The French Girl

This psychological thriller by Lexie Elliott is set in contemporary London and the cast of characters are six former Oxford chums who shared a graduation vacation at a French country farmhouse, the summer home of one of the student's family. The titular French girl was Severine who lived next door and came over almost every day to lounge by the pool. While the six afterwards move on with their lives, Severine is reported missing, and because they were ostensibly the last to see her, they were all interviewed and unanimously swore they saw Severine board a bus to town the morning of the day they left. Now, ten years later, the body has been found at the bottom of the well that was on the property, and the same French detective has returned to London to interview them again.  Of all the group, Kate Channing seems to be the most distressed by this turn of events. As lies and betrayals are reveled, she learns that her boyfriend Seb had sex with Severine the night before they returned to England. She has the additional stress of having gone out on her own to open a headhunting business for lawyers rather than continuing. Her firm is struggling financially and she is afraid it will fail, unless she wins the big for a lucrative contract with a major law firm, where one of her former fellow students is employed and whose father is already a senior partner there. Kate has also started seeing the ghost of Severine everywhere she goes, first as a skeleton--like the one found at the bottom of the well--and then as the beautiful and aloof young woman they all knew that summer.

Library Journal notes that the characters are well developed and offers: "As the detective continues to dig, the shifting dynamics within the group will keep the reader guessing until the end...First novelist Elliott has done a phenomenal job of combining a whodunit with a Big Chill vibe." Booklist says the author, who holds a doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford (check out her bio), "launches a fiction-writing career with a smart, suspenseful thriller." The Washington Post also praises the character and setting development. "The author provides the perfect dose of character development before unveiling eerie details from her cast’s past, ensuring that we’re properly unnerved when their lives begin to unravel. Katie’s charming demeanor combined with her endearing self-awareness produce a main character that readers will find themselves begging, 'Please don’t be the murderer.' Her multifaceted relationships with her friends prove realistic and engaging, and the British pubs, flats and offices where their lives intertwine serve as relevant backdrops." I agree with their assessment of the structure: "While the crux of the story rests in events that occurred 10 years ago, Elliott opts to forgo the alternating past-and-present chapter layout and instead digs deep into her characters’ current lives, allowing history to reveal itself naturally through dialogue and memories. So stark is this difference from current thrillers that the book reads like a fresh genre." They conclude: "'The French Girl' demands a one-sit read." While I didn't finish it in one read, I did stay up late a couple of nights.

The Helsinki Affair

Set in relatively contemporary times, with regular flashbacks to the Cold War era, Anna Pitoniak has achieved a really engrossing and complex tale of espionage and betrayal.  Protagonist Amanda Cole is 2nd in command of the CIA station in Rome when she receives intel that a prominent American senator is going to be assassinated in Egypt the following day. In his typically dismissive way, her boss ignores the warning and the consequent death of the senator results in his early retirement and Amanda's promotion to station chief. She nurtures the relationship with the disaffected Russian bureaucrat who brought her the intel and sets up the usual channels for him to pass along anything of note. Anna returns briefly to Washington, D.C. for Senator Vogel's funeral. In the interim, the senator's aide brings a folder of notes to Amanda's father, Charlie Cole, who is still in the CIA though now in public relations, demoted after his post in Helsinki during the Cold War. He passes this information to Amanda, who is disturbed to find her father's name written on the last page of the notes. He asks to be left out of her investigation but expects she won't. 

Amanda teams up with a senior female agent, Kath Frost, to find out why the senator was killed and what role her father's past plays. The chapters on Charlie Cole's years at the Helsinki station slowly reveal the fateful events that catalyzed his downfall, but the ending will be a surprise.

Kirkus says of these two women characters: "The developing mentorship and friendship between Amanda and Kath as well as the unfolding of the Cole family’s unhappy past give the novel emotional weight and interest that add to its espionage plot. These excellent female spy characters deserve a series." Library Journal praises, " Pitoniak does everything well in this twisty spy thriller that should please the most discriminating connoisseur of the genre." The Washington Post also lauds Pitoniak for providing espionage lovers with capable female protagonists: "The novel, Pitoniak’s fourth, is atmospheric, well-researched, and packed with tradecraft, conspiracies, murder and, best of all, two fascinating women — Amanda Cole and Kath Frost, hard-nosed CIA agents who thrive on chaos and who are often smarter than their male counterparts."

