Old-Fashioned

The Yellow Phantom (Judy Bolton #6)

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by Margaret Sutton

“Irene, nothing!” she fumed. “That girl’s Johanna Holiday, the wench who made away with her mother’s poetry. I know you!” She pointed a shaking finger at the trembling Irene.

Judy, standing near the old lady, caught a whiff of her breath and guessed that she had taken an overdose from the bottle that she called her tonic. She had noticed how frequently her employer resorted to the stimulant.

Margaret Sutton originally wrote this book as a stand-alone unrelated to the Judy Bolton series. When it didn’t sell, she revamped it into a Judy Bolton book. In many ways, it falls very seamlessly into the series, but it does incorporate some elements that seem a little unusual for a girl’s series book. Judy’s friend, Irene, who is barely 17 and still in high school has a serious romance with and becomes engaged to a man who is well into his 20s. One of the characters is an eccentric literary agent with a drinking problem and some of the situations in which Judy and her girlfriends find themselves seem more appropriate or realistic for older girls.

At the end of The Ghost Parade, Judy’s friend Pauline, the daughter of Dr. Faulkner who made an appearance in The Invisible Chimes, invites Judy and Irene to her home in New York City to finish out their extended summer vacation while Farringdon’s new high school is being built. Dr. Faulkner really gets around. Apparently, every crazy person in New York City was or is a patient of his. Lots of coincidences in this one. On the bus to Pauline’s luxurious home in Gramercy Park, the girls’ attention is caught by a handsome young(ish) man. Irene declares him her “ideal” and the girls hope to meet him in New York. It seems unlikely but Judy discovers he is an author of murder mysteries. She has no trouble getting a job with his agent, the eccentric and gruff Emily Grimshaw, in an effort to pursue their acquaintance. And, indeed, it isn’t long before Dale Meredith shows up. When Judy brings Irene along to the office, the formidable tough-as-nails editor takes one look at her, goes into hysterics, and insists she is someone named “Joy” who we find out is the dead daughter of one of her clients, the poet and recluse, Sarah Glenn. Dale and the 3 girls become friendly but it isn’t long before Dale’s preference for Irene becomes obvious (much to Pauline’s irritation). In fact, it is love at first sight. Meanwhile, some valuable manuscripts of the poet mysteriously disappear and Irene also mysteriously and alarmingly disappears soon after. Is there a connection between Sarah Glenn, her dead daughter, Joy, whom Irene so strongly resembles, Irene, and the stolen manuscripts?

Judy has her work cut out for her in this one. In her desperation to find Irene while fearing the worst, she is also trying to protect her from being suspected of stealing the manuscripts. She is at her wit’s end when Peter, Arthur, and her brother Horace show up to help her with the search, ably supported by New York’s finest.

The Yellow Phantom makes good use of its New York City setting. the girls have a night out on the town, and later, Judy ventures alone into the wilds of Brooklyn following clues to Irene’s whereabouts. In addition to the baffling mystery of what happened to Irene and how the manuscripts disappeared from Ms. Grimshaw’s secure office in broad daylight, we have a bonafide serious romance, attempted murder, evil villain, fear of insanity, and a sad tale of a tragic romance, bad poetry, and a yellow phantom in a tower window. Peter and Judy’s relationship is moved forward, and the hapless Irene seems to have fallen into a secure future with an inheritance and Dale. Lord knows she needs someone willing and able to take charge of her. The only quibble I have is the solution to how the manuscripts disappeared is pretty preposterous and somewhat of a letdown.

We can only hope that it will be nothing but smooth sailing ahead for Dale and Irene’s romance. I guess we will find out in The Mystic Ball. Wink, wink.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Bel Lamington

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by D.E. Stevenson

This one was not a favorite. Mainly because I didn’t care for Bel so much. She is timid, shy, conventional, and too self-effacing. Bel’s story is divided into two parts that could be called “City Mouse” and “Country Mouse”. Bel being the Mouse in both the first part and the second part. No growth or change for the better here! I preferred the City Mouse part because interesting things happen. Not that it is action packed, but Bel has some challenges on her job to add suspense and tension and two and a half incipient romances. We suspect one guy will be the one that will win the right to be Bel’s swain caretaker but we are briefly teased with another possibility and a half which turn out to be false leads.

Bel is a girl who comes to London to make her way in life after the aunt who raised her dies and she realizes that she must make a living. Bel has some qualities that I admire. It is these good qualities that earn her a quick promotion from the typing pool to private secretary to the junior partner of the firm, Mr. Brownlee. She is a good girl, hard-working, responsible, capable, and conscientious. Of course, she is also attractive.

