Sara SheridanReseñas

Many, many elements of this novel have the ring of historical authenticity. I wish the author had included an afterword about her research.

1842. Karina is stranded on Deception Island in the South Atlantic after her husband, who is a whaling captain, is lost at sea. Her hope is that her sister in Amsterdam will respond to her letter and send money for her to travel to Amsterdam. But, as the days go by and no letter arrives, Karina gets more and more desperate. So, she stows away on a British ship...

READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW OVER AT FRESH FICTION!

1842. Karina is stranded on Deception Island in the South Atlantic after her husband, who is a whaling captain, is lost at sea. Her hope is that her sister in Amsterdam will respond to her letter and send money for her to travel to Amsterdam. But, as the days go by and no letter arrives, Karina gets more and more desperate. So, she stows away on a British ship...

READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW OVER AT FRESH FICTION!

In 1952 Brighton, Mirabelle Bevan and Vesta Churchill run a debt collections agency. When a chief suspect turns up at their office who is a childhood friend of Vesta they become involved in a case. The case of a eighteen-year-old Rose Bellamy Gore, who has goes missing outside of a jazz club in London.
I enjoyed the story and although I have not read the previous book in the series I didn't find that to be necessary. I liked the group of characters and looked forward to them all being in future books. A very easy style of writing to read.
A NetGalley Book

The happenings behind the scenes of the series Sanditon with overviews of the main characters and the history of the age.
An interesting read with lots of illustrations

1958 and Mirabelle Bevan is now engaged to Alan. When he suggests they visit his family in northern Scotland she agrees and they travel in style. Upon arrival at the family seat they discover that a woman has been found dead in the house, a Russian-American fashion buyer. With Cold War paranoia set in throughout the country there is talk of spies and communists so when another body is found it's no surprise that Government agents are involved as well.
I love Sheridan's series set in 1950s Brighton. Mirabelle Bevan is a delightfully old-fashioned detective heroine, somewhat Upper Class, monied and middle-aged (yet glamorous). Throughout the series big issues of class, race and sexism have been addressed and here homosexuality is also included. However out of Brighton I found this novel less successful and somewhat confused, by taking an international perspective I felt the story lacked clarity. Having said that, Sheridan still knows how to write a quality novel.

WWII is over and Mirabelle Bevan, prior Secret Service and operations analyst is now living a shadowy existence with no relationships or passion in her work, in a debt collection office. That is until her boss Big Ben McGuigan takes a few sick days and a new debt collection case drops onto her desk. Something is wrong with this case; with the facts she hears and sees when reviewed through her past skills Her curiosity is triggered and she begins to use those skills from the past to solve a disappearance from now. She finds new friends to trust and a purpose that had been missing from her life and steps out into the possibility of new challenges.

Excellent read! Likeable characters in a well-paced story that kept me reading to the end

For Mirabelle Bevan the attentions of a handsome police doctor are welcome after her heartbreak at the betrayal by Inspector McGregor. The fact that she comes into contact with this doctor after she discovers a dead body are nothing. the body is that of a local priest and Mirabelle becomes suspicious at the actions of the nurses at a local convalescent home. When one nurse disappears and another kills herself Mirabelle has to find the links between organised crime, an upmarket brothel and the home for Tb sufferers.
Set in Brighton in the 1950s this is another in an excellent series by Sheridan. I like the fact that Mirabelle is middle-aged woman with a bit of a past and Sheridan uses this to help explore taboo areas. In this the subjects of abortion and racial discrimination come to the fore as well as police corruption and the plot is tight and clever.

A woman PI, Mirabelle, in post-war England, her husband dead, her mentor dead, but still keeps the office working w/ two other PIs.

A young journalist's throat it slit, his notebook gone & Police remove the body before the inspector could work with it.

Next the cleaning woman for the Masonic Lodge & Royal Pavilion is poisoned while working at the Lodge.

The young restorer of the Royal Pavilion has a secret cache of letters regarding the Scottish Brotherhood, of which her father is one....

Blackmail, murder, kidnapping, & masonic secrets all come undone in this post-war mystery!

I liked the basic story, the characters were action driven, & the narratives were too long at times (- 1/2 *).

