The Lady from Burma
A Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery
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4.4 • 12 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
In Allison Montclair's The Lady from Burma, murder once again stalks the proprietors of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau in the surprisingly dangerous landscape of post-World War II London…
In the immediate post-war days of London, two unlikely partners have undertaken an even more unlikely, if necessary, business venture - The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. The two partners are Miss Iris Sparks, a woman with a dangerous - and never discussed - past in British intelligence and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a war widow with a young son entangled in a complicated aristocratic family. Mostly their clients are people trying to start (or restart) their lives in this much-changed world, but their new client is something different. A happily married woman has come to them to find a new wife for her husband. Dying of cancer, she wants the two to make sure her entomologist, academic husband finds someone new once she passes.
Shortly thereafter, she's found dead in Epping Forest, in what appears to be a suicide. But that doesn't make sense to either Sparks or Bainbridge. At the same time, Bainbridge is attempting to regain legal control of her life, opposed by the conservator who has been managing her assets - perhaps not always in her best interest. When that conservator is found dead, Bainbridge herself is one of the prime suspects. Attempting to make sense of two deaths at once, to protect themselves and their clients, the redoubtable owners of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau are once again on the case.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Montclair continues to impress in this lively fifth outing for Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge (after 2022's The Unkept Woman), co-operators of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau in post-WWII London. At the outset, an unidentified man offers a young woman he's just met an opportunity to cash in on a vaguely defined scheme; she agrees, and he hands her an advertisement for Sparks and Bainbridge's services. From there, the action shifts to Sparks and Bainbridge themselves, who are fielding an unusual request: Mrs. Adela Remagen wants them to find a bride for her husband, Pitaphar, because she's terminally ill and determined to make sure he has a partner after she dies. After getting Adela to admit she was planning to hasten her own death and to promise not to do so, Sparks and Bainbridge agree to help find Pitaphar a bride. A short time later, however, Adela is found dead from a fatal morphine dose, and the partners—worried she may have been murdered—launch an investigation. Montclair cleverly delays connecting the opening passage to the rest of the plot, effectively deepening her leads' personal lives in the meantime. This will delight fans of Dorothy Sayers.
