By Harriet Klausner of The Mystery Gazette and Midwest Book Review:
This is an enjoyable historical thriller that opens up with the murder followed by what led to the homicide. Harriet is like the rest of the country as life has begun to return to normal after the Depression and war, and the pending coronation brings fervor of renewal. Although the storyline never matches the opening psychological suspense, fans will enjoy reading this engaging tale wanting to know why.
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In the voice of Downton Abbey’s Dowager Countess Violet! (no, seriously)
It all starts with the purchase of a console television, so it’s no surprise that things end badly. The television is to ensure that the Wallis family, their friends, and anointed neighbors can watch the coronation on June 2, 1953, of that Windsor girl in the ease of their comfortable South Kensington home. Just as the newly crowned queen steps out onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace, Mrs. Wallis fires six bullets into her husband and is duly tried and found guilty, becoming the second-to-last woman in England to be executed. Once the author has our attention, the story slowly and with totally convincing and elaborate detail portrays the pressure cooker that is that “ideal” 1950s London home.
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“Brett is a devastating social critic and master of equally devastating physical characterization. This is the kind of book you’ll have to put down frequently, as you roar with laughter.”
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From Stephen Hong Sohn’s Asian American Literature Fans:
The texture of Flint’s narrative is tremendous, as she weaves together a crackling plot and adds other dimensions that speak to the complicated transnational social contexts that link both Singapore and Malaysia.
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City Book Review writes of the second book in the Blotto series:
Back in the 1920s, a number of British authors produced series characters like Bulldog Drummond — heroic upper class types who, when not downing a tipple or two at the Ritz, toured the country fighting crime. Simon Brett takes this stereotype and mercilessly reduces it to absurdity. Blotto is like Bertie Wooster on steroids such that he emerges from his cocoon of incompetence and becomes the equivalent of Clint Barton, except this Hawkeye uses a cricket bat instead of a bow. Twinks is a female version of Jacques Futrelle’s Thinking Machine — no fact is unknown, no clue escapes her attention. Put this team together and they confront a conspiracy to murder all the British nobility while they slumber in the House of Lords. It’s all wonderfully ludicrous.
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Roberta Alexander agrees:
It’s easy to make fun of the traditional British mystery of the 1920s, featuring assorted aristocrats in the drawing room at a country estate. It is not so easy to do that while simultaneously creating a story a person today actually wants to read. Brett has done that. Blotto and Twinks, a brother-sister pair, are both caricatures and characters.
The Oakland Tribune, April 1, 2012
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From Stephen Hong Sohn of Asian American Literature Fans:
Of all the colorful characters to grace us in this novel, I found Vitacchi’s presentation of Master Wong’s intern, Joyce McQuinnie, to be the most endearing and intriguing sidekick-type figure that I’ve seen in a long time. Joyce is truly the product of a transnational upbringing and she is representative of the younger generation, so much so that an early chapter [of The Feng Shui Detective] that sees Master Wong in a hip-hop dance club is one of the most hilarious sequences that I’ve read in a very long time.
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It’s always a delight when reviewers discover older titles! A May 2012 review of The Suspect from the blog Petrona, by Maxine Clarke:
The police investigation forms the framework of the novel, but what brings it to life is the depiction of George, Karl and Cassandra as they all deal with their separate lonelinesses in their different ways. In addition, the book presents a picture of life in this (I am convinced!) beautiful region of Canada which sounds wonderful, not least in its almost year-round warm climate and the enticingly described lush vegetation. In its treatment of a local community and the effects of a crime on the assumed perpetrator, rather than on the more conventional puzzle of whodunnit, the book is absorbing, partly because the author does not push the concept too far in keeping the whole thing short and focused. The underlying reasons for the crime, some of which reach back far into the past, and others of which are subtly presented and left for the reader to deduce, conspire to create a haunting whole. The psychological insights provided, together with the sharply observed characterisations of Karl and Cassandra, leave the reader eager to read more of the series.
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From City Book Review:
Although it starts quite slowly, there’s a pleasing sense of humor at work as we watch our intrepid duo independently ask questions and move the investigation forward. I was amused and enlightened. There are some revealing insights into matters of royal protocol and a satisfying explanation of the command, “Brace, brace!” This is a book to savor.
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