I might or might not read another as I never warmed up to the characters.½

When a young married woman is found stabbed to death in her bed the answer is simple, her husband did it and the Brighton Police don't investigate further. however for his childhood friend, McGregor, it's not that simple. Unable to look into the crime because he is part of the police force, McGregor engages the services of Mirabelle Bevan, his private investigator girlfriend. As Mirabelle probes further she is drawn into a dangerous game where individuals become expendable and corruption leads all the way to the top.
Having read one of the earlier Mirabelle Bevan stories I was sure that I was going to get a slightly more gritty adventure than one might think for the setting in post-War Brighton. This almost has shades of 'Brighton Rock' in the way that the seedier underbelly is exposed. I love the fact that one of the main characters is black and that Mirabelle is not a young woman - racism, sexism and ageism are all covered but in a subtle and integral part of the storyline. As far as the plot goes, there is something for everyone.

I received a free, advance copy of this work from Kensington Books and Netgalley in return for an honest review.

I do love a period mystery, with all the tropes of the eccentric amateur detective but Mirabelle Bevan just does not work for me. Unfortunately the main problem is the quality of the writing, it is very sophmoric and is completely overloaded with unnecessary descriptive detail and tortured syntax.
The 1950s setting would have been better served if Sheridan had focused less on irrelevant period props and more on catching jarringly out-of-place turns off phrase and clarifying historical details.

The characters were really just cyphers lifted from other work in the genre. More than once I was reminded of Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart stories, but the comparison was not favorable. The plot was increasingly ridiculous and the motivation behind the political machinations was tacked crudely and unnecessarily to end, as if these elements had not been properly prepared until it was too late.

With a dash of humour or a more tongue-in-cheek tone it might have been and enjoyable, if very silly, adventure but it wants to be taken far more seriously than it deserves. In the end it reads like a fond homage to the Golden Age classics of Christie, Sayers and Marsh and nothing about the writing has the strength lift it beyond enthusiastic but flawed pastiche.

I found this a so-so murder mystery.

The first half goes way too slowly; by the halfway mark, no new clues or developments had really taken place and the action consisted of repeated forays by the detective, Mirabelle, to locations around where the mystery occurs and questioning the people there. Lots of details abound about Mirabelle's drinks (she's quite an elbow-bender!) and what she ate.

The second half picks up quite a bit, with more action rather than just questioning, and some derring-do on the part of the middle aged Nancy Drew and her cohorts.

Some backstory is presented that the reader need not know about, as it doesn't pertain to the mystery at hand, but tends to get in the way if the reader is not familiar with past loves and losses of the heroine.

The social milieu and issues the author addresses here, primarily pertaining to race relations in London in the 1950s, add a very interesting note here. The prime suspect is a black musician, playing in black clubs which rich spoiled white kids like to frequent, for the racy and risky feeling of rebellion it gives them. This forms the background of the mystery and actually gives it its impetus: black musician, high class girl from a good family -- these are elements not supposed to mix in this time period, and the characters in the book base their assumptions about the crime on these prejudices and assumptions about class and race.

Thank you to the author and publishers for a review copy.

Another exciting,eventful adventure set in the 1950s featuring amateur detective Mirabelle Bevan. Inventive and enjoyable to read.

I was particularly interested as I had been in Hong Kong at this time but the plot didn't ring true and the characterisation was disappointing.

3.5 stars
Mirabelle Bevan and Vesta Churchill are an unlikely investigative duo in England the years after WWII. It’s 1952, the war is over, Mirabelle’s lover has been dead for 3 years, she’s taken over McGuigan and McGuigan Debt Recovery, and hired Vesta as her assistant.
In the war, Mirabelle worked in intelligence. What she didn’t glean from her position was taught to her by her lover, Jack. This mini education has borne fruit in Mirabelle and Vesta’s adventures so far.

Jazz is taking England’s youth and youthful minded by storm. The clubs that feature the music are described as dives and the musicians aren’t thought much better of than the venues they play.
Lindon Claremont, sax player and childhood friend of Vesta, turns up at the Brighton office on the run from London. Rose Bellamy Gore has been kidnapped and the police suspect Lindon. After hearing of Vesta’s previous crime solving, he comes to her seeking help.

LONDON CALLING takes Mirabelle and Vesta away from Brighton to London. From the tony neighborhood of Belgravia to the slums of the East End, they seek Rose and answers about the who and why of her disappearance.
Mirabelle and Vesta, despite the odds and danger, are determined to get justice for all involved, one way or another. For Vesta, this one’s personal.

Mirabelle, always dignified and elegant; Vesta, bright, lively, and highly observant. These two are perfect foils. They manage to keep their cool and their class, not always easy.
Their “cases” are always deep and twisted, keeping readers guessing.
The addition of a new character and a spaniel pup show promise.
The era has never been an especial favorite, but I’m becoming quite fond of it when Mirabelle and Vesta inhabit it.