She is even intelligent and sensible, except when she’s not. And that is when she lets her mousy qualities override her common sense. One example of this is when she goes on a day’s road trip with False Lead #1 and their car breaks down. It transpires that she won’t be able to get back to London and work the next morning but will have to stay the night at a little inn. She is thrown into such a state of panic that she becomes almost demented with worry and anxiety. She loses her grip to the extent that she prevails on a complete stranger to drive her to London rather than stay at the inn overnight along with the nice, if a little flighty, Mark. Poor Mark is as confused and put out by her behavior as I was. I still don’t know what she was afraid of. In fairness, I did listen to this on Audio, so the actress, Patience Tomlinson, may have made her a little more overwrought in her interpretation than she appeared on the page.


The second big drama is when she is fired by being nice to the son of the founder and head partner of the firm. Mr. Copping’s son is just out of college and he wants to learn about his Dad’s company on an informal basis before he is taken into the business. Bel puts Mr. James Copping to work and they become friendly although Bel being Bel meticulously observes the formalities and protocol. Nevertheless, a bad spin is put on their friendship by the jealous and resentful head of the typing pool and the nut case who has put himself in charge of the business in the temporary absence of the other two partners. (And he literally is a nut case. We learn at the end of the book that he ends up in an Insane Asylum!) Even though she is esteemed and respected by the head honcho, Mr. Copping Senior, as well as by her immediate boss, the temporarily absent Mr. Brownlee, Bel is thrown into despair especially because she doesn’t have a reference! She dwells on her reference-less state the rest of the book although it is no one’s fault but her own. In her anxiety to avoid conflict at all costs, she just gives up and does nothing to save herself by reaching out to her powerful friends and supporters. She drops off the face of the earth as far they are concerned.

But every cloud has a silver lining and because she is now jobless, she is able to accept an invitation to go on vacation with an old school friend, Louise, and her father. This is “The Country Mouse” part. Readers who loved the Dering Family Trilogy (#1, #2, and #3) will be thrilled that the vacation just happens to be in the Drumburly, Scotland area where Mureth is and where James and Rhoda live. Readers of Bel Lamington who haven’t read about James and Rhoda Dering and company might not be as entertained by the change of scene. Rhoda, being the force of nature that she is, takes Bel in hand and by the end, all of Bel’s problems are solved very much in spite of herself.

Now, not all heroines have to be full of spirit and fire. In fact, I like heroines who start out shy and too nice for their own good. But I also like them to develop some backbone and cease to be doormats. Although all turns out for the best for Bel, it is kind of by accident. She has very little agency of her own, and when she does, she comes across as foolishly stubborn. At one point, Rhoda, who pretty much takes over the book as soon as she appears, confides to Bel that at first she thought Bel was a bit “wet” but that she was “mistaken”. I laughed and thought, “I’m not so sure about that, Rhoda.” I gather that in the sequel to Bel Lamington, Fletcher’s End, she comes into her own a bit more. I hope so. I liked Louise, Bel’s friend, and her father, and it looks like they are featured. Also, I hope we hear that Rhoda has thrown out all of her Childcare manuals which were making her a terrible mother. I sure don’t want to hear in a yet to be read Stevenson novel that her two sons have become serial killers.

Rounded up…

Rating: 3 out of 5.

The Truth about the Devlins

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by Linda Scottoline

“TJ, that’s why I give you so much credit.” “Me?” I asked, astonished. “Yes, you took responsibility for what you did. When you pleaded guilty, you accounted. You weren’t trying to get away from the consequences. Mom and Dad hired Angela for you, and they all wanted you to fight the charge. You’re the one who said no. You’re the one who wanted to plead guilty, and I watched you in that courtroom. I could see you felt terrible. You thought it was your worst day, but I thought it was your best.” Whoa. I’d never thought of it that way. I couldn’t speak for a moment.

This was my first introduction to Edgar Award-winning author Lisa Scottoline who has written a ton of books but only slightly more than 1 a year. That is a good sign and something I look at with an author that is new to me. She doesn’t churn them out like a book assembly line. I will be reading more of her books. A nice balance of mystery, suspense, and family drama, it is a little old-fashioned in that much of it is the detective work of a private investigator wrapped up with a smidgeon of courtroom drama at the end. Two smidgeons, actually.

