{"id":7170,"date":"2026-07-31T09:06:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T16:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=7170"},"modified":"2026-07-31T09:06:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T16:06:32","slug":"kathleen-marple-kalb-a-fatal-flourish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/kathleen-marple-kalb-a-fatal-flourish\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathleen Marple Kalb: A Fatal Flourish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ella Shane #6<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A Fatal Flourish<\/em> is the sixth book in Kathleen Marple Kalb\u2019s wonderful series about Ella Shane, a star of the Metropolitan Opera in Gilded Age New York.\u00a0 Ella is a mezzo-soprano who is known for playing male roles, and she is an expert swordswoman, a skill which has proven useful while chasing criminals.\u00a0 She grew up in a tenement on the Lower East Side, as the orphaned daughter of a Jewish mother and an Irish Catholic father.\u00a0 A famous singer discovered what a great voice Ella had and mentored her.\u00a0 Ella has since become a star and married Gil, a British duke, but she has never forgotten her past and is always generous to those less fortunate than she is.<\/p>\n

Ella has a group of friends from diverse backgrounds, who are regular characters in the series.\u00a0 Her cousin Tommy, a former boxing champion, manages her career.\u00a0 He is a closeted gay man in a relationship with Cabot, a member of a Knickerbocker family, a descendant of the earliest Dutch settlers of New York.\u00a0 Ella\u2019s closest female friends are the reporter Hetty, who is being courted by lawyer Rowan Alteiss, Marie, a soprano married to Paul, a judge, and Dr. Silver, a female physician.\u00a0 Father Michael, the priest, is a friend to all the characters in the book, and his cousin, a police detective, is simply known as \u201cCousin Andrew.\u201d\u00a0 Ella also has a friend on the wrong side of the law: the gangster Connor Coughlan, who grew up in the same neighborhood as Ella and Tommy and who, it is strongly suggested, was in love with Ella, even though she didn\u2019t return his affections.\u00a0 He gives Ella protection when she needs it.\u00a0 Ella also considers her servants part of her family.\u00a0 Her cook, Mary O\u2019Hanlon, is being courted by Ella\u2019s cousin Rafe, a handyman who is studying to be an accountant, and her maid, Rosa, wants to be a writer.\u00a0 Recently added to Ella\u2019s family circle, after her marriage to Gil, are her Scottish mother-in-law, the Countess, and her younger stepson Jamie, a delightful young man who is studying criminology.<\/p>\n

This book takes place in 1901, as Ella is touring in San Francisco and receives the news of Queen Victoria\u2019s death.\u00a0 Gil must go to London to attend the Queen\u2019s funeral, while Ella returns to New York.\u00a0 It is interesting to read about the various characters\u2019 reactions to the Queen\u2019s death.\u00a0 The Scots, including Hetty and the Countess, mourn her, while the Irish members of Ella\u2019s family don\u2019t feel sad at all, since they blame the Queen for allowing their families to starve.<\/p>\n

As soon as Ella arrives in New York, she learns that her arrogant, snobbish older stepson, Charles, has been arrested for murder following a bar brawl where he punched a man who hit his head and died.\u00a0 Ella had not met Charles until that point, but she knows that he, unlike Jamie who took a liking to her immediately, opposed his father\u2019s marriage to her.\u00a0 We find out why: Charles has absorbed the values taught to him in his British public-school upbringing, and he despises both the Irish and Jewish sides of Ella\u2019s family, and the fact that she\u2019s an opera singer.\u00a0 He also hates the thought of another woman taking his mother\u2019s place.\u00a0 Jamie had the same background, but he was never the heir, so these values were not as important to him.<\/p>\n

