In an alternate reality in which a group of English nobles overthrew Winston Churchill and made peace with Adolf Hitler in 1941, a murder is committed at the home of Lord and Lady Eversley, and suspicion falls on David Kahn, the Jewish husband of Lucy Eversley.
I went into this not really knowing what to expect, and now that I've finished it... I'm not super impressed. For one thing, I'm not a fan of alt-history where the Nazis win. Because fuck Nazis, and the lazy authors who can't think of a better way to frame the story they want to tell. Maybe, maybe there's a story or 3 out there that need that, but this wasn't one of those stories. I finished it, because the writing wasn't bad, but I'm not going to read anything else in the series.
In an alternate universe, the Third Reich occupies Europe, while England remains free thanks to a peace brokered by the Farthing Set, a political faction within the Conservatives. A murder among this group at a country party sets two narratives in motion, one the bubbly daughter of the Farthing's leaders who dared to marry a Jewish man and the other the Scotland Yard Inspector set upon the trail.
The world building is creative, detailed, and very enjoyable. I had thought the two narratives would come together, that something would occur to make use of the dark feelings and themes of the story but they didn't.
Spoiler warning. I could not put this book down for long after I got about a third into it. starting as an alt history book, it becomes a murder mystery soon, only to turn into a warning about fascism towards the end.
I found myself wishing for the longest time that it would still find a happy ending somehow, but alas. And it isn't even Herr Hitler's fault.
Definitely going to pick up the other books in the series.
This is an amazing book. It's an excellent old-fashioned British country house murder mystery, an alternative history, and political commentary all rolled into one. The political aspect sends chills down your spine in the days of the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and "indefinite detention", but it's not a polemic with cardboard characters. The mystery is a tense page-turner, and you care about the characters.
This story is set in England in 1949, in an alternate history where the government brokered a peace with Germany, and Britain's Fascist party is in the ascendent. The country house party is at the estate of a political family that strongly supports the government. The daughter of the family married a Jewish man before that went from a social faux pas to very, very unwise (the legal strictures against Jews on the continent been haven't copied in the U.K., yet). The two of them are …
This is an amazing book. It's an excellent old-fashioned British country house murder mystery, an alternative history, and political commentary all rolled into one. The political aspect sends chills down your spine in the days of the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and "indefinite detention", but it's not a polemic with cardboard characters. The mystery is a tense page-turner, and you care about the characters.
This story is set in England in 1949, in an alternate history where the government brokered a peace with Germany, and Britain's Fascist party is in the ascendent. The country house party is at the estate of a political family that strongly supports the government. The daughter of the family married a Jewish man before that went from a social faux pas to very, very unwise (the legal strictures against Jews on the continent been haven't copied in the U.K., yet). The two of them are guests that weekend, and when a prominent politician is murdered, the convenient Jew is the prime suspect. It's got hair-raising suspense as Scotland Yard investigates.
This is a completely satisfying stand-alone book, but there are two more books that follow Inspector Peter Carmichael over the years as he struggles to survive and live ethically in a society with a vicious government. I snatched up each of the books as they came out. The 3 books are called the Small Change trilogy: Farthing, Ha'penny, Half a Crown.