Looking forward to book 3.
Reviewed for Miss Ivy’s Book Nook Take II & Novels Alive TV

This is a series which improves with time, as we find out more about the characters, their backgrounds, and their motivations.

This time, Mirabelle Bevan is informed that she has inherited a large some of money - but only if she finds out what happened to a man who escaped a German PoW camp in 1942 and was never seen again. The book follows her investigation into what (obviously, or it wouldn't be a very interesting book) expands beyond the realms of a simple missing person case.

A significant subplot is Mirabelle's grieving for her lover, Jack, who died several years ago (before Book 1). This has been a running theme through the books, and Mirabelle is finally starting to move on, and also to realise that the Jack she knew was not the whole man. Just as Jack hid his relationship with Mirabelle from others, he also hid things from Mirabelle. Some of those things are revealed in this book.

I enjoyed the way Sheridan dealt with the various aspects of grief here: Mirabelle's grief for Jack, which she has been compelled to keep secret due to the nature of their relationship; wives' publicly acknowledged grief for dead husbands; grief for the end of an era, as Mirabelle realises how much London has changed, and how many people want to move on and forget the war and those who gave so much.

It's also interesting to consider that in most books, the "other woman" is the husband-stealing villainess: here, Mirabelle is the "other woman", and our sympathies lie with her: Mirabelle's love and grief are no less real for not being socially sanctioned.

The main plot, of course, was that of the missing man; in this, Mirabelle is at her elegant, ruthless best. She moves towards the conclusion with a certain smooth implacability, bringing all the threads together and making all tidy, the way only Mirabelle Bevan can.

I think we are also seeing a change in emphasis away from events of the war, and towards the Cold War of the 1950s, which will doubtless be important in the following books. The next book, [b:Operation Goodwood|29610396|Operation Goodwood (Mirabelle Bevan)|Sara Sheridan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1458820546s/29610396.jpg|48369290] is already out on Kindle.

A good, quick read. I liked this better than the first one in the series - I'm not entirely sure why, since it's a while since I read [b:Brighton Belle|13489266|Brighton Belle|Sara Sheridan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1329674308s/13489266.jpg|19027792].

Mirabelle is resisting getting involved in private detection (unlike Vesta, who's keen as mustard), but events start to involve her, when one of Vesta's childhood friends turns up with a saxophone and a problem.

A rich girl has disappeared - how, and why, and is she alive or dead? Why doesn't anything seem to match up?

There are also hints of future developments relating to Superintendent McGregor, and we get to see a lot more of Vesta. Since there are further books beyond this, I think we will see the growth of some relationships - even now, Mirabelle is rather on her own. Books tend to flow better when there are stronger relationships between the characters, so I expect the next book ([b:England Expects|20875854|England Expects|Sara Sheridan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1392899199s/20875854.jpg|40215237] to be better yet.

This was a great and sad read. The sadness is pretty early - no more hints - it would be a spoiler.

There were numerous suspects in this debutante gone missing case. The main culprit will definitely shock you. I do have to say while reading this book, I'm not sure if it was the main character wearing the same outfit for days I was smelling towards the end or me. HA!

This was the second book I have read by this author and just like the first, I truly enjoyed it. Set shortly after WWII, London is still in the process of rebuilding. Everywhere you can still see the damages, but Londoners are determined to get back to life the way it was before the war. Jazz is all the rage now and that's what brings out our little deb, Rose Bellamy Gore, her cousin, Harry, and friend Lavinia. Rose is last seen leaving the jazz club with a musician named Lindon Claremont. No one has heard from her since. As our main character, Mirabelle Bevan, starts working the case she hears stories with a lot of different suspects. Will she find Rose in time?

I found this to be a great, hard to put down, entertaining read and one that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Thanks to Kensington Books for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

Mirabelle worked for the OSS during the War. When the war was over she took a job as a debt collector's assistant. Her boss disappears and she uses her knowledge to try to find him. As she searches for him she learns of other misdeeds and murders occurring that may be related to his disappearance.

I enjoyed this book. I liked how history was pulled into the story with those attempting to escape their war crimes. Ms. Sheridan had a good sense of the time and place. I felt I was back in 1950's England. The world building is excellent.

I liked Mirabelle and Vesta. Vesta was there for comic relief but she will have a bigger role in future books, I think. I like how Mirabelle's past is woven through the story. I also liked how racism and its effect on Vesta is shown through the story. The mystery is interesting and realistic. Detective Superintendent McGregor I am unsure about. He seems to have an attraction towards Mirabelle but by the end I'm not sure about him. It will be interesting to watch the relationship develop.

