Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: historical

  • Death at Booroomba

    Death at Booroomba

    AL Booth has captured the very essence of small-town Australia post World War1 in this enthralling murder mystery Death at Booroomba set in the town of Warrawolong four years after the ending of the War.

    Jack O’Rourke has finally returned home, weary of body mind and soul, recovering from his injuries and learning to cope with the mental and emotional aftermath of fighting on the front line. He learns he has inherited the property of Booroomba, owned by Samuel Lomond, a man he rescued from drowning in Sydney Harbour, just days before he embarked to fight in France.

    Unfortunately, Lomond had been murdered and when Jack arrives in town at the request of the solicitor Will Grimble, to accept his inheritance, the murder has not been solved; Jack is considered as the man who most likely was responsible for Lomond’s death.

    From his first encounter with the locals, he realizes this is anything but a friendly town, it is a town with very strong undercurrents, secrets that go back many years and as with all small towns, everyone knows your business, or considers they do.

    Befriended by retired town Doctor, Dr Duncan MacDonald and his wife, Jack begins to put the pieces of the recent past together, making the decision, that as the local Policeman appears to be lazy and incompetent, he would make his own enquiries to honor the kindly man he considered his friend.

    This sets off a chain of incidents that see jack arrested. The arrest is reported in the local paper by Tess Allingham, the local journalist, which helps give him a far better understanding of how the small town works and how well it can hide its secrets.

    AL Booth has carefully crafted characters who rise off the pages as people, damaged, scared, careless, manipulative and kindly along with a plot line that hides within plain sight the murderer, a person disguised by events decades old but prepared to go to any lengths to hide a brutal and bloody past.

    Death at Booroomba is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys a well-constructed murder mystery set firmly in the history of Australia.

  • Honour’s Mimic

    Honour’s Mimic

    To read Honour’s Mimic is such a pleasure. The author is gifted in her writing and the reader cannot help but linger over phrases and descriptions. Charmian Clift is less well known than her husband author, George Johnston, but her writing, as does his, stands the test of time. The novel was written using the deep knowledge she gained while living on the Greek island of Kalymnos. The story describes a romance but breaks the rules of the time.

    Kathy has moved to a Greek Island to support her friend who has married a wealthy Greek boat owner. While friend Milly is pregnant and disinterested in local affairs and needs lots of rest, Kathy is free to move about the island and get to know the people and customs.

    She has her own issues as she is recuperating from a car accident and a dull marriage. Kathy meets a sponge diver named Fotis. It is his face which captivates her. Here the author broke the rules of conventional love stories by pairing a well-bred lady with a diver who could barely read. It works so beautifully.

    From the beginning the reader has a sense that there will be no happy ending. Fotis’s greatest wish is to migrate to Australia, and while Kathy writes to many agencies to help him there is no way he can go. The Greek men who are divers on the sponge boats live a very precarious life with death or injury a fact of life.

    Set amid the beautifully described Island the author brings this story to a conclusion, encompassing the characters met and a beginning understanding of their lives.

    Nadia Wheatley has been responsible for bringing Charmian’s writings to our attention. She has written an afterword which explains how the author used her own experiences while living on the Island. Charmian was supporting her husband in his writings but absorbed every aspect of the culture to create her own story. Her writing will touch your soul.

  • The Girl from Sicily

    The Girl from Sicily

    During the Second World War, allied forces often struck a working relationship with somewhat dubious people in order to seek out information on Germany’s bloody march across Europe.

    Sicilian mafia were recruited to work with the Americans which had advantages for both sides, but long after the war was over, the Sicilian mafia, building on their wartime advantage, simply grew stronger and stronger.

    The Sicilian Girl is based on the true story of a slice in Sicilian history which is discovered by Jess Brown, a woman facing a divorce and whom has, much to her surprise, inherited a peasant farm, a baglio contadina, at Villaurora in central Sicily from her maternal grandmother; a woman she had never met.

