Tag: historical crime

#BlogTour #BookReview The Mirror Game by Guy Gardner @RandomTTours @BookGuild

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The Mirror Game BT PosterWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Mirror Game by Guy Gardner. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to The Book Guild for my digital review copy.

The Mirror Game CoverAbout the Book

London 1925. When Adrian Harcourt, a politician and captain in the army believed dead with his company on the battlefield of Flanders, is sighted looking like he’s been living rough, Harry Lark, a war veteran and journalist, is enlisted by his friend and benefactor Lady Carlise to investigate.

As he becomes drawn further into the case and the deaths mount up, he can see that things don’t add up. Where has Adrian been for so many years? Why can’t he remember parts of his past?

Looking further into Adrian’s previous life, even as his own dark past and addiction to laudanum threatens to overwhelm him, Harry begins to fall for Lady Carlise’s beautiful daughter Freddy, who was also Adrian’s fiancé.

Chasing the leads as they continue to unravel, can Harry solve the mystery behind what really happened to Adrian before it’s too late?

Format: Paperback (296 pages)         Publisher: The Book Guild
Publication date: 28th January 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime

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My Review

Reading the description of The Mirror Game suggests it has all the ingredients to make an enjoyable historical crime mystery – and it certainly succeeds on that score – but using the aftermath of the First World War as a backdrop to the story adds an additional element of interest, a darker tone if you like.

The lasting impact of the war is evident in many way, not just on those who survived or were injured but on the families of those who never returned or were reported missing in action. As Harry Lark says, ‘What did the hell did we expect to happen after it was over? We’d go on quietly living our lives, never minding the horror we were part of?’  Harry himself is a troubled man. He sustained physical injuries in the war which still cause him pain but it’s the mental scars more than anything that see him turn to laudanum to help him to forget the things he witnessed.

He finds a welcome new purpose in life when asked to investigate the mysterious reappearance of Adrian Harcourt after an absence of seven years. His journalistic instincts raise a series of questions in his mind. Why would someone who survived the war disappear and not return home? Where have they been for all that time? Why reappear now? What has caused the apparent change in them? I suspect I’m not the only reader to share Harry’s curiosity.

Harry makes a resourceful, resilient and feisty hero, and it soon becomes clear he will need all his wits about him (not to mention his fists) because the deeper he delves the more trouble seems to come his way – and anyone else he’s called upon for help. Why, he wonders, are people so anxious to stop him getting to the truth and what really happened in the battlefield incident during which Adrian Harcourt supposedly lost his life? Is there a cover-up aimed at hiding details of some atrocity or is something more sinister going on?

Alongside Harry’s investigation there’s a touching side story as he wrestles with his attraction to gifted musician Ferderica, the fiancé of the man he’s searching for. They seem simpatico but if he finds Adrian, won’t she want to pick up with him where they left off and what does Harry have to offer her anyway? When he looks in the mirror what does he see? A man fighting an addiction to laudanum, with no job and scarred by a previous relationship that ended in tragedy. Those who love a tortured hero will be urging Ferderica to go for it anyway – at least I was!

The plot moves along in double quick time and has more twists and turns than a corkscrew. Trust me, if you think you’ve got the solution to the mystery all worked out before the final pages you’ve probably got it wrong.

The Mirror Game is an extremely well-crafted, ingenious historical crime mystery. I don’t know if the author has more books featuring Harry Lark planned but I think he would make a great character to build a historical crime series around.

In three words: Intriguing, suspenseful, dramatic

Try something similar: Two Storm Wood by Philip Gray

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Guy Gardner Author PicAbout the Author

Guy Gardner is a professional jazz pianist, and has played both at home and around Europe in venues such as The National Theatre, Pizza Express Soho, the 02 and The Royal Albert Hall.

Having earned his degree in Music at Dartington College of Arts, he went on to gain a PGCE in teaching, which he used to teach in a prison for a time. Currently, he combines his writing with teaching piano in Dorset, where he lives with his wife, two young sons and dog.