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag

Although I have frequently heard about this series of books by Alan Bradley, I have never read one, so I was pleased to have the opportunity when I picked this book at my mystery book group holiday party. "All six [now actually 11 in the series] of the Flavia de Luce books published to date have been New York Times bestsellers, and are presently published in thirty-nine countries and thirty-six languages and the series has been optioned for television by the Academy Award-winning producer/director Sam Mendes..." This is the 2nd in the series, but can certainly be read as a stand-alone.

Our protagonist, Flavia, is an 11-year-old genius, living in the family manor house with her father and two tormenting (i.e., mean) older sisters. Her mother died in a climbing accident when Flavia was quite young.  Here is the review from Kirkus: "Almost 11 and keen on poisons, Flavia de Luce gets a second chance to broaden her lethal knowledge.

Roused from a detailed fantasy of her own funeral by a nosy jackdaw and the sound of a woman weeping, Flavia encounters Mother Goose—or so the pretty redhead introduces herself. Actually Nialla only plays the role in Rupert Porson’s puppet show, currently bogged down with van trouble. The vicar of Bishop’s Lacey suggests a mechanic and puts the puppeteer and his assistant up with the Inglebys at Culverhouse Farm. Rupert will repay the help by staging his production of “Jack and the Beanstalk” at St. Tancred’s parish hall. Oddly, although Rupert claims never to have met the Inglebys before, his Jack puppet bears the face of their son Robin, deceased five years ago in what a 1945 inquest termed misadventure. Inspector Hewitt, whose first acquaintance with Flavia (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, 2009) solved a murder, must wait patiently once more while Flavia chats up the neighbors, breaks into the library, researches the past, washes down scones, horehound candies and cucumber sandwiches with tea, and sabotages a box of chocolates meant for one of her tormenting sisters. A gloriously eccentric cast of characters, from Flavia’s dad, whose stamp collection is bankrupting the ancestral digs, to her sisters Ophelia and Daphne, who tell Flavia she was a foundling. There’s not a reader alive who wouldn’t want to watch Flavia in her lab concocting some nefarious brew."

The Historical Novel Society says of Flavia's character and methods: "Flavia is a keen observer and listener and appoints herself as their assistant. Rupert claims never to have visited the village previously, yet one of the marionettes at the performance bears an uncanny resemblance to a boy found hanging in Gibbet Wood many years before. Flavia’s suspicions are aroused, and she begins to investigate the boy’s death using guile, cheek and lies to gain information. In a memorably funny scene involving Mrs.Mullet, the family’s housekeeper, she learns about the boy’s inquest and post-mortem."

I will definitely go back and read the first Flavia adventure, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Here is an impressive summary of the awards and nominations that Bradley's first Flavia de Luce book garnered: "The first book of his Flavia de Luce series, “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie” won the 2007 Debut Dagger Award of the Crime Writers Association in the UK; the 2009 Agatha Award for Best First Novel; the 2010 Dilys, awarded by the International Mystery Booksellers Association; the Spotted Owl Award, given by the Friends of Mystery, and the 2010 Arthur Ellis Award, given by the Crime Writers of Canada for Best First Novel. “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie” has also been nominated for an Anthony Award, a Barry Award, and a Macavity Award. Besides appearing on the New York Times bestsellers list as a Favorite Mystery of 2009, “Sweetness” was also, among other honours, an American Library Association nominee as Best Book For Young Adults; a Barnes and Noble Bestseller, and was named to the 2009 Bloomer List. The audiobook version of “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie” was voted Best AudioBook by iTunes."

Tom Lake

You might think the title of Anne Patchett's 9th and newest novel (2023) would refer to a man with that name, but, in fact, it refers to a summer stock theatre in Michigan that has played a pivotal role in the life of narrator/protagonist Lara Nelson, nee Kenison. I have read 4 of Patchett's books and this would probably be my favorite. (See my posts on These Precious Days and The Dutch House; I also read Bel Canto long ago.) The reviews of this work are numerous and uniformly favorable, although a few did more elegantly express than I could a sense that this family/setting/dynamics were a little too perfect. Here is a short summary from Patchett's website:

"In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today."

