Library Limelights 245

 

Abigail Dean. Girl A. Ebook download from TPL. USA: Viking/Penguin RandomHouse, 2021.

Alexandra (“Lex”) Gracie to all appearances is a successful lawyer, enjoying a career that took her from London to New York with her high-energy boss Devlin. She’s called back to England as the executor of her mother’s estate—her Mother who died in prison. Slowly, we are fed the backstory of abuse and deprivation perpetrated by Lex’s parents; the minimal references to the seven siblings’ ordeal makes it somehow worse than full-blown details; our imaginations provide the rest. From a normal childhood at first, their Father had slid deeper and deeper into a kind of religious paranoia to control his world, heavily influenced by an evangelistic preacher.

Lex (Girl A) escaped one night and the family rescue began, but their recovery took years of medical care. Two of them were not much more than babies. Teams of therapeutic personnel labelled them Girl A, Boy A, Girl B, and so on, as much for privacy from media attention as for studying their rehabilitation progress. The children were eventually adopted into separate homes, with little contact between them. Narrated by Lex, she seems either devoid of real feelings or strives hard to conceal them.

In the present day, Lex and her closest sister Eve want to turn their former home into a vibrant community centre, the antithesis of what their Father would have approved. Each sibling will have to agree in order for that to happen. Each has dealt with trauma in their own way, some with still disjointed memories. Besides Eve, Lex is sometimes in touch with Ethan (Boy A), and in fact is soon scheduled to attend his wedding in Greece where her sister Delilah will also be. This—despite her longtime counsellor Dr. Kay, and her loving adoptive parents, trying to persuade her not to go. Insightful and sensitive, the author deftly illustrates how powerful the human mind is.

Childhood

▪ I tested handcuffs, as I had done every day since Father’s mistake. (44)

▪ We were never more precious than when we were inside her, when she had us in the tight confines of her body, and we were quiet. (79)

▪ By September, we were scavengers. (305)

▪ Father gathered us to him then. “There’s persecution out there,” he said, “for people who desire to live the life that we do.” (352)

▪ He had decided that we should commence a freer, more focused way of living, outside the shackles of public education. He would teach us himself. (357)

▪ “The lighting. The absence of any point of reference for the date or time. They’re old disorientation techniques.” (406)

Adulthood

▪ “In that case,” she said, “we would bury your mother in an unmarked grave, according to default prison policy.” (21)

▪ Our plan for Moor Woods Road was coming into place: a community center, populated by things of which Mother and Father would have disapproved. (67)

▪ “But I can’t deal with interference, Lex. I can’t deal with your stories, at a time like this.” (112)

▪ With a long sigh, she sat up. “Don’t you ever get tired,” she said, “of hating them?” (186)

▪ “You all have that same look to you. Like some part of you’s still starving.” (282)

Jo Walton. Farthing. USA: A Tor Book/Tom Doherty Associates, 2006.

An unusual and engaging novel. It not only has a tricky murder to solve, it’s set in the late 1940s after England reached “Peace with Honour” with Hitler, who now rules the entire continent of Europe. Farthing refers not to the coin but to the upper class political set that espoused appeasement in the Second World War and negotiated the peace whereby Hitler agreed not to invade the British Isles. On a weekend at Farthing Castle, hosted by Lord and Lady Eversley, Sir James Thirkie is killed in such a way as to place suspicion on a Jew. Scotland Yard Detective Carmichael sees the yellow star as a red herring, although David Kahn, husband of Lucy Eversley, is the only Jew around for miles. Lucy has rarely been bound by reigning social norms; she is no lightsome Daisy Dalrymple (as per Heirs of the Body, LL220). Well aware that David will never be truly accepted by her family and childhood friends, Lucy is not even sure why they were invited for the weekend. Her mother, the Viscountess, treats both of them with contempt.

The narrative switches between Lucy and Carmichael, providing the atmosphere of upper crust animus for the lower classes including Jews, Bolsheviks, Communists, gay people, immigrants, and so on. All the weekend male guests have been advancing towards the highest government positions, and indeed, MP Mark Normanby, brother-in-law of Sir James, becomes Prime Minister as the murder investigation drags on. Normanby and Thirkie had married sisters Daphne and Angela, although it seems everyone was having an affair with someone else. Carmichael’s boss wants a quick arrest on any flimsy evidence; Lucy is outraged that David may become the expedient scapegoat. Then shots are fired at Lucy and her father; the shooter is killed and deemed a terrorist.

Hypocrisy is no stranger to these privileged, powerful people who practice in secret what they condemn in public. Is this the darkest side of the English psyche? It’s not so much “science fiction”—as TPL labels it―with its pointed discrimination, and perhaps the broader scenario all too easily imagined. Great insight, greatly entertaining, but also chilling sangfroid. I learn later that this book is the first of an “alternate history” trilogy, followed by Ha’Penny and Half a Crown.

