satisfying conclusions.\u00a0 I hope this is not the last book in the series, because I would love to spend more time with Ella and Gil and their circle.\u00a0 The two of them obviously share a deep love despite their differences in background and certain opinions.\u00a0 Gil still has the old-fashioned belief that women should not have the vote, even though he is surrounded by strong women and should know better.\u00a0 I hope Ella convinces him to change his mind.\u00a0 A few relationships among Ella’s friends and their admirers are left unresolved, so there is definitely material for more books.<\/p>\n

I also applaud this series for its insight into the lives of gay and, in this particular book, transgender people, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.\u00a0 We see how difficult their lives were, and how they were shunned by their families and society.\u00a0 Even Tommy and Cabot, who live in relatively privileged circles, have to keep their relationship a secret except from their closest friends.\u00a0 Things have come a long way since then, but of course there is still quite a way to go.\u00a0 This book would make an excellent read for Pride Month, and I highly recommend the whole series.\u00a0 Each book can be read on its own, but it helps to read from the beginning and see how the characters and their relationships develop.\u00a0 I hope this is not the end, and that Ella Shane has many more adventures ahead.\u00a0 \u00a0— Vicki Kondelik<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ella Shane #5 A Fatal Waltz is the fifth book in Kathleen Marple Kalb’s wonderful series about opera singer Ella Shane, set in Gilded Age New York.\u00a0 Ella, a mezzo-soprano who specializes in singing male roles, and is an expert swordswoman, grew up in a tenement.\u00a0 She is the daughter of a Jewish mother 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":[2153,557,1469,10,410,1472,810,273],"class_list":["post-6483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-a-fatal-waltz","tag-ella-shane","tag-gilded-age-new-york-city","tag-historical","tag-kathleen-marple-kalb","tag-level-best-books","tag-opera-singing","tag-vicki-kondelik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6483","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=6483"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6487,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6483\/revisions\/6487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}