Miss Aldridge Regrets
In this historical murder mystery, Louise Hare takes readers aboard the Queen Mary in 1936. She weaves in themes of racism, class division, and politics and sets them against a glamorous backdrop of Jazz Age music and romance.
Protagonist Lena Aldridge, who is dual heritage but can “pass” for white, is offered a role on Broadway and a first-class ticket aboard the Queen Mary as she sails for New York. Lena jumps at the chance. Her entertainment career in London has foundered, and she is struggling to stay afloat singing in the Canary Club, which is not much more than a Soho dive. Her married lover has decided to call a halt to their affair, and then her boss is poisoned and dies at the club. Also mourning for her much-loved father, Alfie, Lena has little to keep her in the UK.
Once Lena embarks, the plot centres around the Abernathy family, a wealthy and in the main unlikeable bunch of people she meets her first night on board. But murder seems to follow Lena, when a character is poisoned in a similar way to her former boss. As she falls under suspicion, she starts digging, finding out more than she bargained for.
Louise Hare’s second novel is a lovingly-told yarn. She creates a likeable main character in a mystery which does not airbrush uncomfortable truths about the past. Instead, race and class are well integrated into the plot, although the theme of “passing” could have been developed even further.
At times the pace feels slow, with long descriptions, particularly of food, that interrupt rather than deepen the sense of atmosphere. There is a lot to recommend in this homage to the Golden Age of mystery writing, but it could have benefited from a sharper editorial knife to bring out the kernel of an intriguing book.