    Jess makes the decision to go and see the property before she accepts the bequest and also to try to discover something about her family history, in particular her grandmother and her Sicilian family.

    In doing so she discovers the heartbreaking story of her grandmother, Lucia, who was born in America but taken, with her twin brother Dino and sister to Villaurora, so her father could look after his ailing father.  The outbreak of War sees them forced to remain there, living in grinding poverty, day after endless day.

    As Lucia’s story unfolds, Jess begins to move on from her recent distressing experience and is beginning to fall in love, which she is not too sure about, with Piero, the very handsome manager of the family owned Tenuta Sacca di Melita estate, where she is staying.

    While it appears that the past is long buried, as Jess looks further into her heritage, she realises that the past is still very much alive in this small area of Sicily and she, somehow, is caught up in it; dangerously.

    Set over recent history The Sicilian Girl is a gentle, interesting retelling of a tale that may have been similar for many families during the challenging time of the Second World War.

    The Authors Notes are well worth reading as they bring to life the people who lived and then inspired the characters captured within The Sicilian Girl.

  • Dubious About The Duke

    Dubious About The Duke

    One definite advantage about reading Regency Romance it that it is pure escapism into a world that can be crafted to fit into reader’s expectations, based in a time where the rules of society where strict. To break them or flaunt them was surely instant discredit and definitely death to any idea of advancing through the ranks by marriage.

    So what happens when a shy beauty meets a reluctant Duke, Winston ‘Win’ Cutler, who is struggling to accept his role in Society as the Duke of Woodmont on the sudden death of his brother; a brother for whom he had who he no respect.

    Seraphina ‘Sera’ Nicolls is returning to England from Canada to visit her beloved twin sister Araminta ‘Minta’ who has married Percy, the cousin of Win, and is hopeful she may make a marriage that will see her happily settled in England as well. But as she is so shy she is doubtful she will attract anyone she may possible like to marry.

    Win has decided he will marry for convenience, follow societies rules for Dukes and live a very ordinary life safe in the country at his Estate. When he meets Sera he is intrigued as is she by him, and they chat easily together on the carriage from the docks to ride to Minta’s new home.

    But the Dukes’ very carefully created plans are about to be rapidly changed when he discovers he has two nephews, children of his brother’s Mistress, and that their mother has consumption with only has days left to live. The boys specialise in running away, getting into trouble and generally behaving badly and it is not too long before Sera finds herself volunteering to be nanny to the boys.

    Societies rules are being bent to the limit as Win, Sera and the boys will all be living in the same house, all be it a very large house. It is not long before the Sera and Win realise they have a lot of interests in common and their feelings for each other are growing into a more than polite association.  

    Nicely written with a quirky sense of humour running throughout the plot Dubious About The Duke is the fifth book in the Second Sons of London series but can be read as a stand-alone. If you are looking for a comfortable read for a little self-indulgent time out, in a time and period not all that long ago, Dubious About The Duke fits the bill nicely.

  • Finding Eadie

    Finding Eadie

    Alice Cotton’s tiny baby daughter, Eadie is secretly given away by her grandmother; Alice is devastated.  Her desperate quest to be reunited with her missing daughter Eadie, takes her from police stations to the offices of child welfare oraganisations and finally to the dangerous places used by the baby farmers to sell their illegally acquired babies.  Alice uses her position as the rising star at Partridge Press to expose the horrors of baby farming and to find her tiny daughter.

    Intertwined with Alice’s search for her daughter, readers are given an insight into the publishing world of 1940’s where paper was in short supply but books were in high demand. Books were not only popular with civilians but also the troops, as they were seen as a distraction from the grim realities of war and its depravations. The author has included a list of popular books from this era.

    This well researched historical love story is set in London during World War II, where the Victorian criminal practice of baby farming was still well and truly alive; the war having delayed 1939 Adoption of Children Act. For readers wishing to further research the practice of baby farming, the author has included a comprehensive list of sources and references.