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#BookReview The Unquiet Heart by Kaite Welsh

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The Unquiet HeartAbout the Book

Sarah Gilchrist has no intention of marrying her dull fiancé Miles, the man her family hope will restore her reputation and put an end to her dreams of becoming a doctor, but when he is arrested for a murder she is sure he didn’t commit she finds herself his reluctant ally.

Beneath the genteel façade of upper class Edinburgh lurks blackmail, adultery, poison and madness, and Sarah must return to Edinburgh’s slums, back alleys and asylums as she discovers the dark past about a family where no one is what they seem, even Miles himself.

It also brings her back into the orbit of her mercurial professor, Gregory Merchiston – he sees Sarah as his protegee, but can he stave off his demons long enough to teach her the skills that will save her life?

Format: Hardcover (288 pages)    Publisher: Tinder Press
Publication date: 30th May 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Crime

Find The Unquiet Heart (Sarah Gilchrist #2) on Goodreads

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My Review

The Unquiet Heart is the second in the author’s historical mystery series featuring medical student turned detective, Sarah Gilchrist. Like its predecessor, The Wages of Sin, it is set in Victorian Edinburgh. There are some references to events and characters in the previous book but it would be possible to read The Unquiet Heart as a standalone.

Sarah Gilchrist continues to resist the expectations of her family – and of society – that she will marry and give up her ambition to qualify as a doctor. She frequently rails against the restrictions placed upon her as a woman. ‘I’m sick of being told that women are weak – too weak for surgery, too weak for intellectual thought.’ And she is roused to anger by the double standards that mean, had she been a man, her medical studies would be ‘the object of praise rather than disgust’. Added to this is the unfairness that, because of previous traumatic events, she is considered ‘damaged goods’, including by her family, even though the damage in question was not of her own making and has had lasting consequences.  

Despite a number of suspicious deaths early on, the pace of the book is a little on the slow side for those interested mainly in the mystery element. In addition, for a lot of the time the action moves largely between the houses of Sarah’s friend, Elizabeth Chalmers, her aunt Emily and the University where Sarah attends lectures, meaning it’s only later in the book that one gets a glimpse of the seamier side of Edinburgh. I would have liked a bit more of the latter, to be honest.

However, readers like me who were intrigued by the relationship between Sarah and Professor Gregory Merchiston that featured in the first book will enjoy the simmering sexual tension between them that continues in this one. But will it ignite into a conflagration or fizzle out?  And are they destined to remain merely pupil and tutor?

Despite the prejudice displayed by others, Merchiston is willing to introduce Sarah to the techniques of forensic medicine, even if this does demand a strong stomach. “Our bodies tell stories, Miss Gilchrist. The language may be foreign to most but learn to translate it and you will be privy to all the secrets of our species, living or dead.”  By the way, I think we really need to learn more about how Merchiston’s housekeeper, Mrs Logan, came to be, in her words, ‘in a music hall dressing room stripped down to my unmentionables armed with nothing but a prop knife’.

By the end of the book, Sarah seems faced with a choice between marriage to a wealthy if unremarkable man and the end of her medical career before it’s even begun, or a less socially acceptable relationship with a man who will preserve, even actively encourage, her ambitions. Unfortunately the latter is also likely to cause a potentially irreconcilable breach with her mother. But are those the only choices available to Sarah?

I received a review copy courtesy of Headline via NetGalley.

In three words: Well-crafted, engaging, intriguing

Try something similar: A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry

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Kaite WelshAbout the Author

Kaite Welsh is an author, critic and journalist and the former Literature Officer at Creative Scotland. Her work has appeared in various newspapers and magazines from The Times Literary Supplement to Cosmopolitan. Her short fiction, featuring roller derby, Greek myths and ghosts, has been published in several anthologies and she guest lectures on Creative Writing at universities around the UK. She is the author of the Sarah Gilchrist series, and lives in Edinburgh with her wife, cats and a lot of books (Bio/photo: Agent author page)

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