The Paris Secret

When a collection of Dior dresses is discovered in her grandmother's cottage on the Cornwall coast, Kat Jourdan does not anticipate the revelations about to be discovered about her grandmother and other relations during the Second World War.

The Paris Secret is a novel by Australian author, Natasha Lester. The story is told within different time frames and locations - Cornwall during the late 1920s and early 1930s; England and France during the Second World War and Cornwall and Australia in 2012.

As a child, Skye Penrose enjoyed growing up in a cottage near the beach in Cornwall, especially when she could spend time with her best friend, Nicholas Crawford. Skyes' mother brought up her two daughters alone and the girls are very aware that they do not have a father. However Skye developed a special relationship with her mother who teaches Skye and Nicholas to fly an aeroplane.

With the outbreak of war there is opportunity for pilots to join the RAF, but not if they are female. The novel looks at attitudes towards women in a male dominated world during the war and the fight by women for acknowledgement of their abilities. The role of women in the SOE is also a theme of the book.

 The Paris Secret is a work of fiction but many of the incidents described, especially in the section dealing with events in the 1940s, are based on actual events. At the end of the book Natasha Lester provides information about her research for the book and some of the sources used. The book is also about relationships within families, including sibling rivalry, plus close friendships forged when faced with danger. It is about learning to trust people, dealing with loss and how to decide whether something which may not be as it seems should be investigated or left alone. This is also a romance novel.

I have not read any other novels by Natasha Lester but after thoroughly enjoying reading The Paris Secret this omission will be rectified.

Two other books reviewed and recommended in this blog dealing with some of the themes covered in The Paris Secret:

The Lost Girls of Paris  by Pam Jennoff

Sapphire Skies  by Belinda Alexandra

The Good Turn

This is the third book in Dervla McTiernan's series about Detective Cormac Reilly, an Irish policeman endeavouring to solve crimes despite interference and lack of support from a number of his colleagues.

When the abduction of a young girl is reported Cormac and his small team endeavour to investigate. Additional support was requested and refused leaving a skelton team to locate the missing girl before she is harmed. All does not go to plan resulting in the suspension of Cormac Reilly while Garda Peter Fisher is relocated from Galway to the small town of Roundstone while his future is decided.

While Cormac continues to work on the case of the missing girl from afar he also becomes involved in assisting to uncover corruption in the  police force. Meanwhile Peter investigates a double murder that occurred on a farm near Roundstone and endeavours to resolve his relationship with his father. Cormac also needs to resolve his relationship with Emma who has moved overseas to work.

The Good Turn continues of some of the themes occurring in the two earlier books, The Ruin and The Scholar as well as revealing more of the backstory and lives of Cormac Reilly and Peter Fisher. Another excellent book in this series by Dervla McTiernan.

Trace Elements

Donna Leon has been writing this series of books about Commissario Guido Brunetti and Venice for many years. This novel is the twenty-nineth. I always look forward to a new novel in this series because the stories are about people, their love, fears and foibles, about living in Venice as well as a crime or two to investigate. It is summer in Venice and the author vividly describes locals trying to cope in a hot, crowded, tourist city where there are few places to escape the heat and the many visitors exploring tourist destinations.

In Trace Elements Guido and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, are asked to visit a woman who is in a hospice and has a story that she wants to tell the police. As they leave the hospice they are not sure whether the information that she gave them refers to a crime or not. On their second visit a few days later the patient dies. Guido and Claudia decide that the woman's story has to be investigated which leads to trying to discover how and why her husband died and what is really going on at a water plant that could be threatening the lives of people living and working in the surrounding area.

Added to this, when Vice Questore Patta becomes concerned with young pick pockets in Venice giving the city a bad name when a campaign in a magazine to promote the city is to be launched Guido is summoned the resolve the issue.

The issues in these novels are ethical issues and are never straight forward. They therefore provide Guido and the reader plenty to think about.

A Conspiracy of Bones

I read a number of Temperance Brennan books by Kathy Reichs in the past so when this latest volume in the series, A Conspiracy of Bones, was recently published I decided to revisit the series to catch up on the latest exploits in the lives of Temperance Brennan and Andrew Ryan.

When Temperance Brennan receives photos on her phone of a faceless corpse she wants to investigate the case but she has a new boss who does not want Tempe working on the project. Tempe then enlists the support of friends including Skinny Slidell, a member of the local police force, and they proceed to try and establish who the victim is and how he died. As the investigation proceeds Brennan and Slidell encounter a series of conspiracy theories linked to the dead man and his colleagues. They also suspect that there may be link to the deaths of children ten years previously, a cold case that Slidell is investigating. The author provides lots of information as the plot unfolds, including information that leads to dead ends, as Brennan and Slidell persist in trying to establish the truth.

The book also reveals more of the private life of Temperance and Andrew Ryan. Ryan is now a private investigator in Montreal and he and Tempe have appartments in both Montreal and Charlotte, North Carolina, as Tempe works for organisations in both cities. Tempe has been ill and is receiving treatment for an anerism. During the investigation she often wonders what is true and what is imaginary.

This is a novel where the reader needs to concentrate in order to keep track of what is happening as the investigation continues. However, this current time of social / physical isolation may provide the perfect opportunity to read this novel.

(A Temperance Brennan Novel no 19)

The Bass Rock

The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld is a disturbing novel about the violence men have inflicted on the female characters in the book over time. There are three threads in the novel - the story of Viviane (marked I) who is in Scotland to sort through her grandmother's possessions so that the house may be sold; the story of Ruth (marked II) who after the Second World War married Peter and looked after his children (one who became Viviane's father); and the story of Sarah (marked III) who lives in the 1700s and has been accused of witchcraft. The book is also divided into seven sections at the end of which is a series of short accounts of a woman suffering from the violence of a man.

I did not find this an easy book to read; not just for the subject matter but the jumping from one story to another which interrupted the flow of each story, making (in my opinion) the narrative of each section difficult to follow. Added to this, Sarah's story (III) did not really connect with the other two sections except to demonstrate that women had encountered mistreatment for centuries.

This is therefore a dark novel illustrating how the violence that may occur against women continues to affect lives. The references to the Bass Rock looming in the background add to the uneasiness existing in the novel emphasised by the characters' awareness of the presence of ghosts, who in their turn have faced violence in the past.

Winner of the 2021 Stella Prize (outstanding book written by an Australian female author)

The Bass Rock - review in The Guardian 21 March 2020

The Bass Rock in Scotland - Transceltic