An Excellent Thing in a Woman: A Sparks and Bainbridge Mystery

Montclair seamlessly blends fair-play detection, immersive period detail, and dashes of humor in her latest historical featuring matchmakers Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge (after Murder at the White Palace). In 1947 England, Sparks is mourning her lover, gangster Archie Spelling, who died in a shoot-out soon after he proposed to her. Bainbridge hopes that getting back to work at the duo’s matchmaking firm, the Right Sort Marriage Bureau, will help lift Sparks’s spirits. The partners get a diverting challenge when Jeanne-Marie Duplessis, a dancer who trained with the Paris Opéra Ballet but has been reduced to performing in nightclubs, seeks their help finding a husband in the next nine days so she can remain in England. Sparks and Bainbridge spring into action, but their initial objective becomes moot when Duplessis is found strangled to death in a BBC TV studio. BBC site manager Sally Danielli, who is both Bainbridge’s boyfriend and Sparks’s best friend, comes under suspicion for the killing, and the matchmakers must once again turn to sleuthing to clear his name. Montclair’s light, comic touch and gift for well-placed clues are on full display. It’s another solid entry in a dependable series. Agent: Mitchell Waters, Mitchell Waters Literary. (Feb.)