strange and random happenstance: The Blitz

Blitz by Daniel O'Malley
Published by: Little, Brown and Company
Publication Date: October 18th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 688 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
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Lynette Binns was raised in care and has a deep suspicion of government and bureaucracy. She has created a life for herself and her family. She's a librarian, her husband is a respected cop, her daughter is the light of her life, and her dog, well, he might just be a dog but she loves him. Then one day lightning arcs out of her body destroying her kitchen. The Checquy swoop in. They tell her she has dangerous powers, but they can help her learn to control them. She's not really given an option. She is back in the system and attending school with children on a remote island while her family thinks she's fighting for her life with some rare disease. Well, at least they're right about the whole "fighting for her life part." But surprisingly she learns control, she becomes strong and powerful. She likes the new Lynette, the Delouser. And yes, it's best not to ask about the nickname. Oh, how she wishes it was cooler. She works hard at her new life and just when she thinks everything will work out a report crosses her desk. Someone is killing criminals in London, someone whose signature matches her own. Because whenever she uses her power she leaves behind a double circle. The Checquy have assured her that all powers are unique and that if anyone uses their power for nefarious purposes the policy is to shoot first and ask questions later. Knowing that she has been handed her own death warrant, she goes on the run. If she can find the real killer before the Checquy catch up to her perhaps she has a chance of holding on to her new life, or any life for that matter. Little does she know that her problems are linked to a string of deaths that happened during the Blitz. Bridget Mangan and her two best friends, Usha and Pamela, were on the tail of a Nazis whose plane Pamela downed. If it hadn't been bad enough that Pamela broke the rules, the Checquy is to avoid escalating the war at all costs by using their powers, the fact that there was a surviving witness who could identify them is catastrophic. A surviving witness who happens to have powers. But they can't tell the higher ups. They have to find the powered Nazis while also going about their day to day assignments, and for Bridget that means finding out how certain artifacts have gotten into public hands when they were safely in the Checquy vaults. An assignment that brings her into the orbit of the criminal madame, Tillie Murcutt. The problem with Tillie is she knows more than the public. She knows about powered people. Which means, could it be possible she knows about the Nazis?

Blitz is an odd entry into the Checquy Files because it feels like it's suffering from a split personality disorder. It can't decide if it wants Lynette Binns to be the heroine or Bridget Mangan to be the heroine. Which means it can't decide if it wants to be about the present or the past. Daniel O'Malley's workaround to this problem was to make the book about both of them instead of thinking what would best service the narrative. Which, given his writing style of stacking infodumps like nesting dolls and letting his book run to blunt weapon size, wasn't unexpected. And yes, I can see the appeal of Lynette, an "older" woman joining the Checquy and having to navigate this strange world, and I won't say that Daniel O'Malley wrote this entire book just to get some quality boarding school scenes in, but I think it's pretty obvious that he did. Also, the truth is, Lynette's story does have heart, and a connection to Bridget, it's just that it wasn't enough of a connection to justify her story. Because honestly, the only reason to have a modern section is to include our previous heroines, Myfanwy Thomas and Odette Leliefeld. Which he did. Barely. I think Myfanwy has two lines, Odette a few more. And just getting glimpses of them might actually have been more painful than if they hadn't shown up at all. Which is why this book should have been entirely set during World War II. On the whole I tend to avoid historical fiction or historical fantasy set during World War II because I feel that it's an overused time period. Enough is enough already, there were other wars! But Daniel O'Malley did the impossible, and through unique characters and their highly unique powers, made me actual embrace World War II after many years of avoidance. The more a thought about Blitz I likened it to when Torchwood showed us what it's third iteration was like during the Victorian Era with Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd. I really enjoyed that dip into the past to see how the organization developed over time. And just like Torchwood, here we know about the present day power structure, so we didn't need Lynette, we just needed Bridget. We just needed a terrifying and delightfully different romp through the Battle of Britain. Because during the War, I might not have had Myfanwy, but I at least had Tillie Murcutt. And Tillie Murcutt is one in a million.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Blitz, Bridget Mangan, Daniel O'Malley, London Calling, Lynette Binns, MyFanwy Thomas, Nazis, Odette Leliefeld, The Battle of Britain, The Blitz, The Checquy, The Checquy Files, Tillie Murcutt, Torchwood, WWII

