The Mingham Air by Elizabeth Fair

The Mingham Air

Elizabeth Fair

1960

5/5 stars

Elegant and efficient Hester Clifford, recovering from pneumonia combined with a broken heart, has left London to spend the summer with her godmother, Cecily Hutton, in the small village of Great Mingham.  Cecily's family consists of her husband, Bennet, who enjoys ill health; Maggie, her anything BUT elegant daughter who takes great delight in working on a farm to the consternation of Cecily; and her indolent son, Derek, who can't settle to any job.  Hester sees her visit as an opportunity to change for the better the entire Hutton family, as well as their friend Thomas Seamark, the young, brooding widower of Mingham Priory.  As Cecily describes her, Hester has "restless vitality"; "change and action, clean sweeps and new enterprises, seemed to her good in themselves, because she felt the need for an outlet for her own abundant energy".  The Mingham Air follows Hester and her good intentions through the summer, and ends with some surprising outcomes.

This delightful, witty novel is filled with excellently-drawn characters, believable situations, and intelligent prose.  The Mingham Air is Fair's sixth and final novel, and while they are all wonderful studies of life, this one surpasses the others in depth and maturity.  The gradual emotional growth of the young people and the slow changes of the parents, are both well-written and a pleasure to read.  Overall, this gentle but perceptive book is a forgotten gem, and I recommend it, as well as Fair's five others, wholeheartedly. 

An Infamous Betrayal by Lynn Messina

An Infamous Betrayal

Lynn Messina 

2018  

2/5 stars

Beatrice Hyde-Clare, fresh from solving two mysteries, is approached by an acquaintance to help find a murderer.   Her investigation leads her around Regency London and it's ballrooms, and, with help from the Duke of Kesgrave, to a successful conclusion.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first two of this series (A Brazen Curiosity and A Scandalous Deception), but found An Infamous Betrayal to be disappointing for a host of reasons.  

To begin with, I was well over two hours into the audio book, and the past adventures were still being rehashed, which was annoying and, frankly, felt like a filler designed to bulk it up to it's final 202 pages.

Then, Bea's ability to get in and out of her home unseen became increasingly unbelievable, as was her photographic memory for convenient bizarre facts. Next there was the farce of her romantic encounter with the Duke, which was off-putting, to say the least.  

Her growing friendships were nicely written, as were some of the characters, and there were several laugh-out-loud moments, but the plot as a whole was clunky and slow -- so different from the two previous, that it could have been a different author. I nearly quit listening several times and honestly don't feel that I would have missed much had I done so.  I will continue the series, as I already own the next book, and hopefully the sparkle and charm will have returned.