I look forward to more books in this series.

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, when later comes a moment where a character introduces himself – "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, any of the revelations – like who that girl who owed the money was – 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.

“I’m not Secret Service any more, Sandor. That was a long time ago. I told you. It’s a different world now.”
Sandor spluttered. “What do you mean: you are not Secret Service? What nonsense is this? After all we’ve been through. Come now!”
Mirabelle lost her composure. “I told you, Sandor. I told you! I work for a debt collection agency. That’s all. And this matter is in the hands of the police. I can refer you to them.”

The only plausible excuse for this kind of interference by a civilian is that the police are either uninterested or incompetent. 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. 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. "'Ha! You ain’t such a lady after all!' Vesta teased."

In the end, terrible things happen that I can't imagine would have happened if the woman 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.

What amazes me is that after so many things go wrong, such horrific things happen – after Mirabelle spends a time bemoaning things like "I’ve failed, she thought miserably. 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? 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. 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.

Mirabelle Bevan is intelligent, elegant, and sophisticated. She takes the job at the debt collection agency in an effort to help her forget her grief over her dead lover, Jack. Right before he could leave his wife he leaves them both. All Mirabelle has is an apartment, memories, and what could have been’s. When her boss, Gus, takes ill and then goes missing, the Romana case and budding friendship with Vesta are just the ticket to pull her out of her misery shell.
It was amusing to see Mirabelle contrast the writing/reading of intelligence manuals with the actual doing. The reality is usually a world away from what’s imagined. Vesta is the perfect foil and partner for Mirabelle. Her friendly matter of fact attitude and refusal to be a “victim” was refreshing. Her quiet dignity is the perfect accompaniment to Mirabelle’s elegance and sophistication.
The death of a character that, in my opinion, had quite a bit of potential as far as future cases, was disappointing. I’d been looking forward to hearing their stories and getting to know them better.

BRIGHTON BELLE shows promise as a series. My main issue is that there were a few times it felt as though this might be the second book, rather than the first.
It’s worth reading the second to discover if Belle and Vesta live up to their potential.
Reviewed for Novels Alive TV
3.5 stars

An intriguing story of life in Brighton and the glamour of Goodwood motor racecourse set in the 50's.
Arson has been committed in the flats where Mirabelle Bevan and a racing driver called Dougie Beaumont live.
Beaumont is killed.
The mystery deepens when Beaumont is found to have a dubious past and Mirabelle, her policeman lover and her colleagues have a race against time to solve the murder.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Little, Brown Book Group via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.

This story talks about a little girls daily, moment by moment ideas of what she wants to be; a mermaid, a pirate etc. She is visiting her aunt that pretends to be all of the characters that the little girl has displayed and acted out before. At the end of the story, the little girl only really wants to be herself today. This book is fictional. The media displayed is drawings with pencil and markers with some water colors.

Set in post war Brighton, this story centres on a woman who was a spy during the war.
She decides to take a safer, more mundane job as a debt collector, but finds herself involved in the suspicious death of a Hungarian refugee who had applied for a loan.
An exciting, well written story and Brighton is shown at its best.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Kensington via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.

England Expects by Sara Sheridan - Good

This is the third of the Mirabelle Bevan Mysteries, which are best described as cozy mysteries. It is similar in feel to Agatha Christie's later works in that it is set in the 1950s, but with less of the (painfully) outdated language. The war is over, but the after effects are going to take time to recover from.

Mirabelle Bevan was 'something' in the war. She worked in the Secret Service, not an operative, but behind the scenes. Now the War is over and she has returned to civilian life. Leaving London for a fresh start in Brighton she is now a secretary at a debt collection agency. In the first book, we are introduced to a variety of characters as she became embroiled in a murder. These characters continue into this book to a greater or lesser extent. In particular, her partner in the Debt Agency, Vesta Churchill, a second generation immigrant from the Caribbean.

This book begins with the death of a journalist visiting Brighton. Initially it seems to relate to his betting activities as he is a sports reporter, but it soon transpires that there is a link to the local Masonic Lodge. Mirabelle has a keen nose for a mystery and a clear head for investigation and cannot resist getting involved bringing Vesta along with her.

Whilst I enjoyed the characters, writing and plot, somehow I didn't enjoy the 'story' as much as previously. Maybe I just don't find the Masons of interest. Regardless, I shall look forward to the next in the series as the author has promised a mystery per year of the 1950s as she said, during one of her readings, that she wanted to parallel Britain's recovery alongside that of Mirabelle.