Category: Reading Challenges

#BookReview Burning Cold (Cara Walden Mystery 2) by Lisa Lieberman

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Burning ColdAbout the Book

Budapest: 1956. Newlywed Cara Walden’s brother Zoltán has disappeared in the middle of the Hungarian revolution, harboring a deadly wartime secret. Will Cara or the Soviets find him first?

Cutting short her honeymoon in Paris to rescue a sibling she’s never met was not Cara’s idea, but her husband Jakub has a reckless streak, and she is too much in love to question his judgment. Together with her older brother Gray, they venture behind the Iron Curtain, seeking clues to Zoltán’s whereabouts among his circle of fellow dissidents, all victims of the recently overthrown Communist regime. One of them betrayed him, and Cara realizes that the investigation has put every person they’ve met at risk. Inadvertently, they’ve also unmasked a Russian spy, who is now tailing them in the hope that they will lead him to Zoltán.

Format: ebook (169 pages)                    Publisher: Passport Press
Publication date:  6th October 2019   Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

Find Burning Cold (Cara Walden Mystery #2) on Goodreads

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Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
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My Review

According to the book description, the film version of Graham Greene’s The Third Man was the inspiration for this historical thriller. Set mainly in post-war Budapest, it certainly has the intrigue and noir feel of The Third Man but I struggled to find many other connections although I admit it’s many years since I watched the film or read the book. What this does mean is lack of familiarity with The Third Man needn’t mar your enjoyment of Burning Cold.

Burning Cold is the second book featuring Cara Walden and there are references to events in the first book. However, I’m pleased to say Burning Cold works perfectly well as a standalone read. In fact, it’s made me keen to read the first book in the series, All the Wrong Places.

I knew little about this period in Hungary’s history before reading the book. The events which unfold in Burning Cold  rectified that omission without ever feeling like a history lesson because of the twists and turns of the plot. The atmosphere of paranoia amongst the population of a city with informers everywhere and who live in fear of the secret police is vividly conjured up. The author also creates an interesting dynamic between Cara, her husband Jakub and her brother, Gray.

Burning Cold is an enjoyable, well-crafted historical mystery that explores the legacy of conflict on families as well as nations.  My thanks to the author for my copy of the book – and her patience in waiting for it to reach the top of my review pile!

In three words: Well-researched, assured, dramatic

Try something similar: The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer

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lisa-lieberman-web-7745About the Author

Lisa Lieberman writes the Cara Walden series of historical mysteries based on old movies and featuring blacklisted Hollywood people on the lam in dangerous international locales.

Trained as a modern European cultural and intellectual historian, Lieberman abandoned a perfectly respectable academic career for the life of a vicarious adventurer through perilous times. She has written extensively on post-war Europe.  Her most recent essay on the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution, “Stalin’s Boots” was the inspiration for Burning Cold, set in Budapest just as the Soviet tanks roll back in, evoking Carol Reed’s classic film of intrigue and betrayal, The Third Man, based on a treatment by Graham Greene. Keeping with the Graham Greene theme, her new Cara Walden mystery, The Glass Forest, takes place in Saigon in 1957, during the filming of The Quiet American.

Lieberman taught history for many years at Dickinson College and directed their Center in Bologna, Italy. She has held visiting fellowships at Ohio State and the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England and was the recipient of a Bourse Chateaubriand for research in Paris. In her spare time, Lieberman lectures on post-war efforts to come to terms with the trauma of the Holocaust in film and literature. On the lighter side, she gives talks on cruise ships.

She has published essays, translations, and short stories in Noir City, Gettysburg Review, Raritan, Michigan Quarterly, Mystery Scene and elsewhere and writes film criticism for 3 Quarks Daily. She is Vice President of the New England chapter of Sisters in Crime and a member of Mystery Writers of America. (Bio and photo credit: author website)

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#BookReview Katherine by Anya Seton #ccspin @ourclassicsclub

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TBR#7KatherineAbout the Book

Katherine comes to the court of Edward III at the age of fifteen. The naïve convent-educated orphan of a penniless knight is dazzled by the jousts and the entertainments of court.

Nevertheless, Katherine is beautiful, and she turns the head of the King’s favourite son, John of Gaunt. But he is married, and she is soon to be betrothed.

A few years later their paths cross again and this time their passion for each other cannot be denied or suppressed. Katherine becomes the prince’s mistress, and discovers an extraordinary world of power, pleasure and passion.

Format: ebook (516 pages)                             Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date: 6th March 2014  [1954]  Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance

Find Katherine on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon.co.uk| Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
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My Review

Katherine was the book from my Classics Club listpicked for me to read in the latest Classics Club Spin. And how glad I am it was selected because at 500 pages I’d been putting off reading it but, once I started the book, I became so caught up in the story that the pages flew by.

A fictionalized account of the relationship between Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, the book is wonderfully romantic without being slushy or sentimental and full of period atmosphere. The intimate portrait of their love affair which spanned decades is set against the backdrop of wider historical events, such as the Peasants’ Revolt. However, the historical detail never overwhelms the personal story.

The book is rich in descriptive detail – of food, clothing, furnishings, daily life – and has an interesting cast of secondary characters such as Geoffrey Chaucer. I also liked the way the closing scenes of the book contrast Katherine’s view of her newly elevated position with her first impressions of the Plantagenet court as a young girl.

No doubt it can be argued that Katherine is an overly romanticized account of a woman about whom relatively little is actually known. However, as a historical romance it worked for me and I thank the spin gods for choosing this book for me to read.

In three words: Romantic, immersive, engaging

Try something similar: The Scandalous Duchess by Anne O’Brien

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About the Author

Anya Seton was born in New York City and grew up on her father`s large estate in Cos Cob and Greenwich, Connecticut, where visiting Indians taught her Indian dancing and woodcraft. One Sioux chief called her Anutika, which means ‘cloud grey eyes’, a name which the family shortened to Anya. She was educated by governesses and then travelled abroad, first to England, then to France where she hoped to become a doctor. She studied for a while at the Hotel Dieu hospital in Paris before marrying at eighteen and having three children.

She began writing in 1938 with a short story sold to a newspaper syndicate and the first of her ten novels was published in 1941. Her other novels include Green Darkness, The Winthrop Woman and Avalon. She died in 1990.