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bookish_emily's review against another edition
3.0
This book was enjoyable, but did not quite live up to the expectations generated by it's description. It promised strong female characters, but the two main female characters spent quite a lot of time doubting themselves and mooning over lost loves. The strongest women were the evil ones. That said, the mystery part of the story was decent, and I am willing to read the next installment before giving up on the series.
nicolac's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
adventuremama08's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars - semi-Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
tucholsky's review against another edition
1.0
Frankly not too much to it and the author is more at odds to paint a historical picture rather than a good story. For example when the main character goes to the Brighton Races she just happens to see Prince Monolulu and he is shouting his oft quoted but not always used "I gotta Horse" or she just happens to bump into a murderer when she pops into a shop (Hanningtons=The Shop) for a walk.
The author worked at the BBC and for the Guardian - which probably explains why the main characters sidekick just happens to be black - a theme which is clearly important to Sheridan to judge from the "suggested questions for book groups" at the back of this and her second Mirabelle Bevan Book as the questions focus more on historical attitudes, mores and questions rather than the actual characters or plotlines
The author worked at the BBC and for the Guardian - which probably explains why the main characters sidekick just happens to be black - a theme which is clearly important to Sheridan to judge from the "suggested questions for book groups" at the back of this and her second Mirabelle Bevan Book as the questions focus more on historical attitudes, mores and questions rather than the actual characters or plotlines
portybelle's review against another edition
4.0
I heard the author, Sara Sheridan at the Edinburgh Book Festival festival recently where she spoke about Mirabelle Bevan's origin. Her father recalled seeing a well-dressed woman on Brighton Beach in the 1950s dodging the deckchair attendant. He always wondered why, when it looked as though she didn't need to. The author decided to write a short story with a possible explanation and Mirabelle Bevan was born.
I think it was the author herself at that book festival session who described this series of book as 'cosy mysteries'. I have to confess that I didn't really know what defined a cosy mystery. On looking it up, I discovered it is a mystery story often set in a small community, where the crime is solved by amateur detectives who are often women and there doesn't tend to be much emphasis on violence. Mirabelle certainly fits this category as she works in a debt collection agency. She put me in mind of a younger and infinitely more glamorous Miss Marple. She's a sharp, quick-witted woman who doesn't seem afraid to bend the law more than a little to find out what she needs to know.
Set just post-war there were still echoes of the horrors of what people experienced in during the war throughout the story and links to the past. There were experiences which were hinted at but that the characters did not talk about. I am very intrigued to know what Mirabelle really did in the war as I don't believe she was only a secretary in Whitehall. I would really like to know more about that and her relationship with her deceased lover Jack Duggan. The good news for me then is that there are to date five more books in the series.
I must mention the racism experienced by Vesta Churchill, a black woman who works with Mirabelle. It was jarring and quite shocking to see how she was regarded and treated. I think that she and Mirabelle are going to make a smart and sassy team though.
Brighton Belle is a well paced and well plotted mystery story, with plenty of danger and excitement. With its combination of 50s glamour and style and two female protagonists, I can see it's the start of a series I'm going to really enjoy.
I think it was the author herself at that book festival session who described this series of book as 'cosy mysteries'. I have to confess that I didn't really know what defined a cosy mystery. On looking it up, I discovered it is a mystery story often set in a small community, where the crime is solved by amateur detectives who are often women and there doesn't tend to be much emphasis on violence. Mirabelle certainly fits this category as she works in a debt collection agency. She put me in mind of a younger and infinitely more glamorous Miss Marple. She's a sharp, quick-witted woman who doesn't seem afraid to bend the law more than a little to find out what she needs to know.
Set just post-war there were still echoes of the horrors of what people experienced in during the war throughout the story and links to the past. There were experiences which were hinted at but that the characters did not talk about. I am very intrigued to know what Mirabelle really did in the war as I don't believe she was only a secretary in Whitehall. I would really like to know more about that and her relationship with her deceased lover Jack Duggan. The good news for me then is that there are to date five more books in the series.
I must mention the racism experienced by Vesta Churchill, a black woman who works with Mirabelle. It was jarring and quite shocking to see how she was regarded and treated. I think that she and Mirabelle are going to make a smart and sassy team though.
Brighton Belle is a well paced and well plotted mystery story, with plenty of danger and excitement. With its combination of 50s glamour and style and two female protagonists, I can see it's the start of a series I'm going to really enjoy.
tracey_stewart's review against another edition
2.0
You would think that after decades of reading, and decades of disappointments, I would have learned that – sometimes – there really is truth to that old saw about a book by its cover. But sometimes you can judge a book! And look at this one! It's gorgeous!
Dammit.
So the story goes that Mirabelle worked in the offices for the secret service during WWII, though she never went into the field, and now that the war is over she has a job working with a debt collector. A client comes in one day looking to get his money back from a girl who has disappeared and then she turns up dead only something seems hinky about it and meanwhile Mirabelle's boss is home sick but then he disappears too and then there's a high-end prostitute who kills her client and they're all connected to this other woman and also to this priest that Mirabelle and her now-dead lover Jack knew in the war and then he disappears along with the girl who works in the office down the hall from Mirabelle who gets swept into the whole mess and kidnapped and … did I leave anything out? Probably.
