It’s 1953, and in England, a brave and bright new world is at long last about to dawn. The Depression is over, the vile, vile war is over, even the endless bloody rationing is whimpering to a close. In June the new young queen will be crowned (alongside, it must be said, her extremely dishy husband). It’s all so gorgeous that Mrs. Harriet Wallis, for one, can barely keep from hugging herself. Her husband has an important job with an important firm, the children are settling in well with the new nanny, even the new fashions are splendidly flattering. Really, life is about to be too wonderful for words.
Unfortunately, it is also going to be short. On June 3 the Wallis family will gather to watch the coronation on their bought-for-the-occasion television set. Mrs. Wallis, immaculately dressed, will put three bullets neatly into Mr. Wallis. And some months thereafter she will become the second-to-last woman in England to be sentenced to death.
The Second-Last Woman in England marks the U.S. debut of Maggie Joel. English by birth, Ms. Joel now lives and writes in Sydney, Australia, where The Second-Last Woman was first published (without the hyphen). Her novel The Past and Other Lies will be published by Felony & Mayhem Press next year.
Time was, espionage was – or had license to be – by far the most interesting genre in the mystery field. The threats could be as large as nations or as petty as one’s boss; the settings could span the world; and in the right (write?) hands, books were sprinkled with all kinds of fascinating “tradecraft,” everything from how to unmask a traitor to the specifics of blowing up a train en route from Vienna to Istanbul. Fabulous stuff.
But over the past 20 years or so – and for a host of reasons, maybe fodder for some good blog-chat – the vast majority of espionage novels have morphed into “thrillers,” which is industry-speak for lots of action, and not much else. I don’t mean to dis the entire thriller-genre; some writers do a terrific job (I have particularly liked Joe Finder’s books, for example). Thrillers, though, are essentially fairly simplistic, and more often than not, I want something more complex to chew on. I want a wider variety of flavors. I want more surprise.
I want The Innocent Spy. What astonishes about this book – and the others in the series that follow it – is the extent to which every element, from the setting to the character of the initial murder victim, adds deep and specific flavor to the pot. There is not a single wasted element, and that’s extremely rare these days. I don’t want to give away any plot-points, and will only say that the author’s thoughtfulness – in a genre all too often dominated by lazy thinking – is evident on every page. This is old-school espionage, and I am delighted to welcome it onto my shelves.
Ah, November, how utterly divine! Any moment now we’ll start attending holiday parties, all whiskey and punchbowls and everyone getting completely blotto. Come January, darling, I shall be Virtue Personified, but if I’m terribly terribly lucky, I will still get blotto – and Twinks and the Dead Dowager Duchess, and all of it the sequel, of course, to Blotto, Twinks, and the Ex-King’s Daughter. NO! You missed the first Blotto? But darling, Booklist called it “a complete wow.” They said….hang on, I’ve got this somewhere, and how I wish I weren’t so killingly disorganized….ahHA! Yes, here it is! They said it was like “Cleopatra rolling out of a carpet before an astonished Caesar,” and that it offered “a breakneck plot in the Restoration Comedy mold.” And OH!, they said it was “absolutely bullet-riddled with Wodehouseian wit.” I mean, really, darling, one doesn’t get reviews much better than that.
At any rate, people are saying that the new one might be even better. Blotto’s there, of course, all handsome and noble and thick as two planks, and his gorgeously clever sister Twinks, and this time, unless they find the baddies, their adorable chauffeur Corky will hang for a crime that he positively did not commit. Now, I’m not giving away any secrets; that’s all in the catalog. And it all winds up with Blotto and Twinks confronting – oh this is simply too terrifying – the League of the Crimson Hand. January is going to be ghastly, you know, between the wretched weather and the need to give one’s liver a rest. The only thing that can possibly get me through it is a riveting, amusing book. The Guardian called this one “perfect entertainment,” and that sounds just about good enough for me.
