Review of Bee Ridgway's The River of No Return

The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway

Many crime fiction fans love books involving time travel and I'm no exception. This weekend I found time capable of manipulation in Bee Ridgway's debut, The River of No Return (Dutton, 2013). It's a mash-up of time travel, historical fiction, mystery and Regency romance that begins during the Battle of Salamanca in 1812.

Twenty-three-year-old Nicholas Falcott, Marquess of Blackdown, is about to be skewered by a French dragoon when suddenly the world goes black. The next thing he knows, he's waking up in a London hospital. The man at his bedside says, "You are in the care of the Guild. The year is 2003." Apparently, during moments of terrible stress, some people jump into the river of time. The man himself was a butcher in Aachen who leaped in 810 and landed in 1965. The Guild, organized by other time travelers, has strict rules: (1) There is no return, either in time or place. (2) No one must be told. (3) There is no breaking of the rules. After a year of living in the Guild's compound in Brazil to prepare for modern life, the Guild picked a new country for Nicholas and gave him money and property. Thus did the English marquess become Nick Davenant, owner of a cheese-producing farm in Vermont, with only his ancestral ring to remind him of home two centuries ago. Nick is mostly happy, although he's troubled by dreams and the recurrent thoughts of a beautiful brown-eyed girl.

That beautiful brown-eyed girl is Julia Percy, who's back in 1815, grieving over the death of her grandfather, the Earl of Darchester. The heir to the title is her cousin, the hateful Eamon. Now, Eamon is at Castle Dar in Devon, making Julia's life miserable with his obsession about finding the talisman that enabled their grandfather to do some weird things with time. Julia was kept mostly in the dark about it, but her grandfather whispered, "Pretend" to her as he died, so Julia is trying to pretend she knows absolutely nothing.

There things stand, Nick pretty happy in Vermont in the 2000s and Julia completely unhappy in England in the 1800s, when Nick gets a summons from the Guild's Alderwoman, Alice Gracoki. A rival group of time jumpers, Ofan, may have screwed up the river of time and the world faces serious future danger. The Guild wants Nick to break the rules by returning to 1815 Devon. Nick will claim he's spent the past three years with amnesia in Spain. Because Nick has no experience time traveling, he will be accompanied by a Russian Guild official named Arkady. They'll be looking for the talisman and Ofan. After their mission is concluded, Arkady and Nick will return to the present. In the meantime, Nick will try to avoid drowning in time, which may be harder than Arkady and Nick think.

The England of 1815 is undergoing change, and writer Ridgway, a professor of English at Bryn Mawr, makes the most of the marquess's return to show how it affects his sisters' financial plans and their social status. Nick's fellow aristocratic land owners are trying to postpone the inevitable end to their current way of life. Factories in London and the promise of a new life in America are enticing the lower classes off the old English estates. The Corn Bill is coming up for a vote in the House of Lords. Nick––who has seen England's future––and Arkady have quite a time in London and Devon.

Although, at times, dialog stalls the plot's action in this 450-page book, it's an excellent debut, especially for readers who love a good Regency romance. Nick is a sweetie and a hottie and Julia is feisty, and Ridgway has a deft hand with romantic scenes. She also has interesting takes on the hows and whys of time travel. Good time-travel books must contain a unique way of initiating travel, whether it's the Doctor's 1960s-era London police box or Dorothy clicking her heels and chanting "There's no place like home," and I like the simple grab hands and jump approach of The River of No Return. The ending is satisfying, but it leaves the door open for sequels. That makes me happy. It might be time for a jump to get your hands on it for a read over the winter holidays.

Downstairs at the Bennets': A Review of Longbourn by Jo Baker

"No man is a hero to his valet." In Regency Britain, the household of a gentleman, even one of modest fortune, was supported by a legion of mostly unseen servants. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, that exquisite plus grand roman of Regency chick lit, Mr. Bennet's modest needs and the rather more extensive ones of his wife and five daughters are met with a meager staff indeed.

Mrs. Hill functions as both housekeeper and cook. Housemaids Sarah and Polly––the latter still a child––clean the house, wash the extensive laundry, serve at table, and help in the kitchen. Mr. Hill, who is ailing, is responsible for the horses and the outside work with the help of only an occasional workman. This is a minimal staff for a household with five pretty, but poorly-dowered marriageable daughters, all of whom must look their best at all times.