Actually, one thing I'm leaving out is the motivation behind it all. There's a sort of "oh, really?" reveal – "He walked over to the corner of the room and dramatically pulled off the tarpaulin to reveal" something very exciting. That would have been such a dramatic moment … if the reader didn't already know all about it. Actually, all of the revelations – like the identity of that girl who owed the money – were kind of lame.
Mirabelle … She is the epitome of the "I'm not going to tell the police anything because obviously I know far better than they do" kind of detective. She decides that with her training she's totally qualified to fling herself into the whole thing and get to the bottom of it. She flings caution and common sense (and legality) to the wind and begins breaking into places willy-nilly. Of course she appropriates evidence. One suspect/witness tells her so much upon three minutes' acquaintance and some very awkward questioning that I think my mouth was hanging open for the whole scene – it was absurd.
The only plausible excuse for this kind of interference by a civilian is that the police are either uninterested or incompetent. And here, to use one of my favorite Star Trek quotes, "Sorry – neither." The cop in charge is not stupid, and he's working the case(s) as hard anyone could. And all I could think as this woman tromps through crime scenes and flies by the seat of her pants was that if she would only collaborate with the cops everything might resolve more quickly and safely. Example: she finds herself looking for a house somewhere there have been noise complaints – something the police should have the resources to be able to find very quickly.
"We need information, Miss Churchill, but this isn’t a job for amateurs."
And then the young woman from the office down the hall, Vesta, becomes involved. Where Mirabelle has a modicum of training from the war, Vesta is pure civilian, and struck me as little more than a lamb to the slaughter. She does not volunteer – she is volunteered by Mirabelle. She baffles me, Vesta does. She's a black woman struggling to succeed in post-war England, and I think she's supposed to be of Jamaican origins, but she comes off as American South.
In the end, terrible things happen that I can't imagine would have happened if Mirabelle hadn't been trying to do it all on her own with her even more inexperienced helper. It was completely implausible, and deeply irritating, and when a completely and utterly unnecessary death occurs the book loses any possibility of anything more than a two-star rating.
Chapter headings throughout are taken from many different sources, but these sources are not, as they usually are, given with the quotes. Instead they're all lumped into one page at the end… so when one chapter is headed "All right then, I’ll go to hell" I was just … confused. (Sorry, I'm behind on my Twain.) Either the author didn't put any thought into it, or she gave the reader far more credit than this one deserves in quote identification.
What amazes me is that after so many things go wrong, such horrific things happen – after Mirabelle spends a time (accurately) bemoaning things like "I’ve failed .... I can’t save anyone, least of all myself. There are corpses everywhere. I’m the kiss of death" … still, at the end she is so pleased with herself that she and Vesta are going into business together. And a whole new series is born. "We got skills", Vesta states.
Like what? Like only screwing things up badly enough that some people get killed, not everyone?
It may not need saying that I had a hard time liking Mirabelle. Part of the reader's introduction to her is as she avoids paying a fee for using a deck chair … even though it comes to be pretty obvious that she has ample money. (Which explains a lot, doesn't it.) The writing is mostly adequate to the task of telling the story, in terms of putting sentences together, but as my attempt at summarizing the plot above may indicate it's all very confused. There is head-hopping; there is homonym confusion; there are a few really jumbled, slightly disastrous sentences. Overall … not a promising beginning.
One last note – I find it depressing that the only two books I've ever seen use my grandmother's maiden name, Duggan, are this one and another one which was nearly as bad.
The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.
Dammit.
So the story goes that Mirabelle worked in the offices for the secret service during WWII, though she never went into the field, and now that the war is over she has a job working with a debt collector. A client comes in one day looking to get his money back from a girl who has disappeared and then she turns up dead only something seems hinky about it and meanwhile Mirabelle's boss is home sick but then he disappears too and then there's a high-end prostitute who kills her client and they're all connected to this other woman and also to this priest that Mirabelle and her now-dead lover Jack knew in the war and then he disappears along with the girl who works in the office down the hall from Mirabelle who gets swept into the whole mess and kidnapped and … did I leave anything out? Probably.
Actually, one thing I'm leaving out is the motivation behind it all. There's a sort of "oh, really?" reveal – "He walked over to the corner of the room and dramatically pulled off the tarpaulin to reveal" something very exciting. That would have been such a dramatic moment … if the reader didn't already know all about it. Actually, all of the revelations – like the identity of that girl who owed the money – were kind of lame.
Mirabelle … She is the epitome of the "I'm not going to tell the police anything because obviously I know far better than they do" kind of detective. She decides that with her training she's totally qualified to fling herself into the whole thing and get to the bottom of it. She flings caution and common sense (and legality) to the wind and begins breaking into places willy-nilly. Of course she appropriates evidence. One suspect/witness tells her so much upon three minutes' acquaintance and some very awkward questioning that I think my mouth was hanging open for the whole scene – it was absurd.