The tale is told in first person by TJ, a recovering alcoholic and the youngest son of the powerful Devlin family. Mom, Dad, and 2 of their 3 children, ambitious MVD (Most Valuable Devlin) John and do-gooder, Gabby, are lawyers and are devoted to their family law firm. TJ is not a lawyer, but a college dropout and ex-con who served time in prison for a bad act he did while drunk. He is the black sheepiest of black sheep and has been viewed as a screw-up his whole life, usually for good reason. He is now out, sober, and employed as a private investigator for the firm, a job that the family gave him to keep their eyes on him and keep him on the straight and narrow. Also, it would look bad for a Devlin to be unemployed or flipping burgers somewhere.

TJ is devoted and loyal to his family some of whom deserve it and some who do not. He is a very good guy. We like him right away for his sweet disposition and snarky humor. No one is more surprised than he is when his brother John comes to him for help when he thinks he has murdered a client. TJ is anxious to prove himself and takes matters in hand very competently. But it is not long before we hate and suspect brother John as much as we love TJ. And dear old Dad is no prize either.

While TJ is putting his life and his freedom in danger by trying to save his brother, he has been asked to work on another case by his sister who is seeking justice for a group of ex-prisoners who were experimented on by the government with awful consequences. Although the stakes are high, and we stress over TJ and the injustices he continually deals with, the book somehow maintains a light atmosphere. It doesn’t keep us mired in darkness or on edge for too long although there is plenty of drama, suspense, and surprises. TJ goes to a dark place at one point but Truth, Justice, and the American Way prevail and I loved it. There is even a tiny little romance to provide TJ with a personal happy ending and hope for the future.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

The Ghost Parade

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by Margaret Sutton

“No wonder she’s afraid.”  Judy said aloud. ” I told you the box was empty. Someone stole those heads and tried to scare us. You know they couldn’t have walked out of the box alone. See! It’s empty!”
She lifted back the cover!
Lorraine screamed! Then she fell back into Arthur’s arms and began sobbing hysterically.
That head with horns had popped out at her for all the world as if it had been alive.

Just when a mystery is heating up near Farringdon, Judy is about to leave for a month’s vacation at a girl’s camp at The Thousand Islands near the Canadian border. She is not a happy camper. On assignment from the paper, Horace takes her along to the scene where Chief Kelly has just busted up a counterfeiters’ ring. Some of the criminals are still at large, and Judy is sure the police could use her help. On top of that, Arthur Farringdon-Pett has just bought an airplane. Oh well, I guess Judy will have to endure a boring month of swimming, boating and other camp activities with her friends instead of chasing criminals and joy-riding in airplanes.

Fear Not. Before they even arrive at the camp, Judy has acquired a huge crate full of horrific-looking Indian Masks at an auction and will be keeping them with her at the camp along with her two cats Blackberry and Ghostie. On top of that, she meets a strange old crone called “the Cat Woman” who is headed to the same area. The suspicious old woman tells the friends that the masks are cursed and will bring “sickness, trouble, and death” to all in their vicinity. Hopefully the strict matron will not raise any objections to Judy’s unexpected accoutrements.

Besides dealing with the less-than-thrilled Mrs. Dinwiddie, Judy has plenty else on her plate. First the scary Masks seem to have taken on a life of their own, mysteriously disappearing out of the trunk, then spotted parading through the camp. Have the “Ghosts of Dead Warriors” come to life? Next Blackberry and Ghostie have violent fits and Blackberry scratches Judy’s vain sometime frenemy, Lorraine Lee, on the face. Judy along with Pauline, Honey, and Irene take the beloved pets to the Cat Woman who owns an island nearby. She cures them and takes care of them since they have been banned from the camp. On the way back the girls almost drown during a violent storm on the River, and then Mrs. Dinwiddie gets deathly ill herself. Judy saves her life using the same treatment that The Cat Woman used on the cats (don’t ask, it’s gross) and things are just getting started. Lorraine disappears just as Arthur shows up in his new plane and then the plane disappears! Judy tracks Lorraine to Cat Island looking for a cure for the scar on her face. And who should show up but Slippery McGuirk, the head of the Counterfeit Ring! And weirder still, he is married to the Cat Woman, who is old enough to be his mother!

This is a Judy Bolton that is very action-packed with some character exploration as well. Lorraine Lee shows her bad side as well as a good side, as does Arthur Farringdon-Pett. We get the first clear hints that Judy’s destiny lies not with rich sophisticated Arthur, but with her longtime friend Peter Dobbs. Pauline, Judy’s New York City friend, who is my favorite character besides Judy, played a strong role in this book. In the teaser for the next book, The Yellow Phantom, we are told that talented but poor Irene’s life will be changed forever. Pauline is in that one too.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Seven Strange Clues (Judy Bolton #4)

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By Margaret Sutton

“All kinds of ghastly things may have happened in this tunnel. What’s that?”