Sarah was hanging laundry, trying not to stain it with her chilblains, which the day's scrubbing in lye had opened, when she first spotted the stranger coming up the old drovers' lane. The following morning, the servants are introduced to James Smith, hired to help Mr. Hill with the heavy work. Mrs. Bennet is thrilled; she will have a proper coachman and a young footman to serve her guests at table. Mrs. Hill seems oddly ambivalent; Mr. Bennet had hired him without even informing her. Later, Sarah hears raised voices from the study––could Mrs. Hill possibly be arguing with her master? From that moment, Sarah mistrusts James Smith, although she is oddly attracted to him.

When the neighboring estate of Netherfield is leased to Mr. Bingley, Sarah meets his footman, a mulatto named Ptolemy. "Tol" has ambitions; he is saving his wages and tips to open a tobacco shop in London. He seems very interested in Sarah, who is herself bored and restless with the endless drudgery and her narrow world. London sounds exotic to the country girl, who was born and orphaned within a few miles of Longbourn. But the experienced Mrs. Hill mistrusts Ptolemy, and warns him off. Sarah will eventually have to break with the only people she has known to chase her one chance at happiness and independence.

Longbourn fits itself nicely around Austen's book, never rewriting or reinterpreting her work, just observing the same events from the very different downstairs perspective. The chronology is the same, with a passage from Austen's book at the beginning of each chapter to set up the action downstairs. It also expands slightly on the characters and stories of the senior Bennets, both of whom had baffled me entirely. How in the world could the reclusive, fastidious Mr. Bennet have married such a vapid, vulgar woman? A passage between Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Hill after Lydia' s triumphant return from her scandalous elopement and virtual shotgun wedding to Wickham offers another perspective:

" 'I don't know which is worse,' Mr. Bennet said. 'My daughter's disgrace or my wife's blindness to it.'

'Mrs. Bennet is...' Mrs. Hill hesitated. 'Perhaps it is better that she is as she is.'

'It is hardly respectable. I fail to understand you, Mrs. Hill.'

'For someone to be quite respectable," she said, "I think they must be shown respect. We build ourselves like caddis flies, out of the bits and pieces that wash around us.'"

That astute and compassionate retort from the long-suffering housekeeper, whose many roles include spending countless hours dealing with Mrs. Bennet's hysteria and hypochondria, while her husband hides in his study, says quite a bit about both that marriage and the importance of the practical housekeeper in keeping the balance of the household. Mrs. Hill has become, perforce, the stand-in for her overwhelmed mistress; but Mrs. Bennet might not have become quite so silly and frivolous if she had been a little better cherished.

I am usually disappointed with Austen spin-offs, but Longbourn rings true. It is a remarkably creative adjunct to Austen's beloved masterpiece, among the best I have read, ranking alongside author Pamela Aidan's wonderful retelling of the story from Darcy's perspective in her Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy.

Note: I received a free review copy of this book. Longbourn will be released by Knopf on October 8, 2013.

Chivalry: Not Just for Knights

Picture of praying mantis by Igor Siwanowicz

Don't you love that praying mantis? She looks like a boogying creature from outer space.

Look at her face in closeup below. Now that's a veiled expression if I've ever seen one. Who'd ever guess the murderous thoughts lurking behind those goggling green eyes. Not her mate, apparently. Or maybe he does guess and he's too sex-starved to care. Or maybe he's too much of a gentleman not to become his mate's dinner.

Arthur, Earl of St. Merryn, is a very wealthy gentleman in Regency England. He takes chivalry seriously, but he wouldn't go that far. He doesn't have a wife, for one thing. Arthur's betrothed climbed out of her window in the middle of the night to elope with another man. His fellow club members were astonished when Arthur didn't give chase. Next time, he said, he'd find a fiancée by interviewing women at an agency that furnishes paid companions. She'd be unlikely to run away, "unlike sheltered, romantic young ladies whose views of love have been sadly warped by Byron and the novels of the Minerva Press." The ton (Britain's high society) considers Arthur eccentric ("St. Merryn's blood runs cold"), and this announcement does nothing to dispel his reputation.