    Not only readers of historical novels, but also those who enjoy an enthralling mystery with a happy ending, will enjoy this page turning book.

  • The Last Train

    The Last Train

    Once you enter the world of Ann Craig it is very, very difficult to leave until the very last page has been read.

    Two women, two separate lives, two stories that  run concurrently, in this historical suspense which weaves the days of tragedy in 1879, with  the modern day of 2015, in a style that is a fluid as it is beautiful, combining the two worlds both similar and yet sparingly different.

    Ann Craig is looking out of her window on the night of a fearful storm as it rages about the rail bridge over the River Tay. She watches in horror as the newly built bridge collapses, plunging the crossing train into the storm tossed waters, killing all on board.

    Her husband was on the train, but something makes her think and feel that he is not dead, that perhaps for some reason he was not on the train. As the days pass, she refuses to go into mourning, believing that her husband would return.

    A letter is received with an explanation, in which he says he is leaving for Tasmania with another woman and would return to claim the boys once he was settled.

    In 2015, Fiona Craig discovers her partner, Australian Chef Pete, originally from Tasmania, has emptied their bank account and disappeared, leaving Fiona and her son homeless and penniless.  When the police discover his car at the airport, which turns out to be stolen, she begins to make her own enquiries into Pete’s background, discovering some very dark secrets and with strange and sinister parallels with the past.

    Riveting, enthralling and intriguing, the stories of two women both left to find their own way through a world of lies, treachery and deceit in order to defend the ones they love most, has many twists and turns which are all based in and around the terrible Tay Bridge disaster which occurred at 7 p.m. on 28 December close to Dundee  in 1879.

    As historical thrillers go this is a corker of a read, one that is vivid, real and created with a real skill and flair for historic fiction. Fabulous!

  • Troubadour

    Troubadour

    Set in Europe during the Middle Ages, Isolde Martyn has woven a magnificent historical fiction throughout a time when to make strategic alliances with neighbouring Kings or Lords, was the only way to protect people from the savagery of the purge, led by Pope Innocent III, against heretics.

    When the Queens hair braider, Adela is attacked by King John, she is forced to flee for her life, leaving behind her the security of the life she has always known, carefully, cautiously, but slowly finding her way to France.

    Meanwhile beleaguered Richart, Lord of Mirascon, a small fiefdom in the South of France, is finding that defending his township and his people from the ever increasing horror of Pope Innocent’s campaign is almost unachievable, makes a decision to go to Britain in order to seek an alliance from King John. This is granted on the condition that Richart marries the Mistress of King John, Lady Alys.

    Adela meets up with Lady Alys’s entourage on their way to her forthcoming marriage with Lord Richart. She manages to work her way into the entourage, taking on the task of washer woman. But all is not as it seems with the Lady Alys, as she has a roving eye. When the camp is attacked by bandits on the outskirts of Mirascon, she is in the bed of the Knight leading the party.

    The only survivor of the massacre, Adela is discovered by Richart and his men hiding in the bushes, covered in a magnificent cloak and holding a casket of jewellery. The assumption is made that she is Lady Alys, but when she is introduced to Richart, he begins to wonder if this is so, as, on the night she was attacked by King John, he saw her fleeing the Court and assumed she had been killed.

    As the days and months go on, their alliance turns into so much more, as they both struggle to survive in a time when to dare to step out of the strictures of society, could prove to be fatal.

    Derwent, a Dwarf, and former Jester in the Court of King John, now a member of the Court of Mirascon, recognises Adela as the servant he once knew in Britain, but as a well-known mischief maker, he adds another layer of intrigue, to what is already a dangerous time for those in Mirascon.

    Fast paced, and absolutely involving, can Richart and Adela overcome what are huge odds, to not only survive in a time of horror, but to find their way through a web of complex lies and deceit, before she has to pay with her life.

    A totally enjoyable return to a time in history which is as horrific as it is all encompassing, spun into an enjoyable and compelling read.