The others turned as he said it and when they saw what had frightened Horace he looked a little sheepish. Blackberry was climbing down the ladder. But the cat certainly made an eerie picture as his agile body descended noiselessly….Irene shivered and clutched Horace’s arm.

“There’s something about cats that I don’t quite like,” she said “….not black ones in cellars.”

The shadow of the murdered Vine Thompson still lingers over Judy’s house on Grove Street and once again, her evil doings continue to provide Judy with mysteries to solve and adventures to be had. There is more than one mystery in this fourth book in the series. It starts out innocently enough with Judy and her school friends planning to enter a poster contest to celebrate “Health Week”. Meanwhile, Dr. Bolton has rented out his garage to two strangers who board at Irene’s house. They offer to build a workbench in the Bolton’s cellar with some lumber in the garage. Judy, and Honey will work on their posters there.

Despite her distinct lack of artistic talent, Judy decides to paint a bowl of fruit for her poster.

Golly! It’s bright [Horace] exclaimed “What is it? The sun?”

“Of course not, Silly. Can’t you see it’s in a blue dish?”…

I thought that was the sky.”

“You had the picture upside down.”

“So I did. Hmm! I see now. It’s an orange. Looks as if it’s beginning to go bad. But Judy, seriously, orange leaves aren’t yellow and they aren’t as long as this”…If you just put a little more green in those leaves——

“But they’re not leaves. They’re bananas!”

When Judy wins first prize, everyone is in shock. Sweet Mrs. Bolton wonders if Judy’s poster was taken “for one of those modernistic paintings.” When they go to the exhibit at Brandt’s department store where the posters are being displayed, they see that someone has put Judy’s name on someone else’s beautifully done poster. Why? What are the strange sounds coming from the cellar, and why are papers missing and who ate the apple out of Judy’s bowl of fruit? Why has snobby, mean, and hateful Kay Vincent suddenly befriended poor Irene? Why is Honey behaving so strangely? Why does Kay’s poster have a missing corner and a smudge on it? And most importantly of all, who burned down the High School?

All eyes turn to Judy and she is persona non grata when it is suspected that she took someone else’s poster and claimed it as her own. To make matters worse, it is Honey’s poster that someone has put Judy’s name on, and Honey is not happy. Rumors are spreading that, incredibly, Judy or Honey is the one who burned down the school! And why are the shades always drawn on the car that Irene’s boarders are keeping in Judy’s garage? It all comes to a head when Judy discovers a secret room underneath the Bolton’s cellar complete with a tunnel leading to their garage. I will say no more except to point out that this book was written in 1932, 1 year before Prohibition ended.

This one excelled in tying all of the diverse mysteries into a neatly packaged whole. Both the personal dramas and the genuine criminality that Judy uncovers make for one of the better books in the series. Judy single-handedly extracts a confession from the culprit who started the school fire,  and her detective work leads to the disgrace of a prominent citizen of Farringdon. At least we hope so. She even is responsible for getting Irene out of the drudgery of her life as a mill worker. This book advances the relationships between Judy and her friends, and justice is served on all fronts. But have we seen the last of Kay Vincent? Time will tell.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

The Secret Book of Flora Lea

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By Patti Callahan Henry

Loved the title. Loved the cover. Loved the premise. The book was a real mess. I usually don’t rate books as low as 2 stars simply because I usually quit reading them well before I feel qualified to pass judgment on them. But this started off well and despite my irritations which built up as the book went on, I was intrigued by the mystery and so I stuck with it, hoping for a big payoff at the end.

Hazel works in a rare bookstore in London but this is her last day as she is about to go to her dream job at Sotheby’s after a short vacation to Paris with her long-term boyfriend. She is sad about leaving because the owners are like her family. Alone in the office, Hazel opens a shipment of rare books and much to her shock they include a manuscript of a children’s fantasy book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars by Peggy Andrews.

