Car races, murder, and an art exhibition! Another fabulous Rowland Sinclair read!
Give the Devil His Due (Rowland Sinclair #7) by Sulari Gentill
Sydney, Australia 1934. Rowland Sinclair, the accidental gentleman sleuth is continuing to be the bane of his powerful brother Wilfrid's life, and hopelessly in love with his sometime life model and free spirited sculptress Edna Higgins. I'm hopelessly enamored with Rowly and the gang!
Rowly's returned to the family's Sydney home Woodlands House in the salubrious suburb of Woollahra, with his artistic bohemian friends, poet Milton (Elias Isaacs), a card carrying communist, who quotes others works as though they were his own, landscape painter Clyde Watson Jones, and the beautiful inside and out, Ed (Edna). Rowly's mother Elizabeth, suffering from dementia, is in residence and still calls him by his deceased brother's name, Aubrey. She's a wonderful addition to the menagerie.
Rowley is to race his yellow Mercedes roadster in a charity event for the Australian Red Cross at the jinxed Maroubra speedway.
But in the meantime a reporter, Crispin White, is murdered in the Magdalene’s House of the Macabre, a horror waxworks, after having dinner at Woodlands. Milton comes under suspicion and Rowley and gang must do all they can to prove his innocence.
Throw into the mix Clyde's ex fiancé's Italian family who decide to take action against him and things become very lively.
The fascists are still beguiling the Australian public into seeing them as concerned citizens with the best interests of the country at heart. The conservatives are still trying to handle them.
Psychologically effected, but recovering from his dreadful time in Berlin, Rowley decides to launch an exhibition of his paintings showing the Nazi's up for who they really are.
Rowley is a character I just keep falling in love with. Charming, boyish, principled, avant garde, a talented artist, laconic, sincere and amusing. His handling of his mother is loving and delightful.
Really Gentill's novels are a fabulous trip through Australian political and social history in the 1930's, exposing not just the prejudices of the time, the effects of the Depression, but the sleazy underbelly of the criminal world. We're also treated to the artistic historical developments of the times, and are given an inkling of thoughts and ideas of this island community during this era.
The luminaries we continue to meet are priceless. Kenneth Slessor, a poet whose work I've always admired, Norman Lindsay, Errol Flynn, and Arthur Stace, the man who for thirty years wrote Eternity in fine copperplate all over Sydney.
I must say how pleased I am to have had an ARC of this book from the publishers. Without this I wouldn't have come across Gentill's fabulous Sinclair series. I have enthusiastically taken to reading my way through the series prior to this publication and am enjoying every moment.
A Poisoned Pen Press ARC via NetGalley
*****
Rowly's returned to the family's Sydney home Woodlands House in the salubrious suburb of Woollahra, with his artistic bohemian friends, poet Milton (Elias Isaacs), a card carrying communist, who quotes others works as though they were his own, landscape painter Clyde Watson Jones, and the beautiful inside and out, Ed (Edna). Rowly's mother Elizabeth, suffering from dementia, is in residence and still calls him by his deceased brother's name, Aubrey. She's a wonderful addition to the menagerie.
Rowley is to race his yellow Mercedes roadster in a charity event for the Australian Red Cross at the jinxed Maroubra speedway.
But in the meantime a reporter, Crispin White, is murdered in the Magdalene’s House of the Macabre, a horror waxworks, after having dinner at Woodlands. Milton comes under suspicion and Rowley and gang must do all they can to prove his innocence.
Throw into the mix Clyde's ex fiancé's Italian family who decide to take action against him and things become very lively.
The fascists are still beguiling the Australian public into seeing them as concerned citizens with the best interests of the country at heart. The conservatives are still trying to handle them.
Psychologically effected, but recovering from his dreadful time in Berlin, Rowley decides to launch an exhibition of his paintings showing the Nazi's up for who they really are.
Rowley is a character I just keep falling in love with. Charming, boyish, principled, avant garde, a talented artist, laconic, sincere and amusing. His handling of his mother is loving and delightful.
Really Gentill's novels are a fabulous trip through Australian political and social history in the 1930's, exposing not just the prejudices of the time, the effects of the Depression, but the sleazy underbelly of the criminal world. We're also treated to the artistic historical developments of the times, and are given an inkling of thoughts and ideas of this island community during this era.
The luminaries we continue to meet are priceless. Kenneth Slessor, a poet whose work I've always admired, Norman Lindsay, Errol Flynn, and Arthur Stace, the man who for thirty years wrote Eternity in fine copperplate all over Sydney.
I must say how pleased I am to have had an ARC of this book from the publishers. Without this I wouldn't have come across Gentill's fabulous Sinclair series. I have enthusiastically taken to reading my way through the series prior to this publication and am enjoying every moment.
A Poisoned Pen Press ARC via NetGalley
*****
Comments
Post a Comment