Marjorie Eccles

Sophy is leading a quiet life in the countryside, dreaming of being a writer and moving to London, when her stepmother abruptly abandons her father, leaving a letter after running away with the architect who has been designing a new house for them near Templewood, the family manor in Worcestershire. It’s just the latest upset in Sophy’s life; in 1935 the news is turbulent, with economic distress feeding fascism in Europe and at home. Sir Oswald Mosley is growing popular with many young show more men, including a fast set that Sophy’s sister Gizi finds attractive. She teases Sophy that she needs to lead a more exciting life. Things do get more exciting, but not in a good way, when Emilie’s body is discovered near the site of the new house.

DI Reardon arrives to investigate the murder, accompanied by DS Thomas Jago, a hotshot young detective who had been assigned to monitor violence in the movement growing around Mosley. He has found the assignment duller than expected. What he really wants to do is join the Murder Squad at Scotland Yard, so he jumps at the chance to be part of the investigation. The detectives need to dig into the relationships in and around Templewood and uncover the details of Emilie’s strangely secretive past.

Meanwhile, Sophy is dismayed as her sister grows close to Fitz, a man who drives a fast car and is toying with Mosley’s movement, even as her brother Sam is trying to get a Jewish woman he met in Germany out of the country that is falling under fascist rule.

This traditional mystery, the sixth in the DI Reardon historical series, is not a fast-paced thriller by design. The characters and their social world are given ample time to develop as the detectives work on filling in Emilie’s missing history. Though the story depicts a vanished era of manor houses and village life, and does so in a stye that fits the Golden Age of British mysteries, it has surprising resonance with the present. Gizi is entranced by brash young men who enjoy the transgressive, brute strength of the Moseley’s message, even as her brother and a concerned Jewish neighbor work hard to bring refugees to safety.

Popular history has tended to minimize the rise of fascist movements in the US and UK prior to World War II in favor of a simpler story of good versus evil. While Eccles avoids relating this thread of the story with a heavy hand, the parallels give this old-fashioned mystery surprising relevance to the present.

https://crimefictionreview.com/a-fatal-necessity/ show less

A Fatal Necessity is the next book in the Herbert Reardon Mystery series, and I enjoyed this descriptive murder-mystery set in the politically tense days of the late 1930s before the world erupted in war. While set in a fairly peaceful part of Britain, events in Germany were still affecting the citizens in subtle ways, and the author blends this exceedingly well into the story.

I thought the story was very well told; the plot lines were subtle and well done. The author did a great job show more misleading the reader into thinking that Emilie’s disappearance was one thing, only to discover it was something completely different. As someone who taught WWII history for years, I love how the story brings a lot of the elements of the late 1930s into this book. The threat of Hitler and what was happening in Germany was certainly leaving a pall over the lives of everyone in the village, some taking completely polar sides over whom they supported causing a lot of tension and issues, including the rise of the Socialist and Communist Parties, most of which had to be secret, leading to increased tensions within households and police forces trying to tamp down secret meetings and spying. I found the discussions around these topics fascinating and the author really had a knack for bringing it all to life. The mystery was subtly woven in between all of this tension and conflict.

Because there was so much focus on the political tension, I did feel like there was a lot of repetition and there were times I felt the story dragged. If this was simply a fiction book about this time period, I would have had a different reaction, but this was also a mystery book so I would expect the tension to be a bit higher, and it really wasn’t. And while I liked the ending, there was little to no suspense. And I had to go back to my notes to remind myself what actually happened as it was not memorable so that says something to me when it comes to tension and excitement.

Reardon and Jago were interesting characters and I really liked how they were developed, especially Jago who was new to this book. I liked him so much, in fact, that I hope he will appear in future books as I feel like there is so much more to develop with his character. And while the other characters were quirky and each had distinct voices, they were much more one-dimensional in nature and all blended together.

Verdict
A Fatal Necessity had a good story, and I did enjoy it overall. The author has a subtle story-telling method which I appreciate as it is not about throwing in useless red herrings and also allows the reader to discover things as they go. However, I did feel like you can go too far and forget that mystery novels also need to have that suspense and tension in them to make the reader turn the page, and I thought this one was lacking that element, concentrating more on the historical details. However, there is still a lot to recommend in this book and if you enjoy historical mysteries, this one may be for you. show less

1933 Paul Millar turns up at his family home, at Folbury, fourteen years after being presumed dead when he did not return home from the war. His siblings are now prosperous property builders, but what of his son Matthaeus. But two weeks later he is found dead. Detective Inspector Herbert Reardon and his team investigates. But it seems everyone has their secrets.
An entertaining and well-written historical mystery, with its likeable main characters.
An ARC was provided by the publisher via show more Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. show less

I always think of these books as Jane Austen meets Crime Fiction. Which is probably somewhere between extremely unfair and absolutely acceptable depending on your own particular point of view. LAST NOCTURNE is from author Marjorie Eccles - who is best known in these parts for the Gil Mayo series, which was made into a short TV series that became quite a favourite.

Whilst Grace Thurley's decision to break off her engagement to a rather pompous local man secretly pleases her mother, moving to show more London to take up the position of paid companion and secretary to Dulcie Martagon is regarded slightly more sceptically. Dulcie has been recently widowed, when her art gallery owning husband Eliot seemingly committed suicide. Whilst there's nothing immediately suspicious about the death of Martagon, why a supposedly contended, slightly conventional man would have taken such extreme action makes no sense to anybody. What makes even less sense is the suspected suicide of an up and coming young artist, whose only connection to Martagon seems to be the exhibition of his paintings in Martagon's gallery. As Inspector Lamb digs it seems that young Theo Benton's death isn't so easily written off as suicide. Meanwhile a connection to Vienna and the mysterious widow of independent means Isobel Amberly indicates that all was not as it seemed in Eliot Martagon's life, regardless of what his widow may think.

Set in 1909 this is a very classically styled tale with a lot of traditional elements. The son, Guy Martagon has to fall for the quietly competent paid companion Grace, although the romance doesn't get going until much later in the book. The young daughter of the household has to be a little bit of a tear-away at some stage. Dulcie Martagon has to be just a little bit not quite right for her station in life and poor Eliot has to be, well poor Eliot I guess. There are some twists from the expected though, and the reader is taken into the life of Eliot, in particular, his time in Vienna as well as that of Louise Amberly. The police investigation into the deaths runs alongside the various family machinations until all is revealed.

There's just a little touch of spice, although nothing risky or questionable for readers who prefer things on the slightly more chaste side, but overall the book has quite a feeling of the time and society in which it is set. Having said that, this is not my preferred sort of reading fare, and I will confess I struggled enormously with the predictability of much of the ancillary story lines - the romance and the high and mighty attitude of Dulcie come to mind immediately. But that's very much a personal reaction and I suspect that readers who are not adverse to a little romance will find the intrigue around Eliot's life extremely satisfying. Add to that a little feeling of the tensions and difficulties of Vienna in that period of history and this could be just the book for fans of this sort of historical crime fiction. show less