[571] The Gift of Rain – Tan Twan Eng

” The fortune-teller, long since dead, had said I was born with the gift of rain . . . Like the rain, I had brought tragedy into many people’s lives but, more often than not, rain also brings relief, clarity, and renewal. It washes away our pain and prepares us for another day, and even another life. Now that I am old I find that rains follow me and give me comfort, like the spirits of all the people I have ever known and loved. ” (Book Two, Ch.23, p.431)

Malaysia was at once colonized by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British. The Gift of Rain is set against the period of British Malacca, toward the end of the country’s colonization, when Japanese soldiers cut through impenetrable rainforest of Penang and took over the government. The story is told by Philip Khoo-Hutton, the son of an English father and Chinese mother who grew on the Malay island and lived through the Japanese occupation during World War II.

The novel opens about 50 years after the Japanese surrender, when Philip is an old man, still living in his childhood home redolent of painful memories—memories that are brought into sharp focus by an impromptu visitor from Japan. Michiko was the former lover of Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat and master of aikido that Philip befriended in the late 1930s. Endo-san became the most formative influence on Hutton’s life on the eve of war. Gradually Hutton warms to his visitor who teases out story of Hutton’s life with Endo-san.

I had gone back to many of those places in the days after the war, when in the silences of my life I missed him. I had gone hoping the places would still retain an echo of his presence, and of his passage, but I had only met with emptiness. (Book One, Ch.15, p.168)

An Eurasian, Hutton (his step-siblings were pure British from his father’s first marriage) was never fully accepted by either the Chinese or the English in Penang. Over time and since an early age he has hardened himself against the insults and whispered comments. Alienated from his community and family, the 17-year-old at last discovers a sense of belonging through an unexpected friendship with Endo, who becomes his mentor and master of martial art. The story Hutton tells is meandering, but engaging, leading from his infatuation with the sensei (teacher) to a more mature knowledge that friendship with this man with an insidious purpose on the island is a burden as well as a privilege. He has accepted the bargain: Endo’s protection for his native knowledge.

The problem is, some mistakes can be so great, so grievous, that we end up paying for them again and again, until eventually all our lives forget why we began paying in the first place. (Book One, Ch.13, p.154)

The Gift of Rain, framing its story on a little-heard-of Malaysian island with a diverse people and culture, delves into the moral ambiguity that its protagonist faces when war erupts. Hutton finds himself torn between love for his family and loyalty to his Japanese teacher and friend. Tan is not afraid to deal with such grey areas into which he puts Hutton. Both Hutton and Endo are well-etched. They are both shouldered with the duty to protect their families and have to act within the constraint of obligations. Tan’s treatment of their dilemma and emotional complexities is both nuanced and realistically ambiguous. They are capable of nobility, but also failures of the spirit and most importantly, they have to bear responsibility for evil as well as the good they do. The only drawback of this debut (nominated for Booker Prize 2007) was the excessive aikido element that sometimes teeters over into daftness. Tan’s evocative and thoughtful prose also evokes the work of Kazuo Ishiguro and Somerset Maugham.

432 pp. Weinstein Books. Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

Bargain Dilemma

At lunch break I was browsing some bookstores near campus without much of an agenda. Like I mentioned yesterday, summer is just around the corner, with Memorial day weekend being a few days away. Bookstores are gearing up for summer reading sales, rolling out books that cater to every reader’s palate. Instead I found myself standing before table full of discounted books. They’re not the publisher returns or overstock. They are books, some even by bestselling authors, that were just hot off the press. I was stunned, and so disheartened that many of the books were unsold, unread, and virtually ignored by the public. It really hit home about the plunging sales and diminishing reading culture. I was delighted that I got The Darlings by Cristina Alger, An Unexpected Guest by Anne Korkeakivi and At Last by Edward St. Aubyn, all published within the last year, at heavily discount prices but sad at the same time that these books should be marked down so soon. I might be overly concerned, hoping that more people have switched to e-books. Honestly, I find a hardcover priced at $27 a bit steep despite the labor cost for manual binding. I hardly buy hardcover at full price. The cost of doing business seems to be forcing publishers to keep their prices exorbitant. But this seems to lead to a downward spiral since most people try to recoup money, and that leads them to the sale pile.