When Hazel was a teenager she and her little sister, 6-year-old Flora, were sent to a little farm near Oxford under Operation Pied Piper. This was a scheme at the beginning of WWII to send many of the children away from London to keep them safe from the bombings. Hazel and her sister are fortunate in that they are taken in by Bridey and her son Harry who are very cool and kind. Hazel and her sister are devoted to each other and are further bonded by a fantasy story that Hazel has created and shares with Flora. They “go into” their fantasy story quite often. It is about a land called Whisperwood and is a great secret between just the two of them. Flora relies on Hazel telling her the story whenever she needs comfort and security and is quite enamored with it. Hazel and Harry become infatuated with each other and one day they leave Flora alone asleep in a meadow by a nearby river. The river plays a role in Whisperwood and Flora is attracted by the “river of stars and galaxies” and falls in. She is never seen again and is presumed drowned though her body is never found.

When Hazel looks at the book in the bookstore office it is her secret fantasy story come to life but expanded and embellished with illustrations. Since no one but her and Flora knew about Whisperwood she concludes that Flora must have survived the fall in the river and somehow told the story to someone who told someone else who wrote a book about it. Or could someone have somehow learned about the story before Flora’s disappearance? Or could Flora actually be Peggy Andrews the American author?! The rest of the book is trying to find and talk to the very private and elusive Peggy and chasing down all of the people she knew way back when who might somehow have heard about Whisperwood. This includes her teenage crush, Harry, whom she rejected out of guilt that she was with him instead of watching after her little sister.

There are many reasons why this book did not work for me, but there are several main ones. First of all the details told about Whisperwood interspersed throughout the novel were too precious. I largely skipped over all the twee descriptions. I don’t want to hear about the weird dream you had last night, either. I didn’t like how Hazel fell back with Harry whom she hadn’t seen in 20 years and didn’t really know anymore. She treated her long-term boyfriend shabbily, professing her love to him right to the point where he rightly didn’t believe her and walked out in hurt and frustration. Hazel rubbed me the wrong way from the minute she stole the valuable manuscript from her employer who was supposedly like family and kept delaying fessing up to him until it was too late. “I can explain” is a refrain we hear too often from Hazel about many of her bad decisions.

**Major Spoilers Ahead**

But the absolute most frustrating thing was that the whole book was about the quest to solve how Hazel’s story made its way to America and Peggy Andrews, but in the end, it was nothing but a wild goose chase. A good bit of the book is spent with Peggy, her secretive mother, and their troubled relationship. Twenty-five-year-old Peggy is the same age Flora would be and the reader is teased constantly that Peggy is Flora. Why else would we spend so much time with them and her romance with her boyfriend, “Wren”? But in the end, all of that time and effort came to nothing. The solution to the mystery of what became of Flora came from out of left field from another source entirely. In fact, Flora and Hazel could have been reunited a year before the events of the book even started. But Hazel being Hazel, she sourly refused to be interviewed by a journalist who was writing a series about the lost children of Operation Pied Piper.

So after Hazel, her mother, and Flora are reunited and all of the circumstances of Flora’s disappearance are unraveled and examined, everyone keeps blathering on to everyone else about the wonder of “Whisperwood” landing on Hazel’s desk and how it was a miracle which led to finding Flora. Hazel is told that even the famous illustrator of the book read an “article in the Oxford Mail about your story, about the stolen illustrations and how they led to the solved cold case of your lost sister, the River Child, as they call her.” This false narrative made a good story but it was all nonsense and very irritating. I kept saying, “Wait, What?! What are they talking about?” I read the chain of events over again, to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. And to be fair, they do learn that Flora did survive the river, but Hazel had already come to that conclusion. Because of the brick wall Hazel and company ran into with Peggy and the book, her frustrated mother talks Hazel into meeting with the journalist who has been “hounding” her (Hazel’s words) for over a year.
I paraphrase:
“Gee Hazel, maybe you should meet with that journalist after all.”
“Absolutely Not, Mum! Why drag all of that tragedy up all over again? It would be too painful”.
“But Hazel, someone might read the story, and know something.”
“Oh. OK, then.”
And that meeting is what solves all of the mysteries and gives the book its happy ending for Hazel and Flora (who had been only a phone call away long before this story even started.)

To add to the pointlessness of it all, we learn at the end that distraught teenage Hazel was in the same local chapel that Flora was hidden in right after she was rescued from the river. Hazel even heard her calling out but she was so wrapped up in her own grief and drama that she dismissed the cries she heard as an owl. So Flora needed to never have been lost to begin with if Hazel hadn’t been so self-involved and oblivious.

