Category: Interwar Period (Nov 1918 – Sep 1939)

The period between the end of WWI and the beginning of WWII

A Distant Voice by Neil Richards and Matthew Costello

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A Distant Voice (Mydworth Mysteries #9)A Distant Voice by Matthew Costello
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Barbara’s Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Series: Mydworth Mysteries #9
Publication Date: 7/30/21
Period: Intra-war – Mydworth – ~ 1917-1919

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a well-written, fast-paced, well-done mystery, and the characters are well-developed and likable. You’ll know who the charlatan is right from the start, but you won’t know the why or the how until the end. When you add in the wonderful descriptions of the small village of Mydworth and its citizens, you’ll feel as if you are right there with Kat and Sir Harry every step of the way.

Alice Wetherby seems to be someone who was just waiting to be exploited in some way. She is easily led and fairly easily deceived. So, when Bellamy Smythe facilitated her ‘speaking’ to her deceased father, she was a bit skeptical, but soon believed it – hook, line, and sinker. She is poor as a church mouse, so Bellamy wouldn’t have any reason to ‘con’ her or deceive her. Would he? Surely not. No, her home, the Grange, is rotting down around her – if she had money, she’d at least rid the house of the cobwebs, spiders, and mice.

Kat Reilly, Lady Mortimer, and Sir Harry Mortimer are former ‘operatives’ for their respective governments — Kat for the United States, and Sir Harry for Great Britain. Since their marriage and ‘retirement’ from the government, they have been living in Sir Harry’s home village of Mydworth. New Yorker Kat wasn’t sure how she’d adjust to small-town life, but she’s loving it so far, and now they’ve been asked by a friend to assure that Bellamy Smythe isn’t out to defraud Alice.

Kat and Harry begin to investigate and quickly learn Bellamy has pulled some shenanigans, but knowing it and proving it are two different things. They don’t just want Bellamy, they want to discover how he is getting his information about his marks. There must be more than just Bellamy involved, but they’ll have a devil of a time discovering who is discovering and passing on such personal information.

Once the mystery is solved – and the culprits identified – will Kat and Harry be able to save Alice? Will they even be able to save themselves? You’ll just have to read this entertaining book to find the answers.

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Murder Most Fair by Anna Lee Huber

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Historical Mystery, Interwar Period (Nov 1918 - Sep 1939), Top Pick - Highly RecommendedLeave a comment

Murder Most Fair (Verity Kent #5)Murder Most Fair by Anna Lee Huber
Barbara’s rating: 5 of 5 stars

Series: Verity Kent Mysteries #5
Publication Date: 8/31/21
Period: England, Intra-War Period, 1919
Number of Pages: 384

OMGoodness! This series just keeps getting better and better. This author’s prose takes you from your comfortable chair and plops you down in post-WWI England with her gripping descriptions. It is November of 1919 and the country is still trying to recover – to come to terms with the debilitating, gut-wrenching grief from which they all still suffer. Everyone copes with that grief in different ways, but one way that seems the most common is to carry an all-consuming hatred of anything and anyone German.

With the Christmas holidays nearing, Verity and Sidney are planning a trip to Verity’s home near Yorkshire. Verity hasn’t visited there in five years – at first, it was the war and her responsibilities that kept her away – then, after her brother Rob was killed-in-action, she couldn’t face all of the memories of him. Now, it is time to face the grief she has buried deep, deep inside herself and she’s not looking forward to it. She can handle it for a couple of weeks though – surely.

One of Verity’s missions for the Home Office comes back to haunt her when her great aunt, Tante Ilse, gets permission to come to England from Germany. Verity dearly loves Tante Ilse and was loath to involve her in a mission during the war, but had little choice in the matter. Verity needed to get a collaborator back inside Germany, so they used Tante Ilse’s home as a safehouse during the journey. With the anti-German sentiment so strong in England, Verity and Sidney decide Tante Ilse and her maid would be much safer in the rural Yorkshire Downs, so they decide to travel to Verity’s home earlier than planned.

Verity has been noticing that something just isn’t right. Tante Ilse isn’t telling her everything and she’s noticed the maid being accosted. She’s also caught several glimpses of a man she is sure she recognizes, but cannot put a name to. Is Ardmore, the overarching enemy of the series up to something again? Or, is this much closer to home?

Even in rural Yorkshire anti-German sentiments are very strong and local authorities don’t take it particularly seriously when Tante Ilse’s young, beautiful, German maid is found dead in a remote barn. Sidney and Verity know they will have to solve the murder themselves if they want to see justice done for the young woman. There are suspects aplenty, it is just a matter of weeding through them.

Verity has so much to handle – a murder, deep grief, and a family festering with what they view as her abandonment of them. Can her emotions survive it all? She and Sidney can handle the murder investigation together – no problem. Her family and grief are something she has to manage on her own – with Sidney’s support – but she is still the one who has to deal with it. Because of the Secrets Act, she absolutely cannot tell her family what she did during the war. Yet, without telling them the truth, they’ll continue to believe she abandoned them to drink and party in London while they were grieving at home. Besides the grief, her two remaining brothers both have issues from serving during the war – the things they saw – the things they did… Like most of the other returning veterans, they brought those experiences home with them and those experiences taint everything they do in life.

I absolutely loved the way this author made me feel the emotions of the characters. My heart ached for Verity and her inability to let her brother Rob go. The descriptions of the deprivations, the tensions, the terror – both in Germany and England – made you feel all of it yourself.

I hope you will read and love this outstanding historical mystery as much as I did. You cannot get better writing, better storytelling, better emotion, better more compelling characters anywhere. It is a wonderful series and I highly recommend all of the books.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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