At the Goodhew & Willis Agency, Arthur is almost ready to give up when he meets Miss Elenora Lodge, whose unfashionable clothes can't disguise her intelligence and beauty. Elenora seeks employment as a lady's companion after her stepfather's catastrophic business investment costs her her home, possessions and fiancé. She hopes to make enough money as a companion to open her own shop.

Arthur thinks she'll do fine. He tells Elenora he'll pay her to pose as his fiancée for a few weeks while he is in town to take care of business. Unless he is engaged, the debutantes' mothers will make his life impossible. There is a suitable chaperon available so Elenora can stay at his home. She agrees.

Elenora arrives at Arthur's Rain Street mansion to find an odd household, and she quickly learns that Arthur's business in town isn't what she expected. Arthur learns that Elenora isn't the woman he expected. Intrigue, murder, alchemy, and a mad scientist ("the second Newton") are in store.

Amanda Quick's The Paid Companion isn't my usual read. I chose it after learning about my friend Periphera's romance reading by flashlight when she was a kid. Author Quick, a best-selling romance writer, isn't Austen and this book isn't a comedy of manners. It's a Regency romance with a mystery story line. The writing is polished and the plot is amusing. The period detail is well done. Best of all are the charming characters and their dialogue. Whether the bedroom scenes are historically accurate in behavior and speech, I can't say but I was surprised at how fun they are. I was glad that Arthur's gentlemanhood doesn't keep him from prancing and that Elenora isn't a praying mantis. I'll look for another Amanda Quick book and I'll read it correctly, by flashlight.

No flashlight needed for this next one. That's not to say there are no heaving bosoms or clothes flung to the floor in passion. Unlike Quick's chivalrous Arthur, Lovejoy is no gentleman. He's an antiques dealer and forger who lives in East Anglia, England. I picked up Jade Woman, a book in the Lovejoy series by Jonathan Gash, after reading Maltese Condor's reviews of Asian mysteries. It's set in Hong Kong.

Lovejoy loves antiques, women and survival, in that order. He will sometimes clock a woman if she pushes the wrong buttons or kill a man whom he feels needs killing, but Lovejoy is generous and loyal to his friends.

Dire straits result when Janie, a married woman who loves him, tries to do him a favor and Lovejoy loses his house and possessions because of it. Worst of all, Lovejoy had just finished faking a painting for Big John Sheehan and it was taken away too. Lovejoy will die if he doesn't get out of the country immediately, so Janie gives him the money for a ticket to Macao, where his ex-apprentice Algernon plans to race cars. To get to Macao, Lovejoy must fly to Hong Kong.

Lovejoy is exhausted by the time he arrives at the Hong Kong airport and the stultifying heat puts him to sleep. When he awakens, his bag and money are gone. This bad luck begins a gloriously hellish stay in Hong Kong where the poor man is swamped by crime and women. Since it's a Lovejoy book, it's full of talk about antiques, real and fake. Lovejoy is a divvy, which means he can instantly recognize a valuable antique, and this ability catches the eye of a Hong Kong triad (criminal underground group).

Lovejoy's irreverent narration is something else. He and his fellow characters are memorable, and this statement goes double for Hong Kong. The author is a British pathologist who lived in Hong Kong for years. Here's how Lovejoy describes his first sight of the city:

First imagine all the colors of the spectrum. Then motion, everything on the kinetic boil, teeming and hurtling on the go. Then noise at such a level of din you simply can't hear the bloody stuff. Then daylight so blindingly sunny that it pries your eyelids apart to flash searing pain into your poor inexperienced eyes. Add heat so sapping that you feel crushed. Then imagine pandemonium, bedlam, swirling you into bewilderment. Now quadruple all superlatives and the whole thunderous melee is still miles off the real thing. Every visible inch is turmoil, marvelous with life.

I had a wonderful time seeing Hong Kong through this book. I quailed at some brief descriptions involving food preparation but otherwise found it fascinating. Lovejoy's passion for antiques is interesting and endearing and I could listen to him natter on for hours. He isn't much of a gentleman, but he sure does know how to entertain his readers.