“Summer Reading”

I checked in at the Musing Mondays blog, which is the host for a weekly book meme or blogging prompt. Here is this week’s prompt:

Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s). What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it! Also tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.

On social media people share their first swim of the season and barbeque grill fired up for the first time. Summer is here. The bookstores are rolling out their summer reading titles. These summer books, to my amusement, are quite diverse in their target audience and intensity of the subject matter. My reading for once is not influenced by change of season, weather, or travel plan. That said, I tend to pick lighter books that don’t require much brain juice to comprehend so I can bring with me to the pool. Summer reading always has an academic connotation: students are loaded with a pile of books to be completed over summer holiday. I think students should be given wide latitude in deciding what they want to read, instead of the Moby Dick-model. At Barnes & Noble and some local bookstores, I was a little taken aback by some of the titles: Columbine? Lolita? My school made me read Lolita in 10th grade but I don’t think some parts of this country would even allow that book to be shelved in public libraries! Interesting is that many of these summer reading books were once banned books: Leaves of Grass, Madame Bovary, Jungle, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Bell Jar. I read most of these in school, except Bell Jar, which was required reading for a literature course in Freshman year of college. Bell Jar is too depressing as a summer book. 

As much as I don’t make a list for summer, I have inclined toward including travel books—memoirs and narratives. Dreaming in French captures the Paris years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis. People Who Eats Darkness is a true crime story of 21-year-old Lucie Blackman who went missing in Tokyo. The city had simply swallowed her up. The Geography of Bliss is a grump’s journey to look for the “unheralded happy places.” These are great books to sizzle in imagination and far places. They are easy readings that you can pick up without having to back-track between pool times and cocktail hours.

[570] North River – Pete Hamill

” He was a doctor, but medicine was not an exact science. There was no cure for everything. As in life. The cause of death was always life. Across many years now, he had comforted people he knew would soon die. He hoped his consoling whispers would do them no harm. ” (3:46)

North River is what know as the Hudson that separates New York from New Jersey. In this novel, set in the 1930s, against this river that symbolizes both impermanence and closure, Peter Hamill gives us what he knows best—New York City. Rich in ambiance and period details, North River draws closely and intensely from the city, in the tight grip of Depression, where people are addled, desperate, and lonely.

But he had lost prayer somewhere along the way, along with faith. He had been educated to deal with the body, not the soul. In the Argonne, he lost what remained of the affairs of the soul, among the torn and broken bodies of the young, until the day came that he cursed God. (Ch.5, p.94)

In winter 1934, 47-year-old James Delancey ministers to poor patients in the tenements of Lower West Side. They are burst-outs who cannot afford to pay him but he treats them nonetheless. Among his patients are old stubborn heads who refuse to go to hospital, neighbors who blame him for loss, and lush husbands who beat their wives. On a snowy morning he finds his toddler grandson at his door with a note from his daughter, who is off to Spain looking her husband, a revolutionary from Mexico pursued by the FBI. Although flustered by his grandson’s impromptu arrival, the little boy infuses life and warmth into his home. To cope with his new domestic arrangement, Delancey enlists the help of Rose, a tough, decent and intelligent Sicilian woman with a secret in her past.

But across the days of other people’s illness and damage and painful unhappiness, the days of endless casualties, he carried Rose with him now. She and the boy had formed a current in his life, like a secret stream flowing south through the North River . . . It was a stream that was always in the present, not in the past, nor the future.” (Ch.9, p.164)

Indeed the past has haunted him that the nobly beleaguered doctor has transmuted his attention to the poor and needy. The influenza pandemic claimed both his parents’ lives. His wife Molly was furious with him for volunteering duty overseas. Unable to shake off her angry feelings of abandonment, she walks off to the river leaving him with his daughter Grace. This new life with Carlito and Rose is threatened by a mafia who is angry at Delancey’s treating the bullet would of a rival and refusing to reveal his whereabouts.

