Lord Bainbridge returns from Africa in this third Sparks & Bainbridge mystery. He throws the whole house into chaos when he demands that Gwen's son Ronnie be sent away to a harsh boarding school. Gwen is even more determined to regain custody of her son but her psychiatrist is not yet willing to indicate that she's been cured.

But Ronnie's custody is only one part of the problem. Gwen was also willed her husband's share of the company Lord Bainbridge built. Her court appointed financial manager has been unwilling to do anything other than let Lord Bainbridge control Gwen's inherited shares.

Lord Bainbridge brought home other problems from Africa too. These problems lead to the death of a man outside his exclusive club. And they lead Lord Bainbridge's kidnapping and Gwen's too since she was in the car arguing with him with the kidnap attempt went down.

Gwen's kidnapping has her partner Iris Sparks willing to call in any and all favors to find and rescue her friend. This jeopardizes Sparks' relationship with her gangster boyfriend Archie. And it reveals some things Gwen and Sparks' friend Sally hasn't been willing to reveal.

And then there is the object that a new client at the marriage bureau is looking for which has ties to the Bainbridge family. Since the new client is a Black man, it causes both Gwen and Sparks to question some of their assumptions about their own prejudices and the purposes of their marriage bureau.

This was an action-packed episode in the series. Lots of secrets were revealed. ( )

Was so excited to win the ARC.

I really love this series. The protagonists are well written, as are the supporting characters. Excellent plotting, with no cheats. The writing is also smooth, authentic, and solid. I read this in one sitting - I expected I would based on my experience with her two previous books - and prepared accordingly.

Eagerly looking forward to the next book! ( )

When my best friend alerted me to the series of mysteries by Allison Montclair, she did it with a warning not to start until I have time to read, read, read. She wasn’t kidding, I read from the first through the fourth in a weekend. The novels take place shortly after WWII and with the army being demobilized, men are taking their jobs back leaving women who had been activated during the war at loose ends. Iris Sparks is impulsive, intuitive, and full of intrigue about what she did during the war. Gwen Bainbridge is methodical, organized, and technically not sane in the eyes of the courts. Grief at her husband’s death led to her commitment to a sanitorium. Her in-law’s have custody of her son and a law firm controls her inheritance. When the two meet, that mysterious alchemy of friendship leads them to start a marriage bureau together. It’s call The Right Sort and they are confident their contrary methods, when they converge on a candidate, will find the right sort for marriage.

Their adventures begin in The Right Sort of Man when a client is indicted for murdering the woman they picked for him. A Royal Affair finds them investigating a potential husband for the Queen. A Rogue’s Company centers on Gwen’s family. Her father-in-law returns from Africa and brought trouble with him. When a woman is murdered in Iris’ apartment in The Unkept Woman she is the obvious suspect. She needs to find out the truth and quickly.

The Sparks & Bainbridge series of historical mysteries is a complete winner for me. These are fair play mysteries that we can solve because we know what Iris and Gwen know. They follow the rules of the Detection Club, though not the stricter rules of S.S. van Dine written in 1928. After al, there are two detectives and a bit of romance as well.

I like Iris and Gwen who are temperamentally polar opposites but have similar values and dedication to justice. I like how they support each other and other women. I like the historical details that add valuable color and context to the stories. I am so far behind on my reading, I am postponing the new release The Lady from Burma until I can read it without guilt. And then in a year, there will be another, Murder at the White Palace. I can hardly wait.

The Right Sort of Man at Minotaur Books | Macmillan
A Royal Affair
A Rogue’s Company
The Unkept Woman
Alan Gordon – author site
Introducing the Real Allison Montclair at Jungle Red

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2023/08/13/sparks-bainbridge-mysteri... ( )

Another great read in this series. Very interesting to learn more about life in post war London. ( )

London in 1946 is a city struggling to get on its feet again, amid perennial food shortages, all-too-slow postwar reconstruction, and grief over losses. What a perfect time and place for the Right Sort Marriage Bureau, a fledgling business devoted to repopulating a bloodied world.

Iris Sparks, one of its two principals, accustomed to tight spaces and violent men, persuades her partner, (Mrs.) Gwendolyn Bainbridge, war widow, to receive martial arts training. London has mean streets, after all; men are men; and Sparks and Bainbridge have paired up on more than one amateur criminal investigation, so you never know when a well-placed karate chop may come in handy.

No one could provide a more deserving target than Lord Bainbridge, Gwen’s bully of a father-in law, who has just returned from Africa, where he has mining interests. Technically, Gwen’s a member of the board of directors, or should be, having inherited her late husband’s shares. But Lord Bainbridge has taken custody of that inheritance, because his son’s death sent Gwen into a psychological tailspin, and, by court order, a psychiatrist must declare her competent before she may assert control over her assets. That ruling also applies to her seven-year-old son, whom her father-in-law intends to pack off to the same brutal boarding school inflicted on the boy’s father — and Gwen can do nothing to stop this.

A Rogue’s Company takes a minute to percolate the mystery, but no worries, there. Iris and Gwen are characters you’ll enjoy, with wit and verve to spare, and present a contrast in their origins and social views. Both must negotiate their class differences, not only with each other, but their respective friends, and though I would have liked to see more uncertainty in them, questioning whether their connection will last, they’re an interesting mix. Their bond feels genuine. Ironically, neither of them is married, though they have admirers. Gwen still mourns her husband, but you get the idea that she’s in no hurry to become intimate with anybody again.

They do diverge in their toleration for danger. (Hint: Iris, who seems to have been an intelligence operative, craves it.) However, neither fears to upset convention, as when an importunate board member of Bainbridge, Limited, tries to pry into Gwen’s “absence," the time during which she received psychological treatment. To ward him off, she replies that she went to prison. Why? he asks, astonished. She killed a man, she says. Why? “For asking too many personal questions.” To his credit, the board member laughs; so did I.

Still, you know that the menace circling the Right Sort Marriage Bureau will erupt into action. And when a man’s found dead near the Livingstone Club, where colonials go to drink and disport themselves, the game’s afoot. Before they’re done, financial shenanigans, a kidnapping, and much listening-in on conversations will take place.

The narrative doesn’t take itself too seriously — one of its charms — yet there’s content alongside the entertainment. The story delves a little into race prejudice, gender roles and expectations, and the intersection of pride and violence, treading lightly, to be sure. Sparks and Bainbridge have something to them, in other words, and aren’t merely the framework for a mystery. Montclair’s not in too much of a hurry, and I like that.

I also like the writing, willing to linger on emotional moments and offer physical description with psychological resonance.

The novel (and I) could have done without the prologue — what else is new? — and a couple loose ends affix themselves with perhaps too much ease. One or two of the nastier characters soften a tad, maybe in ways they shouldn’t. I’m also skeptical that Sparks, despite her background, can be so blasé about crime scenes; I think even the hardest-boiled detective (which she isn’t) would at least wince. But A Rogue’s Company, the third installment in the Sparks and Bainbridge series, is an engrossing, delightful book. ( )