Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
Sarah Sheridan is the author of the Mirabelle Bevan series of crime novels set in the 1950’s, normally in and around Brighton, so this is a departure from Mirabelle’s home turf.
Mirabelle and her long time ‘squeeze’ Detective Superintendent Alan McGregor have finally agreed that their on/off relationship is permanently on and travel north to visit the ancestral home of McGregor’s Mother’s family. The house is now in the hands of his boyhood friend and cousin and American wife, ably attended to by a Mrs. Danvers-like family retainer.
As Bevan and McGregor spend their first night, another American woman, of Russian descent, is found murdered in the orangery (where else?). Whilst the local Constabulary investigate, cold war – this is 1958 – connections surface and the body count rises, necessitating possible outside help for the beleaguered local police who are inevitably at that time (and perhaps in ours) focussed on a black American who was ‘minder’ to the dead woman and her god-daughter.
Mirabelle, being Mirabelle, is driven to investigate and fill some of the gaps in the local investigation. The Russian connection, although apparently the simple prejudices of the ‘white’ Russian community, keeps resurfacing and steers the narrative in unexpected directions.
The dialogue, setting and background historical and cultural contexts are all absolutely spot-on as in all the Bevan books. Fallout from the second world-war and earlier events, are central to the story both on a personal level for the main characters, but also on a wider basis for the local rural economy. The issues of race and discrimination as well as abuse in the book are echoed in the Brighton- based earlier stories.
The fleshing out of Mirabelle and Alan’s history, prior to their first meeting is also a welcome rounding of the characters. It also explains why Alan keeps his socks on in moments of ‘ahem,’ intimacy!
If you are new to these novels, they are really well-constructed historical crime fiction, intelligently researched and a reminder that there is really nothing new under the sun, in terms of human relationships and that below the veneer of apparently civilised society, runs a vein of darkness which our own age shares with that of times past.
