The lady from Burma

Montclair continues to impress in this lively fifth outing for Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge (after 2022's The Unkept Woman), co-operators of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau in post-WWII London. At the outset, an unidentified man offers a young woman he's just met an opportunity to cash in on a vaguely defined scheme; she agrees, and he hands her an advertisement for Sparks and Bainbridge's services. From there, the action shifts to Sparks and Bainbridge themselves, who are fielding an unusual request: Mrs. Adela Remagen wants them to find a bride for her husband, Pitaphar, because she's terminally ill and determined to make sure he has a partner after she dies. After getting Adela to admit she was planning to hasten her own death and to promise not to do so, Sparks and Bainbridge agree to help find Pitaphar a bride. A short time later, however, Adela is found dead from a fatal morphine dose, and the partners--worried she may have been murdered--launch an investigation. Montclair cleverly delays connecting the opening passage to the rest of the plot, effectively deepening her leads' personal lives in the meantime. This will delight fans of Dorothy Sayers. (July)

The proprietors of London's Right Sort Marriage Bureau continue to fight crime and prejudice. Iris Sparks was an intelligence officer during World War II when the husband of Gwendolyn Bainbridge, her partner in the matchmaking bureau, was killed. After a bout of depression that landed her in a sanatorium, Gwen is fighting to be declared mentally fit so she can regain custody of her son. She's about to get a court hearing before the Master of Lunacy that could return her son and give her a seat on the board of Bainbridge, Limited, her late husband's family business, of which she owns 40%. Oliver Parson, the lawyer who controls her daily fate, dislikes her and has been mismanaging her money. Despite these problems, Iris and Gwen have had great success in matching people up for marriages and even more in solving murders. Their latest customer has a most unusual request. Mrs. Adela Remagen grew up in Burma and married Potiphar Remagen, a naturalist who was called upon to fight the war in the forest he knew so well. Now that Adela is dying, she wants the agency to find her shy husband a wife to care for him after she's gone. Suspecting that Adela plans on suicide, something she's attempted herself, Gwen extracts her promise to abstain. When Adela is found dead in Epping Forest, her death looks like suicide anyway, but a young constable who suspects murder enlists the help of the successful sleuths. In addition to trying to discover who killed Adela, both must deal with their complicated love lives, and Gwen must still convince the court she is sane. Intriguing characters and two mysteries are intertwined with little-known regulations on mental health in postwar England. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.