Sweet Sorrow

David Roberts' Sweet Sorrow is the latest in his Verity Browne and Edward Corinth mysteries. I think it is probably one of the best as well. I wasn't impressed with Something Wicked; No More Dying - the last one - was good, but this is even better. Set in 1939 just before the outbreak of war, it includes cameo appearances by Leonard and Virginia Woolf and Dylan Thomas. Verity is waiting to be sent abroad as foreign correspondent for her paper and Edward is waiting to be told what the Foreign Office and MI5 want him to do - which may or may not include escorting the Duke of Windsor to a place of safety.

In the midst of all this Verity and Edward have just got married and bought a house in a small village in Sussex only to find that violent death has followed them. Byron Gates a philandering poet is murdered with a sword. Edward spends half the book saying he's not going to investigate the murder while actually following various leads. The dialogue is excellent and it seems as though the author has really got to know his main characters over the course of the series. The early niggles of married life where each person misunderstands the other and over reacts to them is brilliantly done. The background is really good as well - politics, the BBC and the 1930s literary scene. Good reading

1930s Crime Story

I've read David Roberts' Edward Corinth and Verity Browne stories before but I was less than impressed with one published a couple of years ago called Something Wicked. At that point I seriously considered not reading any more, but as I'd enjoyed all the rest I thought I'd give the series another go and read No More Dying. It was enjoyable.

Edward and Verity are engaged - in spite of the fact that Edward is the son of a Duke and she is a member of the Communist Party. It is 1939 and war is imminent. Joseph Kennedy is the American Ambassador in London and both Edward and Verity need to speak to him. Edward because he's working for MI5 and trying to thwart an apparent plot to assassinate Winston Churchill which might have originated at the Embassy; and Verity because her Communist Party boss, David Griffith-Jones wants her to get to know Kennedy and because her newspaper boss wants her to interview him. Both Edward and Verity end up as guests at the Astors' home at Cliveden - where the trouble begins.

This book flows much better and the dialogue is more believable than Something Wicked and Verity's crisis of conscience over the Communist Party is well done. I really enjoyed this one. I have its successor - Sweet Sorrow - to read now and I'm enjoying that one as well.