North River is both character- and plot-driven. Stewed in guilt, self-doubt and misery until his grandson arrives, the doctor has always lived in the past, held captive by dreams of his disappeared wife and haunted by the carnage of battlefield in France. Portraits of rouges and rule benders, along with the budding romance with Rose propel the novel, which truly evokes the Irish, for no other ethnic group so easily lends itself to such fertile inner conflict as shown in Delancey and the characters that populate this book.

341 pp. Back Bay Books. Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

Pete Hamill

With 17 books under his belt, I have a lot to catch up with Pete Hamill. I have recently bought North River and Forever and started the former. The story is simple enough: a stroller with a three-year-old boy was left at the door of James Delancey’s walkup on asnowy morning. The boy, Carlito, is his grandson. His mother left for Barcelona to look for her revolutionary husband who was a member of the Mexican Communist Party. So the beleaguered doctor who ministered to the poor and the down-and-out now has one more person under his roof, a little boy who needs more than just nourishing—an emotional upbringing and a safe home. Hamill’s New York is one that is cottage industry in literature and film—the Irish misery. But the ground has been covered so often at this point that it risks cliché. Presumably the only trick left is to go even farther than your predecessors did, pile on the misery even thicker. At 77, Hamill is at his best when he writes about his city. He knows New York present and past, and he is able to make us taste the early-20th-century time frame of “North River”, which is the Hudson River.

Returns: About Rereading

I checked in at the Booking Through Thursday blog, which is the host for a weekly book meme or blogging prompt. Here is this week’s prompt:

What book(s) do you find yourself going back to? Beloved children’s classics? Favorites from college? Something that touched you and just makes you long to visit?
(Because, doesn’t everybody have at least one book they would like to curl up with, even if they don’t make a habit of rereading books? Even if they maybe don’t even have the time to visit and just think back longingly?)

I find myself returning to books that sparkle with contemplative prose. Many stories have stayed with me over the years but certain books have really stuck with me because of how the stories were told. Without further ado, I give you my treasured list and urge to grab these reads:

CROSSING TO SAFETY by Wallace Steger. The intense narrative power of the quiet prose brings into life a friendship between two married couples. It’s really a love story, not in the sense that it explores romantic dialogues and actions, but in the sense that it explores private lives. In the guise of friendship, sustained through births, outdoor adventures, job losses, war, moving, unrealized dreams, and thwarted ambition, Stegner offers, with an uncanny sensitivity, a glimpse of the physical and emotional intimacy in marriage that go largely unspoken out of respect and loyalty.

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A tragic love story that takes place in a society of which the values have gone awry. Gatsby is a man of desperate love who has been blinded by rotten values. He doesn’t know that while pursuing his dream, it’s already behind him and that Daisy will always be like that green light at the end of the dock in an unreachable distance. Fitzgerald’s language once again proves that his prose is unfilmmable, without the latest release of the film adaptation.

THE REMAINS OF THE DAY by Kazuo Ishiguro. Subtly plotted, this novel gives the impression that characters and scenes in the beautifully paced novel become no more than mouthpieces and backdrops for Ishiguro’s concern for the human condition: A desire to exceed one’s limitations. We are all obsessed with the upstairs-downstairs world as Downton Abbey has brought to life, but Stevens is, to me, the most capable butler in service. Not only is Stevens loyal to a fault, his former employer, Lord Darlington, however decent, honest, and well-meaning he was, was also playing a dangerous game by allowing himself to be used as a pawn in Hitler’s schemes.

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA by Mikhail Bulgakov. What good is good without evil? This novel gives you the best answer in the backdrop of Stalin Soviet Union. Despite the atmosphere of terror that deepened all through the years he was working on the novel, the book takes on a surprisingly light tone, one of multifaceted humor, without compromising its philosophical depth. It is Bulgakov’s embittered and sarcastic response (and indictment) to his era’s denial of imagination and its wish to strip the world of divine qualities.

