"...De mortuis nil nisi bonum is all very well, but the man was a cad.”
“Right,” Will said, since it was usually best to ride out the Latin and wait for things to make sense again.[loc. 869]
Culmination of the Will Darling Adventures, begun in Slippery Creatures and continues in The Sugared Game. Will Darling and Kim Secretan have achieved a kind of peace. Kim, fired from his role in the Bureau by the mysterious DS, is working in Will's bookshop; for a man who's lost his job and his fiancée, he's coping remarkably well. (He has promised not to lie to Will again. I took this with a pinch of salt ...) Then Kim's brother Chingford (a thoroughly unlikeable character) apparently murders a man at his club, and Kim and Will investigate the case -- not because of any fondness for Chingford, who reminded me uncomfortably of Boris Johnson, but because if Chingford hangs for murder, Kim will be his father's heir, and that would be the end of anything between him and Will.
It was especially interesting reading this novel because I've followed the author's accounts of her struggles with it: I kept wondering whether a particular scene was the one she'd mentioned in a post ...
I admired the ways in which various plot threads were tied up, such as the devious machinations of the perfidious Zodiac: I was happy to encounter DS again: I cheered at the return and resolution of Maisie and Phoebe: I was chilled by Kim's interactions with his family, and I very much appreciated the backstory of Kim's 'gentleman's gentleman', Peacock. There were welcome cameos from the cast of Proper English, including Jimmy's nephew, now an adult in his own right, and Bill Merton. And K J Charles knows how to write a well-paced plot, complete with false resolution and ever-more-desperate situations.
What I most liked, though, was the acknowledgement that it's not only Kim who carries psychological damage from the war. Will has coped with his wartime experiences in very different ways: and Kim calls him out on those coping mechanisms, which have been glossed over by Will's viewpoint narrative.
There is also some piquant literary criticism (of Aleister Crowley's White Stains, which Will finds much more readable than Lady Chattersley's Lover). And, unusually, a sex scene where things don't work smoothly: which is wholly relevant to the plot, rather than distracting from it.
Happy endings and just deserts all round: dashing adventure, sudden reversals, sleaze and sophistication. I enjoyed this a lot and have just accidentally reread it. (And Proper English. Oops.)
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