When I finally came to the end I felt like I had been on a long trip to nowhere. Instead of The Secret Book of Flora Lea it should have been called When a Respected Journalist Wants to Write About What Became of Your Lost Little Sister who Disappeared 20 Years Ago, Take the Call.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

The Invisible Chimes (Judy Bolton #3)

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By Margaret Sutton

Judy’s hands trembled and her gray eyes were dark with apprehension as she lifted the loose floorboards and looked.
“Good Heavens!”
The two boards fell back across the open space with a crash as Judy uttered this startled exclamation. She simply sat back on her heels and refused to think until her mind had been prepared for this appalling thing she had discovered.

In the last book, we learned that Peter is the son of Grace Thompson who was rejected by her parents, Peter’s grandparents, The Dobbses, after she ran off with the oldest son of Vine Thompson, a criminal gang leader. When Grace died, after having another baby, who apparently also died, The Dobbses adopted her 3-year-old son, Peter, and raised him.

This book opens with Arthur driving Judy and her friends out to the country to visit an antique store and tea room. After admiring the antiques, they go into the tea room for a snack. Horace asks a pretty girl who is playing the piano to dance. But they soon suspect that her loud piano playing was to distract the owners and guests from the antique store being robbed. The thieves and the piano player make their getaway by stealing Arthur’s beloved car. After the police come, Judy and her friends chase them down and end up almost getting run over by the gang when they get out of their car and try to block the road. At the last minute, the young girl turns the wheel from the driver and saves their lives. She is injured and the grateful Boltons take her home to recover where they learn she has amnesia.

The heart of this book is uncovering the mystery of the girl’s background. Judy calls her “Honey” as they don’t know her name and she has honey-colored hair. She is sweet, eager to please, and grateful to the Boltons for taking her in. But is she a thief and part of a criminal family? Or was she kidnapped? Judy uncovers some lies Honey has told but doesn’t want to believe that Honey is anything other than the good and lovely person she appears to be. But whom was Honey meeting in secret in the dead of night and what was in the package that the stranger gave her? And what are those chimes Judy keeps hearing in her home seemingly out of nowhere? To uncover the truth Dr. Bolton invites a psychiatrist friend from New York City to observe Honey. Thus, we meet Pauline Faulkner, his daughter, who becomes a good friend of Judy and plays a part in this and several other of her mysteries down the road. Judy starts keeping a notebook to record clues and observations and discovers many inconsistencies that make Honey suspicious (to the reader, at least). She wants to catch the thieves that almost killed her and her friends as well as recover the stolen antiques and discover what the connection is between the gang and Honey. When Mrs. Dobbs, Peter’s grandmother, has a stroke she becomes strangely attached to Honey and starts calling her “Grace,” the name of her dead daughter.

While Honey is caring for Mrs. Dobbs, Judy discovers a musical vase that was stolen from the antique store hidden under the floorboards in Honey’s bedroom. That solves the mystery of the chimes but things are looking very dark indeed for the Boltons’ young house guest. Judy feels angry and betrayed. Can Honey really be the sneaky and criminal liar that all the evidence seems to indicate? Judy thinks so and wants her arrested immediately. The cooler heads of her parents and Peter persuade Judy to not judge until they hear Honey’s explanation.

When Judy gets a letter from Pauline who has been doing some detective work for her in New York City, she thinks she has all of the answers and confronts Honey with her disturbing discoveries. But she is not prepared for the story that Honey has to tell. By the end of the book, there are tears aplenty but they are tears of happiness and Honey will start her life anew with a “clean slate.”

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Charlotte Fairlie

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by D.E. Stevenson

Spoilers

As much as I enjoy D.E. Stevenson’s writings, settings, and stories, there is always a little fly in the ointment. For one, most of the time her endings are way too abrupt and often leave an unresolved problem and a lack of closure. I can live with that if it is the first of a trilogy or there is a sequel. She avoids drama like the plague. Exciting and longed-for confrontations and comeuppances often happen behind the scenes and the reader is told about what happened later. And sometimes her heroines do everything in their power to avoid happiness. They make decisions that sacrifice their happiness for the sake of others. Again, this would be OK if the greater good was served by the sacrifice, but often it is based on a lack of self-esteem. Sometimes they are wet noodles and won’t stand up for themselves often to the detriment of others as well as theirselves. This book features three of these plot elements. Thankfully, being a wet noodle is not Charlotte Fairlie’s problem.