THE NAME OF THE ROSE by Umberto Eco. This is the one book that hits me by this author. It deals with issues from an age of classics; so in other words, because it’s set in Medieval times, is written in Dark Age vernacular and includes historical details worthily accurate of the respected academe Eco is. It is not just an exciting DaVinci-Code-style historical thriller, but also a densely layered examination of stories about stories about stories, of symbols about symbols about symbols, of the meaning behind meaning behind meaning.

[569] A Royal Pain – Rhys Bowen

” Oh, Lord. It had never occurred to me that there would be a companion! Of course there would. How dense of me. What king would send his daughter, newly released from the convent, across from the Continent without a chaperone. ” (Ch.6, p.54)

[Her Royal Spyness series #2] About two months after Lady Georgiana, a Windsor who is thirty-fourth in line for the throne, solved the mystery murder case that would have incriminated her brother and threatened her life, she returns to her normal life and makes a living by cleaning houses. She belongs to a branch of the family that has been down on its luck. In disguise she dons her maid uniform and maintains appearance of the upper crust when she is off.

I began to think that Granddad was right. The princess was rapidly turning into more than I could handle. The small stipend from Binky certainly wouldn’t cover outings like lunch at the Savoy and I couldn’t risk letting Hanni loose in any more shops. (Ch.16, p.121)

The Queen is constantly troubled by her son’s intimate liaison to Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee and asks Georgiana to play hostess to a Bavarian princess whom Her Majesty likes her son to be interested in. Georgiana has no servants, no funds to entertain a friend, let alone a royal guest. With a small stipend from Binky, she is to hire a short-term maid, and to install her grandfather and his neighbor as butler and cook.

The book is lighter than what I expect a “whondunnit” to be. When the princess arrives with an overbearing baroness, she proves to be more than a handful—she drinks like a fish speaks like American gangster in movies, and sets her sights on Darcy O’Mara, the one man who makes Georgiana’s heart flutter. To makes matter worse, upon her arrival, three people have died in a remarkably short space of time with no seemingly obvious connection. Parts historical fiction, comedy, and mystery, Bowen’s prose really sparkles. I find myself reading sentences over again just for the sheer pleasure of her words. On top of the clever twist at the end, the book shines in the historic description of the society and the ways people conceive the relations and their ways of thinking. This is a comical royal romp.

307 pp. Berkeley Prime Crime. Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

Read Like a Man

To be a man is not to be rooted for a baseball team and playing hoops, Esquire magazine comes up with an unranked, incomplete, utterly biased list of the greatest works of literature ever published. This list has probably made its way around the blogging sphere since it was published back in 2008 for the magazine’s 75th anniversary. How many have you read? I boldfaced the ones I have – 28 in all.

1. The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow – high priority on TBR pile
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain – read it in high school, not thrilled
3. Affliction, by Russell Banks – want to read
4. All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
5. American Pastoral, by Philip Roth

6. American Tabloid, by James Ellroy
7. Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner – doesn’t measure up to Crossing to Safety
8. As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text, by William Faulkner – one of the most difficult books
9. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
10. Blood Meridian, Or, the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy – don’t care for McCarthy

11. The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
12. The Call of the Wild, White Fang, & To Build a Fire, by Jack London – read it in high school, zzzZZZ
13. Civilwarland in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella, by George Saunders – never heard of this
14. A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
15. The Continental Op, by Dashiell Hammett

16. The Crack-Up, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
17. Deliverance, by James Dickey
18. Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac – don’t care for Kerouac
19. Dispatches, by Michael Herr
20. Dog Soldiers, Robert Stone

21. Dubliners, by James Joyce – not as difficult as Ulysses
22. A Fan’s Notes: A Fictional Memoir, by Frederick Exley
23. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway – boring
24. Going Native, by Stephen Wright
25. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, by Flannery O’Connor