Ella, Tommy, and Jamie visit Charles in prison, and the young man has nothing but contempt for his stepmother but comes to realize she represents the only hope of saving his life.\u00a0 She convinces her friend Rowan Alteiss to defend Charles, even though Charles is so unpleasant that Alteiss tells her he will have a hard time gaining sympathy for him from a jury.\u00a0 The best hope is to argue self-defense, but Alteiss warns Ella that, unless any more evidence turns up, Charles will be convicted of manslaughter, at the very least.\u00a0 The fight happened in the red-light district of Five Points, where it is hard to find witnesses who are willing to talk.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Ella has been suffering from morning sickness and suspects she is pregnant.\u00a0 When she, accompanied by her solicitous mother-in-law, tries to go to Dr. Silver about her symptoms, she learns that the doctor has been arrested on a charge of obscenity brought by Maitland, an Assistant Commissioner of Police.\u00a0 Ella has encountered Maitland before and knows he is a blackmailer, and worse, but she can\u2019t expose his corruption without also exposing a secret in one of her friends\u2019 families.\u00a0 She does arrange for the doctor to be released quickly, and she finds out she is indeed pregnant.\u00a0 She sends Gil a telegram, and he comes rushing to her side.<\/p>\n

Before Gil\u2019s return, though, Ella has learned that a British aristocrat has been in New York, looking for him and speaking of him in a menacing manner.\u00a0 She also learns from the gangster Connor Coughlan that someone has taken out a contract to kill her, but we don\u2019t know if this is the same person who threatened Gil or not.\u00a0 In another development, the police are planning a raid on the Five Points gangs, and Connor is in trouble.\u00a0 Ella is sure Charles was set up in his fight in Five Points, and there might be some connection to the planned raids.<\/p>\n

The plot takes many twists and turns along the way, which I will not spoil.\u00a0 Not only is Ella dealing with her pregnancy and all the hopes and fears associated with it, as well as the arrests of Charles and the doctor, the police raids, and the threats against her and Gil, but there are also a couple of romantic subplots among members of Ella\u2019s circle.\u00a0 Most of these are resolved or at least are heading toward a resolution.<\/p>\n

I must say that the mystery aspect of this novel is not as strong as in some of the others in Kalb\u2019s series.\u00a0 I guessed who the villain was as soon as that character was introduced, and there\u2019s no pool of suspects.\u00a0 But there is plenty of suspense about how the villain will be caught, and how things will turn out for Ella\u2019s friends and family.\u00a0 To me, the mystery aspect is not the main point of the book.\u00a0 The strength is in the characters of Ella and her circle.\u00a0 They are all lovable characters, and a new book in the series feels like a visit with old friends.<\/p>\n

I do not know if this is the last book in the Ella Shane series or not.\u00a0 I hope it isn\u2019t, but I know the series has had its problems.\u00a0 The first book was published at the beginning of the pandemic, then the original publisher dropped the series after three books.\u00a0 I have to say, though, that the cover art didn\u2019t help.\u00a0 It made the books look silly, when they\u2019re not.\u00a0 Luckily, another publisher took up the series and has published the three most recent books.\u00a0 At one point, I heard the publisher was in financial trouble, but I hope this is no longer the case.\u00a0 If this is the end, I will miss Ella and her friends, but if not, I am looking forward to meeting them again.\u00a0 I highly recommend the series to fans of Rosemary Simpson, Alyssa Maxwell, the late great Victoria Thompson, and, especially, Barbara Paul, who also wrote mysteries set in New York\u2019s opera world, at a slightly later time.\u00a0 —\u00a0Vicki Kondelik<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ella Shane #6 A Fatal Flourish is the sixth book in Kathleen Marple Kalb\u2019s wonderful series about Ella Shane, a star of the Metropolitan Opera in Gilded Age New York.\u00a0 Ella is a mezzo-soprano who is known for playing male roles, and she is an expert swordswoman, a skill which has proven useful while chasing … 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":[2575,2574,557,10,410,1472,555,273],"class_list":["post-7170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1901-san-francisco","tag-a-fatal-flourish","tag-ella-shane","tag-historical","tag-kathleen-marple-kalb","tag-level-best-books","tag-opera","tag-vicki-kondelik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7170","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=7170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7172,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7170\/revisions\/7172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}