We meet our heroine as the new headmistress of an elite girls’ school, St. Elizabeths. Although young for the job, being in her late twenties, she is an Oxford graduate and eminently qualified. She is a former student, who was boarded there when she was thrown out of her beloved father’s life by her new stepmother. Her sad past has only made her strong and empathetic. She proves to be very popular and respected by the staff and students but one long-tenured teacher, Miss Pinkerton, becomes her nemesis. The older woman is wracked with hatred and jealousy towards Charlotte. She feels sure that the longed-for post of headmistress would have been hers but for the young upstart. I loved the way Charlotte navigated all of Miss Pinkerton’s machinations with wisdom, tact, and sense. She won me over completely early in the book when faced with a malignant threat from Miss Pinkerton, she gets out in front of the problem with aplomb. Thus, what could have resulted in scandal and calamity for both her and a young student turned into a powerful friendship with the head of St. Elizabeth’s board of directors and a strong bond with the student.

That unusual young student, Tessa, is a charming and fearless young girl who obviously hero-worships and loves Charlotte. When she invites her headmistress to spend her vacation at Targ, her beloved island home in the highlands of Scotland, Charlotte decides to throw caution to the winds and accepts. She and Tessa’s divorced father, the laird, fall deeply in love with each other. He proposes marriage and here comes the fly in the ointment. She refuses him for a couple of cockamamie reasons when all of her objections could have been easily overcome by some honest communication. It flies in the face of what we have come to know about Charlotte and how she always handles her business. Of course, all ends happily with one of D.E. Stevenson’s trademark rushed endings, but I was still disappointed in Charlotte, whom I had come to trust and admire.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and esteemed Charlotte Fairlie up until the point when she did her darndest to break her own heart and the hearts of the two people who have come to mean the world to her. In addition to the love problems, there is a side story of Tessa’s best friend at school, Donny, and her two brothers. The three siblings are the victims of a toxic parent and their story almost ends in the worst tragedy imaginable. It was shocking.

The large and small joys, dramas, and adventures at the school and on Targ were as involving as I have come to expect from D.E. Stevenson. It is almost magical the way she makes outwardly ordinary characters and their journeys fascinating and gripping. She makes small things seem big. And when big things really do happen it’s jaw-dropping.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

The Mystery on Judy Lane (Judy Bolton #13.5)

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by Beverly Hatfield

Judy sighed. I can’t decide if this mystery is interfering with Christmas or if Christmas is interfering with the mystery.

Before going to the third book in the Judy Bolton series, we take a short detour to celebrate the season, with The Mystery on Judy Lane, which is set during Christmas time. This book is a later addition to the series and was written by Beverly Hatfield who co-authored book # 39, The Strange Likeness (A Judy Bolton Mystery, #39).. It is set in 1940 between The Name on the Bracelet, in which Judy and Peter become officially engaged, and The Clue in the Patchwork Quilt, which sees the death of both of Judy’s grandparents, The Smeeds. Of natural causes, I hasten to add. So this one gives us an opportunity to see Judy and Peter as a newly engaged couple and their working relationship in Peter’s Roulsville office as attorney and secretary. It is also a fond farewell to kind hard-working Grandpa Smeed and loving but moody and somewhat intimidating Grandma Smeed.

The mystery involves the Pipers of The Unfinished House and Ruth Piper’s mother-in-law, Ella. Mrs. Ella Piper comes to visit Peter to sign her will, which seems to have some complications and mysteries attached to it. Earlier, while Judy was shopping for Peter’s Christmas present, she senses she is being spied on by a strange woman. What follows is a mystery involving the Roulsville Paper Mill, a land dispute, threats against Peter’s law practice, and finally criminal mischief in the form of rocks through windows. Why are Judy and Peter being targeted? Both Mrs. Piper and George the owner of the stationary store where Judy bought Peter’s present fall under suspicion, as well as Ruth’s cousins-in-law who are possible claimants to an inheritance. Interspersed with the sinister goings-on are the Christmas secrets and plans of Judy and her friends and family. We get to spend valuable time with the Smeeds when Horace and Judy are stranded there overnight during a snowstorm. Finally, with the help of Horace’s investigative reporting skills, Arthur’s inside information, Honey’s spying from George’s store, and Judy’s derring- do (and female intuition), all is solved satisfactorily for all just in time for Christmas. And of course, Peter helps too.