Here are selections from and links to additional reviews: 

Kirkus: "Patchett expertly handles her layered plot, embedding one charming revelation and one brutal (but in retrospect inevitable) betrayal into a dual narrative that deftly maintains readers’ interest in both the pastand present action. These braided strands culminate in a denouement at once deeply sad and tenderly life-affirming. Poignant and reflective, cementing Patchett’s stature as one of our finest novelists."

The Guardian: "Patchett’s new novel, in which a mother tells her daughters about her early romance with a famous actor, is a gentle but revealing meditation on lost love and destiny."

The New York Times: "This author is such a decorated and beloved figure in American letters — spinning out novels, memoirs and essays like so many multicolored silks; ... — that I sometimes think of her as Aunt Patchett...With 'Tom Lake,' she treats us — and perhaps herself — to a vision of a family beautifully, bucolically simple: nuclear, in its pre-bomb meaning...'Tom Lake' is a quiet and reassuring book" 

The New Yorker: "In these scenes, the source of Lara’s contentment is sweetly obvious. When Nell laments the celebrity Lara could perhaps have been, she exclaims, “Look at this! Look at the three of you! You think my life would have been better spent making commercials for lobster rolls?” The pandemic portions of the book conjure an adult world of trade-offs and compromise, in which family offers abundant recompense for lacklustre Google search results. The girls themselves are delicious creations." 

The Washington Post: "So many books about love are actually about heartbreak. Ann Patchett’s new novel, 'Tom Lake,' is not. 'Tom Lake' is about romantic love, marital love and maternal love, but also the love of animals, the love of stories, love of the land and trees and the tiny, red, cordiform object that is a cherry. Not that a heart is not broken at some point, but it breaks without affecting the remarkable warmth of the book, set in summer’s fullest bloom...Ann Patchett’s wisdom about love has run though all of her novels and nonfiction books.. As soon as you finish 'Tom Lake,' you should go back and read them all." 

Publishers Weekly: "Patchett ... unspools a masterly family drama set in the early months of Covid-19...'There's a lot you don't know,' Lara tells Emily, Maisie, and Nell at the novel's opening, and as Patchett's slow-burn narrative gathers dramatic steam, she blends past and present with dexterity and aplomb, as the daughters come to learn more of the truth about Lara's Duke stories, causing them to reshape their understanding of their mother. Patchett is at the top of her game." 

Booklist: "Lara's three twentysomething daughters are back home in northern Michigan, thanks to the COVID-19 lockdown, just in time to harvest the cherries. Emily has already committed herself to the family orchard and farm and her other great love, neighbor Benny. Maisie discovers that she can continue her veterinarian studies by caring for their neighbors' animals. Only Nell, an aspiring actor, is distraught because of their isolation, but all are ravenous for distraction as they work long hours handpicking cherries, so they insist that their mother tell them, in lavish detail, the story of her romance with a future megawatt movie star. Lara strategically fashions an edited version for her daughters, while sharing the full, heartbreaking tale with the reader. "

A Woman I Know: Female Spies, Double Identities, and a New Story of the Kennedy Assassination.

Written by Mary Haverstick, "a film director, writer, and cinematographer" (book jacket), this non-fiction book is--if nothing else--a remarkable piece of research strething over several years and requiring dozens if not hundreds of FOIA requests. The book has over 80 pages of notes documenting her sources. What started out to be a documentary on the first woman to pass all the astronauts tests at NASA, it evolved into an in-depth examination of a woman who lived multiple lives within the CIA. I cede the floor to Kirkus for a summary of the book:

"A cat-and-mouse search for a woman’s identity opens onto a shadowy corner of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Filmmaker Haverstick’s title is ironic, for the woman in question—Jerrie Cobb—is essentially unknowable. An unsung participant in NASA’s Mercury program, she was trained as an astronaut along with a dozen other women volunteers: “She’d been the first to ace the physical exams and had then gone on to tackle flight simulators, endurance tests, and spatial orientation studies, something the others hadn’t done.” When NASA scrubbed the women’s program, deeming men alone to be potential astronaut material, Cobb faded into the woodwork. Not quite: She logged time in Cuba as a supposed confidant of Fidel Castro, turned up in Mexico at the same time as Lee Harvey Oswald, explored the headwaters of the Amazon and advocated for its Indigenous peoples, spoke Spanish fluently—and was a CIA agent. Or was she? Cobb, a skilled pilot, was also on the tarmac at the Dallas airport as Oswald was making his way there, apparently to be transported elsewhere. Complicating the picture is a chain of false identities, pseudonyms, and the possible existence of another woman of the same skill set and physical appearance named June Cobb. “If Jerrie’s life was intertwined with June Cobb’s as a CIA cover,” writes the author, “then Lee Harvey Oswald was a covert player in intelligence, too.” Haverstick takes a few speculative steps into the engineers of the assassination—maybe Castro, maybe the Mafia, maybe renegade intelligence insiders. No definitive answer emerges, of course, but meanwhile, Jerrie Cobb’s fascinating life reveals her to be “a spy, an explorer, a gambler, an astronaut, an illusionist, a narcissist, and a con”—and, to say the least, a puzzle.