Short-liners

▪ “Awkward sort of business,” Carmichael said as they continued on up the drive. “Aristocrats, politicians, that sort of thing.” (30)

▪ “You always wanted James for yourself, and you’ve never had a baby. If you’d wanted a baby you should have married a man who could give you one, not a vicious nancy-boy like Mark.” (60)

▪ “She’s a country-running bitch. A first-in-class, best-in-show, one-hundred-percent bitch, thoroughbred Southern English.” (84)

▪ “Do you think they’re all covering something up? Something we ought to know?” (166)

▪ He couldn’t, even under policeman’s privilege, ask her what had possessed a smart woman like herself to tie herself for life to a bastard like Normanby. (199-200)

▪ They hang people for murder, and while I didn’t exactly like Mummy, she was my mother after all. Though do they hang Viscountesses? (215)

▪ “You’ve married out of this family and you can’t expect to keep the privileges that came with being born into it now that you’ve married a Jewboy.” (247)

▪ “It’s just that they’re going to introduce new ID cards with pictures on them, like passports I suppose.” (251)

One who cares

Daphne blew out smoke. “In his dressing room. And he’s been stabbed by some damned Jew and he’s all over blood and cold and dead and you’re telling me Angela’s fainted and I ought to go and look after her because she’s the grieving widow when she never really gave two pins for James except that he could make her Lady Thirkie, and he never cared about her except that she was the nearest he could get to me.” (53)

One who doesn’t

I couldn’t think of a single time Sir James had been nice to me, even especially taken notice of me, except to lecture me about the inadvisability of mixing my blood with that of a lesser race. I’d told him he had no right to talk to me, and really he didn’t, not a shred. I’d listen to that sort of thing from Mummy, but hearing it from her friends was the outside of enough. He said he’d make marriage between Jews and people like me illegal if he had his way, and I said it was a good thing he didn’t have his way. Nobody could get a bill like that through Parliament in England, whatever happens on the Continent. (58)

The Carry On Gang

It struck me as we sat around the dining table, all dressed for dinner, jewels glinting in the candlelight, how simply absurd the whole thing was. Here we were gathered to eat, but not just to eat, to eat specific courses in a prescribed order. Mummy would probably have been more horrified to have meat before fish, or a savory before the soup in the French way, than she was by a terrorist shooting at Daddy and me. We sat in a prescribed order, we ate and talked as the conventions dictated, and the whole thing was as artificial as one of those elaborate plaster wedding cakes confectioners keep in their windows. (168-9)

Isabella Maldonado. Blood’s Echo. Ebook download from TPL. USA: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd., 2107.

Back to big city cops again. Experienced narc detective Veranda Cruz loses her position on Phoenix’s elite anti-drug force (DEB) right at the beginning of the story, thanks to an issue with her confidential informant, Flaco. After her carefully planned intercept of a trailer-load of drugs goes awry, she receives a text message showing Flaco’s dead body. Being shifted over to the homicide department doesn’t change her abiding hatred for the Villalobos cartel that controls drug trafficking and other criminal enterprises in the area. Veranda’s new job, unfamiliar procedurally, is in a squad of six detectives led by Sgt Jackson; her mentoring partner is Sam Stark. At least the squad can pursue Flaco’s murder, keeping her in touch with drugs activities. Her personal goal of putting the cartel out of business is matched only by the intent of drug lord, Bartolo Villalobos, to eliminate her.

Bartolo’s father Hector (“El Lobo”) controls his empire from Mexico with an iron fist; especially over his four adult kids who each operate a section of it, competing with each other for his favour. There’s much play on the surname with a wolf’s head appearing in tattoos and a branding iron and photos sent as warning messages. Veranda’s supporting cast is the ideal, hardworking, extended Mexican-American family. But the increasing danger for Veranda and the arson destruction of the family restaurant prompt her mother Lorena to spill a family secret. Potential romance is in the cards with the entrance of attractive fire inspector Cole Anderson. A well-planned trap is set for catching Bartolo, trying to keep details away from an unknown mole within the police group. Bartolo beats them to it with a kidnapping and everything goes sideways with a harrowing scene. This is the first of a series, worth catching another book despite the “off of” author ☺.

Teasers

▪ “Cruz, it’s over,” Cornell said. “Your cover is blown. You can’t work in DEB anymore.” (58)

▪ “The way they set this up shows that the cartel has a deep level of understanding of our procedures.” (82)

▪ Each squad had its own small group dynamics. There were leaders, followers, and sometimes saboteurs with hidden agendas. (85)

▪ Anderson stared at her for a beat. “So you’re basically at war with a drug cartel?” (288)

▪ “Mi’ja, I have many things to tell you. Difficult things.” (313)

▪ “There is a price to pay for coming to the United States. As the saying goes, ‘Freedom isn’t free.’” (327)

▪ “Bartolo had acted irrationally. Nothing he did made good business sense for the cartel.” (347)

▪ Her family had left everything behind to outrun their old enemy. And now Veranda had brought the wolves back to their door. (363-4)

▪ Anderson looked at Sam. “I can’t believe you’re supporting this suicidal plan.” (405)

▪ “Let this be a lesson to you all that I will not tolerate dishonesty, disloyalty, and incompetence from anyone. Not even my own children.” (433)