Books Set in Asia: Burma

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, by Jen-Philip Sendker (2002)

This novel follows Julia Win, a young woman whose mother was American, and father was a well-known Wall Street attorney and Burmese national.  One day, when she was a child, her father ostensibly went to work and just disappeared.  Julia and her family knew nothing of her father’s life before he arrived in America.  He never shared his early life with his wife.  They only know that he was born and raised in Burma.

Years later, Julia finds an old love letter, written by her father to an unknown woman named Mi Mi.  She decides travel to Burma to seek out this mysterious woman.  Julia travels to a remote village in Burma that was once her father’s hometown.  There she meets a strange old man who tells her he has been waiting for her.  He tells her that his name is U Ba and that he knew Tin Win, Julia’s father.

U Ba proceeds to fill in the details of Tin Win’s early life.  An orphan at a young age, he was raised by a widowed aunt.  When he was 10 years old, he suddenly went blind.  His aunt took him to a monastery where he was taught to follow the wisdom of his heart.  He meets Mi Mi, who was born with deformed feet and can only scuttle around on all fours.  They immediately fall in love, and with their disabilities, form a magical ability to feel with their other senses.  After Tin Win regains his eyesight, he finds himself in America where he marries and has a family.  He never lost his love for Mi Mi, however.

This is a beautiful novel with some intriguing philosophical ideologies.

Read:  July 7, 2023

3 Stars

Books Set in Europe: United Kingdom

Payment in Blood, Elizabeth George (1998)

Payment in Blood is the second in the Inspector Thomas Lynley / Barbara Havers mystery series.  This novel starts out as pure Agatha Christie.  On a cold winter night, playwright Joy Sinclair was found murdered in her bedroom in a snowbound estate in a remote town in Scotland.  She had been a guest at the manor along with a handful of actors who were to be in Sinclair’s next play, the producer, a drama critic, the director, and his lady love, Lady Helen Clyde, and the servants.  One of them must surely be the murderer.

For reasons that are not immediately apparent, Lynley and Havers were sent to investigate the murder.  Lynley enlists the help of his forensic friend, Simon St. James, to assist in the investigation.  Odd, because Scotland Yard had virtually no authority over the crime committed in Scotland.  Lynley is in love with Lady Helen, and so focuses his attention on Rhys Davies-Jones, who was sleeping with Helen in the room adjacent to Joy Sinclair’s room.  Havers and St. James, however, focus on Sinclair’s revised play, which they believe holds the key to the murder.

Complicating the investigation is the 1973 of Hannah Darrow.  What is her connection with the manor?  Was her death really a suicide?  Following clues leading to her death point to a spy scandal involving the family that owns the manor.

This is the second novel in the series.  The author is still introducing the characters.  Lady Helen seems to have many lovers.  Havers lives with her working-class parents and feels quite out of place with her aristocratic partner.  Lynley has some skeletons in his past, which are only hinted at, although we learned from the first book that he was the driver responsible for the accident that crippled St. James.

I am glad that I started this series in the middle where the characters are more developed.  Had I started at the beginning of the series, I probably would not have been compelled to read further.

Read: June 23, 2023

3 Stars

Other Books Read in the Series:

A Great Deliverance (# 1)  //  Read June 1, 2023

Well-Schooled in Murder (# 3)  //  Read June 29, 2003

For the Sake of Elana (# 5)  //  Read February 21, 1994

Missing Joseph (# 6)  //  Read June 12, 1996 and January 25, 2003

Playing for the Ashes (# 7)  //  Read January 6, 1996

A Traitor to Memory (# 11)  //  Read January 3, 2004

With No One as Witness (# 13)  //  Read May 13, 2023

A Banquet of Consequences (# 19)  //  Read July 4, 2018

Books Set in Europe, United Kingdom, England

A Great Deliverance, by Elizabeth George (1988)  //  Inspector Thomas Lynley # 1

This is the first in the Lynley / Havers detective series.  It provides the origin story of how Barbara Havers, a somewhat cantankerous low-level Detective Sergeant in the Scotland Yard, begins working with the aristocratic Inspector Thomas Lynley.

The novel revolves around a murder in a small village north of London.  A teenage girl confessed to beheading her father, but some of the townfolk question whether or not she actually committed the crime.  Enter Lynley and Havers.

The reader learns some of the backstories of Lynley and Havers.  Lynley is dating Helen, but he is also something of a lothario.  We are also introduced to Simon St. James, who is a close friend of Lynley and planned on a career in law enforcement before he was crippled in a car accident.  Lynley was the intoxicated driver of the car.  St. James just married Deborah, who was a former lover of Lynley.

Meanwhile, we learn a bit about Havers’ background.  She comes from a lower-middle class family and lost her young brother to leukemia when he was a child.  His death lies heavy on her family life.

I didn’t find the mystery as intriguing as other stories in the series.

Read: June 1, 2023

3 Stars

Other Books Read in the Series:

Well-Schooled in Murder (# 3)  //  Read June 29, 2003

For the Sake of Elana (#5)  //  Read February 21, 1994

Missing Joseph (# 6)  //  Read June 12, 1996 and January 25, 2003

Playing for the Ashes (# 7)  //  Read January 6, 1996

A Traitor to Memory (# 11)  //  Read January 3, 2004

With No One as Witness (#13)  //  Read May 13, 2023

A Banquet of Consequences (# 19)  //  Read July 4, 2018

Books Set in Europe: London, England

Courtiers, by Valentine Low (2022)

 

This book is an inside look at functioning of the British royal family.  The advisors to the Queen, and other working royals carry immense power and influence.  The courtiers are those whom Diana referred to as the “men in grey suits”.  They are around the royal family at official events and are, in many respects, the power behind the throne.