Assassination buffs and students of spycraft will find this intriguing and endlessly enigmatic." 

The New York Times opens their review this way: "In 'A Woman I Know,' Mary Haverstick discovers that the subject of her documentary may have once been a key player in Cold War espionage. Near the beginning of her new book, Mary Haverstick quotes James Angleton, the head of the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence division during the Cold War. Angleton described the world of spycraft as a 'wilderness of mirrors,' where no one could be trusted and nothing was quite what it seemed." And they conclude, "As a fresh history of U.S. espionage, “A Woman I Know” is an absorbing read. As a smoking-gun investigation into the Kennedy murder, it’s less convincing. Even Haverstick admits that, after years spent in the wilderness of mirrors, she still wasn’t sure what to believe. Of Jerrie Cobb’s life story — or stories — Haverstick writes: 'She has still eluded me.'"

A Curious Beginning

This book by Deanna Raybourn is the first in her "Veronica Speedwell" series; she has written nine of these so far. She is also the author of the "Lady Julia Gray" series as well as some stand-alone novels, one of which is Killers of a Certain Age, which I read and really liked.  Set in 1887, we meet our protagonist, 20-something-years-old Veronica, an orphan raised by two "aunts." She is a lepidopterist and has already had several adventures in remote spots of the globe seeking rare specimens; she earns her own money by selling these on to wealthy collectors. When the last of the two aunts dies, she decides to leave the most recent small village they lived in and head for London. Her departure is interrupted by coming home to find someone has broken into the house, and who then also tries to kidnap Veronica. Saved by the arrival of another stranger in an elegant coach, Baron von Stauffenbach, Veronica accepts his offer of a ride to London--saving the train fare she reasons to herself. On the long journey, the Baron tells her that he was acquainted with her mother and that she is in grave danger. Veronica has never known who her mother was, but the Baron fears this revelation could put her in even more danger and refuses to reveal the name. He wants to take her to stay with a friend he would "trust with his life" in London. This turns out to be our other protagonist, Mr. Stoker, who is definitely not  what he first appears to be--a down-on-his-luck taxidermist living in a filthy warehouse trying to preserve an elephant shot by a wealthy patron, Lord Rosemorran.  

Kirkus continues the plot, "Before the Baron can return to tell Veronica what he knows of her mother, he's found dead, and the police like Stoker for a suspect. Stoker and Veronica partner up to find the real culprit, hurtling pell-mell into a captivatingly intricate plot, including a traveling circus, the fetid Thames, and the Tower of London, as they dodge villains with murky motives and hulking henchmen. Soon, they realize that Stauffer’s [von Stauffenbach's] death may be connected to the mystery of Veronica’s birth parents, and Stoker himself has a few secrets to discover, including what really happened on his disastrous expedition to the Amazon, which left him scarred and disgraced. As Veronica and Stoker careen through dastardly plot twists, they match wits, bantering with skill worthy of Tracey and Hepburn. A thrilling—and hilarious—beginning to a promising new series."

Library Journal also approves: "Creating strong character pairings, placing the action in ... unusual but actual historical settings, and folding it all into a clever mystery are hallmarks of this author's magical, signature style. Victoria engages in boldly inappropriate activities for women of the Victorian era but remains genuinely likable, adding a pleasant zest. Stoker's backstory allows his upbringing and past experiences to aid Victoria's investigations without becoming the primary focus. Readers will discover just enough about these two and hints of curiously reticent secondary characters to make the next in this ... series eagerly anticipated. ...For ... [those] ...who like out-of-the-ordinary historical mysteries that are completely satisfying, this new series starts off with a bang."