Saturday, August 13, 2016

Dancing Books: Sometimes you just have to get off the shelf and dance!



The White Cottage Mystery, by Margery Allingham

Imagine being a female author writing police procedural mysteries in the 1920s. Margery Allingham was born in 1904, and she wrote "The White Cottage Mystery" in 1928. She was one the most pre-eminent mystery writers during the "golden age" of detective fiction. Luckily for those of us who love classical mystery novels, Bloomsbury Reader has just reissued this book, and has plans to re-issue more of Allingham's books.

W.T. Challoner is a British detective with the "yard," and he has a young, adult son, Jerry. Jerry has an eye for pretty ladies and offers one, with a blister on her heel, a ride home while driving down a lovely country lane. Shortly after dropping her off, after stopping to put his car's roof up, and chatting with a local policeman, he hears a gun shot and a parlour maid comes running out of house screaming (what else?), "Police! Murder!"

Although constrained by her age to use only acceptable language, and polite terms, Allingham pushes the boundaries set by the British class system and the social mores affecting women. Published in 1928, the plot is actually set five years after the beginning of WW I, which makes several of the plot revelations quite shocking for the time. Allingham also depicts a darker undercurrent, one that is reminiscent of the early Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter Whimsey stories, and several of Agatha Christie's novels. Set in England, Paris and the Riveria, the book offers a wonderful window into those places after the Great War. If you appreciate a good mystery, with a calm, polite unfolding of the plot, and no gore, you will love this book. If you have read it before, revisiting Allingham is still a treat. I give the book five stars. (I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)


  • Print Length: 170 pages
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Reader; 1 edition (October 28, 2011)
  • Publication Date: October 28, 2011
  • Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC

When We Meet Again, by Kristin Harmel

"When We Meet Again," is much more than romantic novel. I read this book in one sitting because I was captured by Kristen Harmel's profound story telling ability and exquisite use of words. The protagonist in the novel, Emily Emerson, has lost her job as a syndicated relationship columnist at a local newspaper. Daily, she deals with the pain of her father's abandonment of the family when Emily was eleven. Her father also deals with the pain of abandonment, since he never knew his father. His mother, Emily's grandmother, Margaret Emerson, raised him alone. After Emily's mother died when Emily was 16, Margaret also raised Emily.

Now in her mid-thirties, Emily refuses her father's attempt to reestablish a relationship, and her anger at him is palpable. Her anger is mixed with her grief over Margaret's recent death, and her constant pain over giving her baby up for adoption when she was 18.

Out of the blue, a beautiful painting is sent to Emily from an art gallery in Munich. It is of a woman in a red dress in a field of sugar cane. The sky is a gorgeous violet. A note accompanies the painting. It says, "your grandfather never stopped loving her. Margaret was the love of his life." The mystery of this painting sends Emily to the former German POW camps near Lake Okeechobee, Florida, and to her grandmother's hometown in Belle Creek, Florida. There she learns that over 400,000 captured German soldiers were sent to POW camps across the U.S. in order to fill the labor shortage caused by World War II. Unlike the Nazis, the U.S. complied with the Geneva Convention, and treated the POWs well. Near Lake Okeechobee, the POWs harvested the sugar cane fields, and it is there that POW Peter Dahler met Margaret and fell in love. Emily also learns that her grandmother's family disowned her when she became pregnant with Peter's baby. Driven by the need to solve the mystery of the painting and the mystery of the disappeared Peter, Emily accepts her father's help and the pair go to Munich, Savannah, and Atlanta.

Kristen Harmel elegantly creates mysteries within mysteries within mysteries. The ending took my breath away, and I cannot praise this book enough. If you love good, well written books, you will love "When We Meet Again." (I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)