Miss Aldridge Regrets - Louise Hare

 

Everything happens in threes doesn’t it? Can you believe that this is the third book this year that I’ve read where the action takes place on board ship! Doesn’t seem possible does it? And I’m wondering what the significance of that is! Am I destined maybe to take a cruise soon? If I do I wouldn’t mind it being in the company of Miss Lena Aldridge. 

Louise Hare first hit the book waves with a laudable debut, This Lovely City, a book that perfectly captured the mood of a postwar South London. I wrote about the book on my blog in 2020. Here’s the link if you’re interested to read it.

https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-lovely-city-louise-hare-blog-tour.html

If This Lovely City excited you and you were anxiously waiting to see what Louise Hare would come up with next, well, you won’t be disappointed. This is a murder mystery to delight. An historical novel set in 1936 with a dual timeframe comprising of events before the start of the cruise interspersed with the events on the cruise itself. It’s a slow reveal on both counts and it’s wonderfully engrossing. Tightly plotted, the reader is fed an abundant diet of red herrings as you first suspect this person, then that person. 

‘London, 1936

Lena Aldridge is wondering if life has passed her by. The dazzling theatre career she hoped for hasn’t worked out. Instead, she’s stuck singing in a sticky-floored basement club in Soho and her married lover has just left her. She has nothing to look forward to until a stranger offers her the chance of a lifetime: a starring role on Broadway and a first-class ticket on the Queen Mary bound for New York.

After a murder at the club, the timing couldn’t be better and Lena jumps at the chance to escape England. Until death follows her onto the ship and she realises that her greatest performance has already begun.

Because someone is making manoeuvres behind the scenes, and there’s only one thing on their mind…

MURDER’

Although thematically the book has much in common with This Lovely City there is no sense of the repetitive. The author has taken a fresh canvas and a new set of paints to look at the same concept but with a different palette. And if you loved the hint of jazz in the first book you’ll be happy to find it’s a subtle soundtrack to this one too. Jazz aficionados will immediately think of the song by Cole Porter, Miss Otis Regrets in the title of this book. But does the lyric of the song have any relevance to the book? I’m not saying.😉

I was often reminded of the Golden Age of Crime stories, that stalwart praxis of unencumbered storytelling and, by today’s standards, primitive policing methods should they even be available on a cruise. As far as mysteries go it follows the tradition of locked room stories as indeed one might expect if the action takes place on board a ship!

The characters are rich, vibrant, they step off the page at you. And I had the strangest feeling of some kind of Cluedo game set on board a ship; was it Doctor Wilding with the dagger on the poop deck!? 😉 But Lena Aldridge is a meritorious heroine, bright, brave and possessed of more humanity than some of the other characters we come across. 

It’s entertaining. It’s well written with a perfectly paced narrative that has you wanting to read on. There’s little to dislike about it. It’s the kind of book you can lose yourself in on a gloomy afternoon and find yourself completely enveloped in the history of the time and the customs of the age.

My thanks to Joe Thomas at HQ stories for a proof and - fanfare - the author herself for slipping a handwritten card into the book which I shall treasure. I also have a spot upon the blog tour.