26. The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, by Studs Terkel – really want to read this one, enjoyed Working
27. The Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck Centennial Edition (1902-2002), by John Steinbeck – my favorite is East of Eden, this list seems to pick the wrong books all the time
28. Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
29. Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga, by Hunter S. Thompson
30. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison

31. The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
32. The Known World, by Edward P. Jones – want to read
33. Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings, by Jorge Luis Borges – Borges is a genius
34. Legends of the Fall, Jim Harrison
35. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families, by James Agee – only read A Death in Family

36. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
37. Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
38. Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis – want to read
39. Master and Commander, by Patrick O’Brian – want to read all his books
40. Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie – read Satanic Verses and had since stayed away from him

41. Moby Dick, by Herman Melville – absolutely the most boring book ever
42. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
43. Native Son, by Richard Wright – violent
44. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey – fun
45. Plainsong, by Kent Haruf – heart-warming story

46. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain – want to read
47. The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene – want to read
48. The Professional, by W. C. Heinz
49. Rabbit Run, by John Updike – maybe, not thrilled about the witches
50. Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates,

51. The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe
52. A Sense of Where You Are: A Profile of William Warren Bradley, by John McPhee
53. The Shining, by Stephen King – creepy
54. Slaughterhouse-five, by Kurt Vonnegut – want to read
55. So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell – again, this is not my favorite of Maxwell, try
Folded Leaf

56. Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron
57. A Sport And a Pastime, James Salter
58. The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford
59. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John Le Carré
60. The Stories of John Cheever, by John Cheever – want to read

61. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction, Tim O’Brien – one of his best novels
62. This Boy’s Life: A Memoir, by Tobias Wolff
63. Time’s Arrow: Or the Nature of the Offense, by Martin Amis
64. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller – one of the books I meant to read for a long time
65. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry

66. Underworld, by Don DeLillo – meh…overrated
67. War And Peace, by Leo Tolstoy – not my favorite, try Anna Karenina
68. What It Takes: The Way to the White House, by Richard Ben Cramer
69. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories, by Raymond Carver
70. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami – not thrilled about this one

71. Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson – want to read
72. Winter’s Bone: A Novel, Daniel Woodrell
73. Winter’s Tale, by Mark Helprin
74. Women, by Charles Bukowski

Not my kinda reading. I find it very strange to read a must-read list without a single woman on it. This is not biased? To me this list is more likea self-fulfilling thing. Or maybe men get caught up in ideas of ‘manly books’, whereas women (and some excellent men) will generally pick up whatever’s nearby and looks good. Wait, Flannery O’Connor is a woman. So either they don’t realize this (in which case shame on them for not doing their research) or they think she’s the only woman worthy of attention!

[568] Argo – Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio

” Any good surveillance detection run, or DSR, always begins with the assumption that the hostiles, whoever they may be, are everywhere, and watching. ” (Ch.6, p.111)

On November 4, 1979, backed by the government, Iranian student-militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and held dozens of Americans in hostage. The situation was dire, unbearably tense. About three months after the takeover of the embassy, six American diplomats who had secretly escaped the compound were attempting to flee the country that seethed with hatred for Westerners, who they saw as liars, spies, and obstacles to the Islamic Revolution.

How could the president stand by and do nothing while sixty-six Americans were in danger? There was no shortage of critics, including political foes of Carter who used the moment to score points by decrying him as weak and ineffective. (Ch.3, p.47)

Argo recounts how CIA and Canada hid and then sneaked the six diplomats out of Iran before the militants realized they were unaccounted for in the hostage crisis. Much of the planning and execution of the escape fell to Antonio Mendez, a top-level CIA officer who specializes in forging, authenticating, and maintaining aliases and covers for clandestine operations. With the American diplomats holding out in two safe houses—specifically, the residences of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor and diplomat John Sheardown—the rescue effort faced a ticking clock.