 

The author takes the reader through the private secretaries, personal secretaries, assistants and deputy secretaries from before Elizabeth II’s rule through Harry and Meghan.  Many courtiers held their positions for years before either retiring or moving on.  They are the trusted advisors of the monarch’s inner circle.  When the Queen was alive, Charles had his own courtiers and Kensington Palace (William and Harry) had their entourage.  The author describes the conflicts of having three separate households, each with its own agenda and people.

 

The book focused on the current royal family and was written shortly before the Queen died.  The book discussed the challenges the courtiers faced negotiated through the scandal of Prince Andrew and the explosive Megxit.  The author spent a great deal of ink on Harry and Meghan.  They didn’t come out well.  While the book recognized that Meghan, as an American, had difficulty adjusting to royal life, it also acknowledge that she was difficult to work with and many underlings in the household left their employment rather than stay working for the Firm.

 

I found the book mildly interesting, but not fabulously so.

 

Read:  May 18, 2023

 

3 Stars

 

Books Set in Europe, Madrid, Spain

The Princess Spy: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffiths, Countess of Romanones, by Larry Loftis (2021)

 

Aline Griffith (1923 ~ 2017) was born Pearl River, New York, a sleepy little town in outside of New York City, to a middle-class family.  She had big dreams and longed to make a name for herself.  After graduating from college, she landed a job as a model with New York fashion designer Hattie Carnegie.  While it wasn’t her dream job, she did learn poise and a fashion sense.

 

A chance meeting at a dinner party one night in the early 1940s with an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative changed the course of her life.  She was given mysterious instructions and told to show up at a building in Washington, D.C., and give a false name.  That led to her training to become an operative with the OSS.  After completing the training course, she was sent to Madrid, Spain in the midst of World War II.  There she was to search for Nazi supporters in the supposedly neutral Spain.  She rubbed elbows with the rich and famous and dated many glamorous men.

 

After the War, she married Luis Figeuroa y Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno, Count of Quintanilla, making her an instant countess.  Her husband’s grandfather was Álvaro de Figeuroa, who had served as Prime Minister of Spain in the early 1910s.  She mostly retired from the spy business after her marriage, but in the 1950s she occasionally took on secret information-gathering missions for the CIA.

 

Her actual involvement in espionage was not well enumerated.  The author describes one event when Aline takes in some female operatives into her home, and one woman was sleeping in her bed.  Later, Aline discovers that the woman had been shot and killed while sleeping.  Aline called her handler and they quietly removed the body before morning.  The author, however, acknowledges that it is difficult to determine what is real and what is not because Aline, herself, provided very contradictory versions of various events.

 

Most of the book describes the life of high society in Spain during.  The author describes the sport of bullfighting in detail and introduces the reader to some of the most famous bullfighters of that era.  Aline traveled in circles where she met and became friends with many of the bullfighters.  From reading this book, one gathers that most of her time as a spy was attending cocktail parties and bullfights.

 

During the War, Aline seems to be nervous about having too much contact with Nazis.  After the 
War, however, she considers the Duchess of Windsor, a known Nazi sympathizer, as one of her closest friends.

 

The book was mildly interesting.  I expected to learn more about a female spy during World War II, and not the antics of a high-society partier.

 

Read:  April 26, 2023

 

3 Stars

 

Books Set in Australia and Asia; China

The Song of the Jade Lily, by Kirsty Manning (2019)

This historical novel jumps back and forth between the present (2016) and the late 1930s’ through the end of World War II.  In the present, Alexandra Laird has a high-powered job with a financial company in London and has sought a transfer to Shanghai.  The transfer request was for three reasons: to escape part escape from a bad break-up; to be closer to her grandparents who live in Australia; and to learn about her birth mother who had been born in Shanghai.  Alexandra’s parents were killed when she was very young had had been raised by her grandparents, Romy and Wilhem Cohen.  Alexandra’s mother was ostensibly adopted and was of Chinese ancestry.  She is curious about her mother’s origins, but her grandparents have been very secretive about her past.

In flashbacks, we meet Alexandra’s grandmother, Romy.  Twelve-year-old Romy and her parents, who were Jews, fled Vienna shortly after Kristallnacht and made their way to Shanghai.  China was one of the few countries in the 1930 that was accepting Jewish immigrants.  They were not, apparently, practicing Jews in China, but their religious affiliation was not a problem in China.

In Shanghai, Romy met Li Ho, a beautiful young girl who is Romy’s age and the two become fast friends.  Li Ho’s father was a doctor in Eastern medicine, which intrigued Romy.  She picked up some herbal treatment methods, which she employed throughout her life.

Initially, Shanghai was safe.  In the 1930s it was a major international city.  Late in World War II, however, Shanghai fell under Japanese control and the city became very dangerous.  There are parallels between the brutish treatment of the Nazi’s towards the Jews and the Japanese soldiers’ treatment of the Chinese.  Li’s parents were active in the resistance, which lead to a tragic result.  Li and her brother then had to take whatever steps necessary to survive.

The description so Shanghai bring the city to life with its sight and smells.  Unfortunately, the characters are lacking and are not fully developed.  Alexandra too quickly falls into a new relationship that doesn’t quite fit as described in the novel.

The novel was a very quick read, although it could have used a better editor.  There were several places where the author repeated herself.  The twist at the end, however, made the book a worthwhile read.

Read:  May 25, 2020

3 Stars