Out of the Gate Like a Stutz Bearcat
Radha Vatsal is a scholar and a talented storyteller, evident in her strong historical mystery debut, A Front Page Affair, just released this summer.
Capability Weeks (“Kitty” to her friends) and her father (a well-to-do, self-made mogul) live well in 1915 New York City. Kitty, a young addition to the New York Sentinel‘s Ladies Page, covers a July 4th society soiree and becomes tied to a murder and what looks like a plot to endanger the delicate international balance.
Kitty Weeks (and supporting cast) are wonderful. She’s young and privileged and begins to recognize what that has meant in her life throughout this story. I don’t go for that combination in a hero much, but Kitty’s introspection and awareness redeem her (to me at least). A hero who can throw money at their problems and make them go away is not much of a hero. Kitty also works not only externally but internally as well, to find solutions, being creative and brave throughout.
Radha Vatsal has sentences in this book that are heavy with history. It’s hard to write historical novels without ‘info dumping’ on readers. It’s a challenge to weave historical information, foreign to modern readers, and achieve a native harmony so readers glide along, learning without being jarred by the thrills and not the history.
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RECOMMENDED
Get in on this new series straight away. You’ll enjoy this plucky young hero as she matures during a time of great change in our nation and our world. Strong historical research sunk deep below the surface pushes this debut novel to the top of my recommendation list this month. For a work of fiction, there’s a fantastic ‘Further Reading’ and ‘Selected References and Sources’ pages. Old historian habits die hard.
About the Author: Benjamin Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review.
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