Review: The Lady from Burma

The Lady from Burma by Allison Montclair
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs Gwen Bainbridge are approached with an odd request. Mrs Remagen, the titular Lady from Burma, has a strange request. She is dying of cancer and, when the time is right, would like The Right Sort Marriage Bureau to find her husband, Professor Remagen, a new wife and she fully intends to take her own life once her affairs have been put in order.

In order to get to know the Professor better, Iris attends a lecture at the Royal Entomological Society (of which she is a member) where he is speaking and runs into an old flame, Trevor Forester, who was last heard of deep in the Amazon basin.

Meanwhile, Gwen is desperate to have her lunacy diagnosis overturned and retake her place as a majority shareholder in Bainbridge, Limited. Especially since her father-in-law's recent heart attack has left him temporarily incapacitated. However, her financial committee representative (the man who administers her not inconsiderable wealth whilst she is deemed incapable) Mr Parsons seems determined to thwart her at every turn.

When Mrs Remagen is found in Epping Forest with an empty bottle of morphine, a bottle of wine, and a book of poetry the assumption is that she took her own life. But the young Essex policeman who finds the body is unconvinced, not least by her shoes which are totally unsuitable for walking in a forest.

Although unravelling the solution to this mystery seemed a bit convoluted, I think the actual execution (if I can say that) seems more straightforward. However, the greater part of the novel appears to have been devoted to the romantic antics of both Iris and Gwen, and Gwen's lunacy hearings.

I liked this, but not as much as the previous books. I felt like some of the characters (eg the two detectives) were very broadly drawn caricatures and some of Gwen's actions were plain stupid (although necessary for the plot).

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