The Secret Life of Anna Blanc

 

Review of The Secret Life of Anna Blanc by Jennifer Kincheloe

Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: It's 1907 Los Angeles. Mischievous socialite Anna Blanc is the kind of young woman who devours purloined crime novels—but must disguise them behind covers of more domestically-appropriate reading. She could match wits with Sherlock Holmes, but in her world women are not allowed to hunt criminals. 
Determined to break free of the era's rigid social roles, Anna buys off the chaperone assigned by her domineering father and, using an alias, takes a job as a police matron with the Los Angeles Police Department. There she discovers a string of brothel murders, which the cops are unwilling to investigate. Seizing her one chance to solve a crime, she takes on the investigation herself. 
If the police find out, she'll get fired; if her father finds out, he'll disown her; and if her fiancé finds out, he'll cancel the wedding and stop pouring money into her father's collapsing bank. Midway into her investigation, the police chief's son, Joe Singer, learns her true identity. And shortly thereafter she learns about blackmail.
Anna must choose—either hunt the villain and risk losing her father, fiancé, and wealth, or abandon her dream and leave the killer on the loose.

My Review:

I am happy to be with you again to share my thoughts about my last piece of fiction. This week I review The Secret Life of Anna Blanc by Jennifer Kincheloe.

It features a main character who is a well-known Los Angeles socialite at the turn of the century, but that’s not all she is. As the title suggests, Anna Blanc has a secret, a whole secret other life, under the name of Matron Holmes.

Her love of playing detective and the chance for excitement get the best of her. After a failed attempt at marriage, her father literally catches her immediately after marrying someone he does not approve, another man miraculously wants her for himself and his money is something that her father can’t refuse.

After being arrested as a suffragette, Anna becomes obsessed with the idea of having a job as police matron, something that she knows her father and fiancé won’t approve of. When a positon opens up at the LAPD though, she knows that she can’t let that stand in her way. So she bribes her chaperon to look the other way, tells her new boss that she is a married woman, and gets a job as Matron Holmes.

When she visits a brothel one day, she discovers that prostitutes are being murdered on a regular basis and vows to herself to solve the crime. Meanwhile it becomes more difficult by the day to keep her double life a secret from her father, her friend, and her fiancé.

My overall analysis on this was is that it is a great story. It is nice to see a strong and independent female character from this time period. The author handles the tie-in with the suffragettes nicely.

Also the ending was something of surprise for me. Don’t worry, I am not going to give anything away but the mystery itself was interesting though I think the most interesting part of the story for me was Anna story as a girl who was ruined only to be “saved” again by the attentions of Edgar Wright who then decides to risk everything to help solve a crime that the police seem to ignore.

In the end, Anna also proves herself a capable detective in her own right who is able to make decisions for herself. It would really be nice if this story became a series complete with more mysteries to solve.

On the downside, some readers might find the mystery slow going initially but for me, that part of the story was just as interesting as the mystery. I appreciate the way the author tackled a time period that does not seem to appear much in historical fiction. It reminded me of some of the stories that my grandfather used to tell me in some ways.

I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction, particularly if he or she also likes a good mystery. The background about Los Angeles during this period as well as the Arrow Collar man is fascinating in and of itself. I am hoping someday to score an interview with author about that but in the meantime pick up a copy and read it for yourself.

Contains: language, some sexual situations

 

The Dressmaker

       


Review of The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott


Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com:  Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she’s had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be her personal maid on the Titanic. Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men—a kind sailor and an enigmatic Chicago businessman—who offer differing views of what lies ahead for her in America. But on the fourth night, disaster strikes, and amidst the chaos, Tess is one of the last people allowed on a lifeboat.

The survivors are rescued and taken to New York, but when rumors begin to circulate about the choices they made, Tess is forced to confront a serious question.  Did Lady Duff Gordon save herself at the expense of others? Torn between loyalty to Lucile and her growing suspicion that the media’s charges might be true, Tess must decide whether to stay quiet and keep her fiery mentor’s good will or face what might be true and forever change her future.

My Review:

“Not another Titanic story,” was my first thought when I began to read this one. To me, the Titanic is only slightly behind the Holocaust as the most overdone topic among authors who write Historical Fiction.

The question is: How can the author do justice to yet another story about these horrible tragedies without seeming repetitious or trite? The answer in my opinion is that it is very difficult to do this and was the reason for my hesitation in reading this book. In fact, if I hadn’t paid for this one, I might not have continued.

Our main character is Tess Collins, a headstrong girl who, thanks to her mother’s encouragement, is determined to succeed in the world and rise above her “station” to something great with her life.

At the novel’s start, Tess makes a rather impulsive decision to leave her job as a mostly maid but part-time seamstress in some stuffy upper class English household to take a job on the Titanic. Unfortunately when she arrives at the docks, she finds out that all the positions have already been filled but knowing that she can’t go back to her old job (and doesn’t want to), she starts begging the families of passengers to take her on board with them as a nanny. Not surprisingly most of them want nothing to do with the haggard and desperate young women that they see in front of them.

But then fate intervenes when she spots the famous designer Lucille Duff Gordon saying goodbye to her sister and preparing to board the ship with her husband. Having admired her for years, Tess, of course, listens to her conversation where she laments the fact that the maid that was to accompany her on this trip has backed out at the last minute.

Tess immediately volunteers herself even though it means she is putting herself back into the servant business that she was trying to get herself out of. Hoping it will lead to a position as a worker in Lucille’s office stateside, she has no qualms about accepting; even when she finds out she will have to call Lucille “Madame.” But Madame’s temper and the sinking of the ship are only the beginning of her problems.

The verdict for me was that I liked it but I didn’t love it. What kept me from loving it was the love triangle situation. I am getting rather tired of those situations in stories and in this one in particular I really didn’t see why Tess had to choose at all. She was young and determined in the beginning and then it all seems to fall by the wayside when she meets these two guys.

Also, I didn’t really like the ending. It gives only a hint of what is to come. I like that it is not sappy at least but somehow I still felt it needed more. It seemed to be rather abrupt.

Positives were some of the characters. I liked Tess, though I liked her more in beginning. I also really liked the Pinky character who was one of the few female reporters of that day, working for the New York Times. She seemed exactly like the type of woman who had the guts to do what few women of her day would do and yet we see the heart beneath the persona as well even if we don’t always like her tactics. I think she was my favorite character in the whole book.

Contains: some language and violence