The only plausible excuse for this kind of interference by a civilian is that the police are either uninterested or incompetent. And here, to use one of my favorite Star Trek quotes, "Sorry – neither." The cop in charge is not stupid, and he's working the case(s) as hard anyone could. And all I could think as this woman tromps through crime scenes and flies by the seat of her pants was that if she would only collaborate with the cops everything might resolve more quickly and safely. Example: she finds herself looking for a house somewhere there have been noise complaints – something the police should have the resources to be able to find very quickly.
"We need information, Miss Churchill, but this isn’t a job for amateurs."
And then the young woman from the office down the hall, Vesta, becomes involved. Where Mirabelle has a modicum of training from the war, Vesta is pure civilian, and struck me as little more than a lamb to the slaughter. She does not volunteer – she is volunteered by Mirabelle. She baffles me, Vesta does. She's a black woman struggling to succeed in post-war England, and I think she's supposed to be of Jamaican origins, but she comes off as American South.
In the end, terrible things happen that I can't imagine would have happened if Mirabelle hadn't been trying to do it all on her own with her even more inexperienced helper. It was completely implausible, and deeply irritating, and when a completely and utterly unnecessary death occurs the book loses any possibility of anything more than a two-star rating.
Chapter headings throughout are taken from many different sources, but these sources are not, as they usually are, given with the quotes. Instead they're all lumped into one page at the end… so when one chapter is headed "All right then, I’ll go to hell" I was just … confused. (Sorry, I'm behind on my Twain.) Either the author didn't put any thought into it, or she gave the reader far more credit than this one deserves in quote identification.
What amazes me is that after so many things go wrong, such horrific things happen – after Mirabelle spends a time (accurately) bemoaning things like "I’ve failed .... I can’t save anyone, least of all myself. There are corpses everywhere. I’m the kiss of death" … still, at the end she is so pleased with herself that she and Vesta are going into business together. And a whole new series is born. "We got skills", Vesta states.
Like what? Like only screwing things up badly enough that some people get killed, not everyone?
It may not need saying that I had a hard time liking Mirabelle. Part of the reader's introduction to her is as she avoids paying a fee for using a deck chair … even though it comes to be pretty obvious that she has ample money. (Which explains a lot, doesn't it.) The writing is mostly adequate to the task of telling the story, in terms of putting sentences together, but as my attempt at summarizing the plot above may indicate it's all very confused. There is head-hopping; there is homonym confusion; there are a few really jumbled, slightly disastrous sentences. Overall … not a promising beginning.
One last note – I find it depressing that the only two books I've ever seen use my grandmother's maiden name, Duggan, are this one and another one which was nearly as bad.
The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.
veronica87's review against another edition
3.0
Set in Brighton, England in 1951, this entertaining mystery story centers on Mirabelle Bevan, an intelligent woman in her (I'm guessing) mid-thirties who, much like England itself, is still recovering from the after effects of WW1. For Mirabelle, that means mourning the death of her lover 18 months ago. She's been going through the motions of her life, having left behind her work in intelligence with the British Secret Service (which her lover, Jack, also did) to seek out peaceful monotony working for a debt collection agency. When a new debt collection case comes in that doesn't add up and her boss goes missing, Mirabelle's old Secret Service instincts get activated. As she follows the clues and the plot thickens, she crosses paths with Vesta Churchill ("no relation"), the plucky secretary in the insurance company across the hall, and Detective Inspector Alan McGregor.
This was a quick read but it was well paced, not perfect but not a lot that felt like filler either. I really liked Mirabelle as well as the secondary characters, though they can all use some more fleshing out. The mystery aspect had branches seemingly going off in all sorts of directions but it gets tied together in the end and it's quite time appropriate considering what was going on during those post-war years. I'm definitely going to read more in this series.
This was a quick read but it was well paced, not perfect but not a lot that felt like filler either. I really liked Mirabelle as well as the secondary characters, though they can all use some more fleshing out. The mystery aspect had branches seemingly going off in all sorts of directions but it gets tied together in the end and it's quite time appropriate considering what was going on during those post-war years. I'm definitely going to read more in this series.
leavingsealevel's review against another edition
2.0
Promising Maisie Dobbs readalike! So "promising," in fact, that I'd be feeling a bit ripped off by Mirabelle were I Maisie. Let's review...both series plots seem to contain:
Young female character. Postwar. Did something heroic and unconventional during the war. Kinda traumatized by it. Had slightly unacceptable love affair during said war. Ended tragically. Now back in England. Trying to do something totally different. Solves mysteries. Past creeps back. Has diversity sidekick.
About that diversity sidekick. I'll gladly read a few more of these, but Vesta had better be given an actual *personality* sometime soon, in addition to only being being The Black Friend Who Illustrates How English Society Is Racist and Helps Solve the Mystery.
Young female character. Postwar. Did something heroic and unconventional during the war. Kinda traumatized by it. Had slightly unacceptable love affair during said war. Ended tragically. Now back in England. Trying to do something totally different. Solves mysteries. Past creeps back. Has diversity sidekick.
About that diversity sidekick. I'll gladly read a few more of these, but Vesta had better be given an actual *personality* sometime soon, in addition to only being being The Black Friend Who Illustrates How English Society Is Racist and Helps Solve the Mystery.