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
Published by: Atria
Publication Date: October 16th, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 480 Pages
Rating: ★★★
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When Laurel was a young girl she witnessed her mother kill a man. After that night they never spoke of it ever again. The crime was hushed up by the local police and other then herself and her parents, the rest of the family never knew what happened, especially to the special knife used to cut all the birthday cakes. Now fifty years have passed and Laurel's mom Dorothy is dying. Laurel has spent most of her life not thinking about that day. Shortly after the incident she moved away and has rarely been home since. With time running out, Laurel realizes that she can not let her mother go without finding out why the crime happened.

The answer goes further back then that day Laurel hide in the tree house, it goes back to London during the Blitz. Dorothy was a young girl with big plans for her and her boyfriend Jimmy. She could just see them now, at all the glitzy parties with all the chosen people, all the bright young things. Dorothy wasn't going to be a domestic all her life. Wasn't the fact that she had become friends with the wonderful and glamorous Vivien a sign that she was destined for greater things? Though nothing is as it seems sometimes. Dorothy was desperate to get the life she wanted, so desperate that she might do something stupid. Something that might echo down the ages till a "stranger" wanders up a garden path and dies with a knife buried in his gut.

I remember picking up my first Kate Morton book at Borders one day, it was a copy of The Forgotten Garden. Years later I finally read it and while I wanted to love it, with so much potential as to where the plot could have gone, I was a bit disappointed. Yet there was a part of me dying to give Kate Morton another chance. On a dark and stormy night in October I drove to Oconomowoc to see Kate Morton give a talk on her newest book, The Secret Keeper. She was a delight talking in her melodious voice about peeling wallpaper and everything else she loves. I had actually not read anything about her new book and was delighted to find out that a large portion of it took place during the Blitz. While the Blitz must have been one of the most horrific things to live through, it has a romanticism that draws me. It was a time when life lost it's routine. The world was on hold till one side lost. During this time what life you had was intensified. You seized anything you could and didn't let go. I often wonder if we will ever see an event that could have the same impact, but I know it's unlikely. Thousands of people euthanized their pets because they knew of the danger they would be in and also because of rationing... which makes me question a bit why Kate's new book had a few too many pets... research error or food for later...

Sitting in the little armchair with her perfectly cut hair and lovely boots, Kate read the opening chapter. I have a tendency to not be good at public speaking events, after a few minutes I really start to zone out, but Kate had me just transfixed. While I wanted to listen to the rest of her talk and her question and answer session, there was a part of me that just wanted to sit there in that auditorium and keep reading. I wanted to blot out the rest of the world and make this book my everything. One reason I desired an escape from the world was I was in the midst of my worst semester ever and I longed to lose myself. Another reason was that the book I was reading by Mary Roach was non-fiction and not that much of an escape. Also, there are so many other books I want to read at a given time that sometimes picking my new book over an old book makes it feel like the new book is jumping the queue. So I waited. Then one day before spring break I couldn't take it anymore and just had to pick the book up. I devoured it in four days.

I was grateful that this book didn't have the ambition of The Forgotten Garden. Now, this isn't a slight on the book, it just had a simpler question at it's core. Therefore I had a clear through line to follow. I could see, if partially obscured, what followed what and I didn't go off in flights of fancy imagining killings like Jack the Ripper and dark abuse and murder... all of which happened in reading The Forgotten Garden. Instead I had a wonderful time with three characters. Laurel, I couldn't care less about, but Jimmy, Dorothy and Vivien were so alive and so distinct and fully formed they became my life for a few days. Yet what I loved the most is the twist, turn, secret, whatever you want to call it, was a wonderful surprise that could only be done in a book. The contrivance would never work in any other medium, and it's the characters and their behavior that make the twist not only possible, but fully believable. Now, while I will say that I saw the twist coming, it was because of Kate's writing that, although the end was in view, I couldn't tear myself away from the book. I was glad I gave Kate another chance, and I have a feeling I'll be picking up another one of her books in the near future.