This isn't a mystery in the conventional sense -- an overall mystery, with multiple suspects, that is tied up at the end. There are two distinct mysteries, neither of which is completely solved at the end, although there is the possibility that one will be, with the upending of things that seem settled. At the end, the reader knows the truth of it, one of the characters suspects it, but we are left to wonder if truth will out. A touch frustrating, but no one of those plots that trails off vaguely. In some ways, this is really more of a literary novel than a mystery, examining interactions, motives, and effects of the past on the present; it is cataloged as fiction rather than a mystery at the library where I borrowed it (before buying my own signed copy.) Either way, I thought it was excellent.

Everything revolves around a Russian/Latvian/ German émigrée, Jean, who seems to have settled in a a perfect, placid, middle-class English matron, now aging, fond of her stepchildren, to whom she expects to leave all she has. She has moved out of her marital home, Asshe House, into an easier to live in bungalow. The first monkey-wrench thrown into this serene setup is that of a Russian student, Xenia, who shares the surname of Jean's mother, and on that basis writes for assistance in coming for a visit to England -- a visit that she hopes will become permanent. Naomi, Jean's always helpful step-daughter-in-law, decides to help Xenia when Jean isn't interested, with completely unlooked for consequences. Next, renovations that Naomi is making to Asshe House reveal the body of a child -- long dead, or buried recently enough to upset the Jean's life?

Jean begins recording the biography of her tumultuous life, an account of her aristocratic family's attempt to cope with revolution and war, before she found sanctuary in England. Paralleling this, her neighbor and lawyer, Zita Daunsey, the other protagonist, the daughter of a Russian émigrée and an English father, struggles with her relationship with her mother, her son who has cerebral palsy, and the ex-husband who abandoned his wife and son. Both as lawyer and friend, she becomes involved events around Jean.

I enjoyed this thoroughly. It's an interweaving of subplots and motives that kept me enthralled until the end, which the reader understands better than the characters -- but how will all end? ( )

Elizabeth Ironside writes a great mystery. Period. How could you not like the intersection of Russian genealogy, a depressed, but fashion conscious lawyer, petulant teenagers with middle class small town England, coupled with WW II secrets? Elizabeth combines it all into a believable and engrossing tale that will keep you up long before your mate goes to sleep. You won't figure this one out before the end. Think Betty Moody's cave! ( )

The Accomplice is a highly intelligent and stylishly crafted mystery,literate,with not just the veneer of literacy and with the resonance of not very distant history. Think Dr. Zhivago with a who-dun-it attached. This is the third of Ms. Ironsides's mysteries that I have read, and I am never disappointed. ( )

eh, very chatty, didn't grab me

A child's skeleton is dug up in the yard of Zita Dauncey's friend and client, the elderly Jean. A local policeman is convinced that Jean is responsible and that the skeleton is that of an 8 year old boy who went missing 30 years prior. As Zita (a lawyer in a small English town) attempts to assist her friend and client, Jean's past is gradually revealed. Jean is no ordinary upperclass Englishwoman. Originally Yevgenia Chornoroukya, a Latvian princess, she endured and escaped the horrors of Eastern Europe in 1945. Her aristocratic family had mostly been destroyed by the Russian revolution decades earlier. Lots of history here but an engaging and thrilling story. I was reminded again how little most of us know about Eastern European nobility. Many families can trace their root for centuries longer than the British monarchy. As I seem to be the only member who has this book, I assume it is not readily available in the US. This is a mystery author well worth looking up. She is published in pb by Hodder & Stoughton's "New English Library" and should be available on UK used books websites (or you never know what you might find in your local used book stores). ( )