Though not written by or based on any input from Margaret Sutton, this book fits right into the series perfectly. Past mysteries are referred to and future mysteries and occurrences are foreshadowed, and sometimes quite poignantly. The writing style perfectly mirrors the original author’s and all of the characters’ personalities are faithful to her original creations. One can tell a lot of knowledge, love, and respect went into this one. Like Margaret, Beverly incorporated true events in her own life into this story. After reading this, Margaret Sutton’s daughter gave her blessing to its publication and asked Beverly to co-author The Strange Likeness which so successfully brought closure to the Judy Bolton series.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Black Sheep

/ Rebekahrox / 1 Comment

By Georgette Heyer

“She thought, in touching innocence, that in Miles Calverleigh she had found a friend, and a better one by far than any other, because his mind moved swiftly, because he could make her laugh even when she was out of charity with him, and because of a dozen other attributes which were quite frivolous – hardly attributes at all, in fact – but which added up to a charming total, outweighing the more important faults in his character.”

“I love you, you know,’ he said conversationally. ‘Will you marry me?’ The manner in which he made this abrupt proposal struck her as being so typical of him that a shaky laugh was dragged from her. ‘Of all the graceless ways of making me an offer – ! No, no, you are not serious! you cannot be!’ ‘Of course I’m serious! A pretty hobble I should be in if I weren’t, and you accepted my offer!


I can’t deny Black Sheep by Georgette Heyer 5-star status. It was formerly a 4-star and thus relegated to second-tier status (for a Heyer). This is not a book I re-read over and over like These Old Shades, Frederica, Cotillion, or Arabella to name a few. It was one of her later books (though the book right after Frederica, one of my favorites,) when her powers were not at their height. The one after this was the almost universally disparaged Cousin Kate, and the one after that was the boring and flat Charity Girl, and the one after that was Lady of Quality, which is really just a pale imitation of this one. And we will let the unfortunate My Lord John lay there undisturbed out of respect. But this one is a fan favorite and when it was on sale at Audible with a new reader, Natalie Simpson, I bought it and took the opportunity to reacquaint myself with it and discover what is behind its popularity. And I did.

The reader was “unexceptional” which in Heyer-speak means perfectly fine. I won’t go into the plot except that it revolves around our heroine coming to Bath to prevent a disastrous misalliance between her much loved 17-year-old niece and Stacy Caverleigh, a suave and charming cad and fortune hunter. She tries to enlist the help of his uncle, Miles Caverleigh, who has recently returned from 20 years of exile in India. Unfortunately for Abigail, if Miles had any religion, it would be against his to get involved.

He was not a rebel. Rebels fought against the trammels of convention, and burned to rectify what they saw to be evil in the shibboleths of an elder generation, but Miles Calverleigh was not of their number. No wish to reform the world inspired him, not the smallest desire to convert others to his own way of thinking. He accepted, out of a vast and perhaps idle tolerance, the rules laid down by a civilised society, and, when he transgressed these, accepted also, and with unshaken good-humour, society’s revenge on him. Neither the zeal of a reformer, nor the rancour of one bitterly punished for the sins of his youth, awoke a spark of resentment in his breast. He did not defy convention: when it did not interfere with whatever line of conduct he meant to pursue he conformed to it; and when it did he ignored it, affably conceding to his critics their right to censure him, if they felt so inclined, and caring neither for their praise nor their blame.


Abigail and Miles are perfect for each other from the very beginning. Their attraction to each other was palpable throughout. I particularly loved Miles. He kind of reminded me of Rhett Butler: Somewhat of a “loose screw”, but ultimately a good man who goes his own way and doesn’t care two hoots about the silly conventional rules of society.

But, we come to learn, he respects the feelings and values of people who really matter to him (when they aren’t being swayed by pesky outside influences, that is.) By people who matter, I mostly mean Abigail, of course. As beloved as she is to her older clingy sister Serena, and her young niece, Fanny, to the rest of her conventional conservative family, she is almost as much of a Black Sheep as Miles is to society at large. He turns out to be the missing piece she didn’t know she lacked to break her free from her constricted life and become truly free and happy. Which will only happen after the final delightful scene in the book.

As for Miles, it is through his machinations which we only suspect are going on behind the scenes, and then not until the book is in its final chapters, that things work out to the satisfaction of all of those we like, and the disgruntlement of those we don’t. Young Fanny is saved and is well on her way to a suitable love match with another, Stacy, the villain, is vanquished in 6 different ways to Sunday, society and conventional forces are flouted but will soon be brought to heel, and those that love and depend on Abigail a little too much are gently set aside. As for Abigail and Miles they will embark on a marriage and a life that we imagine will be filled with passion, adventure, and even peace when it suits them. And it is all pretty epic.
Other than Venetia, I think it is one of the most romantic of Heyer’s Novels. Brava to the genius of Georgette Heyer.

Rating: 5 out of 5.