Hollywood film crews were typically made up of people from all over the world. And of all the groups heading to Iran, it wasn’t implausible to imagine a group of self-absorbed Hollywood eccentrics traveling there in the middle of a revolution to find the perfect locations for their movie. (Ch.9, p.172)

Much of Argo is about Mendez’s preparation to pull off this charade that would rescue the six American diplomats out of Iran. He came up with a seemingly preposterous but surprisingly plausible idea that went against the standard practice of crafting mundane, unassuming cover identities. Recruiting the help of a Hollywood Academy Award-winning makeup artist, Mendez would disguise the six diplomats as a film production crew scouting for a sci-fi film location, complete with backstopped stories for each diplomat and their alias documents. To make the cover story plausible, Mendez created a fake movie and production company, printed business cards, took out film ads and held a party at a Los Angeles nightclub.

What I didn’t know was that the Canadians had been working on the problem of the passports for quite some time. From the day that the houseguests had come under their care, I think the Canadians realized the logic of allowing them to use Canadian documentation. (Ch.8, p.152)

The book emphasizes on the Canadians’ crucial role in making this landmark operation a success. To even Mendez’s astonishment, Canadian government had quickly bypassed the necessary council hearing and granted fake Canadian passports to the American diplomats. Every page of Argo breathes tension and raises pulse rate, since the Iranian revolutionaries had suspended all conventions and rationality. The loosely-adapted film inevitably steals the limelight, but the book, less dramatic but more detailed in the step-by-step elements contributing to the rescue, is more insightful to the nature of the operation. The book shows how the success on this rescue hinges on the smallest of details and intricate thinking. It also gives you a historical and political background of Iran in the 20th century. Argo shows how truth is stranger than fiction.

310 pp. Penguin. Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

[567] Her Royal Spyness – Rhys Bowen

” I wandered around the empty house, trying to shake off a feeling of dread that wouldn’t go away. If this had been my first brush with death, it would have been different. But within one week to have found a body in my bath, been dragged off a boat, then almost pushed under a train made this death almost too much of a coincidence. ” (Ch.24, p.275)

Thirty-fourth in line for the throne, descendent of Queen Victoria but from a not-so honorable branch, Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, daughter of the Duke of Glen Garry and Rannoch, is poorer than dirt. Though a minor royal, Georgiana is expected to observe formality of the royal family and to behave as befits a member of the ruling class. The acceptable destiny to someone like her is to marry into another royal house, for she has been bred only to marry “some lunatic, buck-toothed, chinless, spineless, and utterly awful European royal, thus cementing ties with a future enemy.”

At the moment it is a choice between marrying a ghastly foreign prince or becoming lady-in-waiting to a great-aunt, Queen Victoria’s last surviving daughter, in the depths of the countryside where the height of entertainment will be holding her knitting wool or playing rummy. (Ch.7, p.84)

In spring 1932, Georgiana decides to flee her half-brother’s castle in Scotland to escape a forced marriage to a Romanian prince. But upon the summon from Queen Victoria, a cousin by marriage, Georgiana is to spy on her philandering son, Prince Edward (the same one who later abdicated the throne for his American divorcee, thus making George VI the King). The most unusual assignment, the troubling discovery of a dead body in the bathtub of her London house, and a series of accidents that later proved to be intentional for her harm, and even death, keep foiling her efforts to make an honest living.

It was a piece of strong black thread. I couldn’t think how it got there until it dawned on me that somebody could have strung it across the top of those steps—someone who knew that I would probably be the only person who used them tonight. My attacker was indeed in the house with me. (Ch.25, p.287)

Her Royal Spyness is a multifaceted mystery and comedy of errors. As Georgiana labors to solve the murder of the waterlogged body—a Frenchman who is creditor of her brother, an eclectic cast of characters come forth to provide the inside, satirical view of the snobbery and pretension of upper-crust British society. This book is a pleasant read, but readers shall note that the mystery takes a while to be introduced. Once Georgiana’s background and predicament are established, and the murder kicks into motion, the book really takes off and inevitably cumulates into the spying for the Queen—at a house party to be attended by Prince Edward.

324 pp. Berkeley Prime Crime. Pocket Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]