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Transcript

Welcome to Mystery Books Podcast where you’ll discover new mystery books and authors. I’m USA Today bestselling mystery author Sara Rosett. I’m also a bookworm who specialties in the mystery genre. I love sharing my favorite mystery discoveries  from classic golden age novels to contemporary cozies. This is Season two, Episode eight, and it’s all about Revenge in Rubies by A. M. Stuart. Revenge in Rubies was published in 2020 in its book two of two in the Harriet Gordon Mystery series.

Book Blurb

Here’s the blurb: Singapore 1910. When Harriet Gordon receives word from a friend about a tragic death, she and Inspector Curran are thrust into a web of family secrets that threatens to destroy them both

So that is pretty short, but it does give you a good overview of the story. So it involves Harriet, who lives with her brother in Singapore, and she helps him run the local boy school. And she also works as a typist for the local police, which is Inspector Curren.

He’s not the stereotypical bumbling policeman sometimes seen in mysteries. He’s a former soldier. He’s a police officer now who is very diligent and thorough and conscientious, and he and Harriet are friends.

The writing style of this is set up is sort of an episodic type series with dual POVs. So you’ve got Harriet’s point of view, and then you’ve got the inspector’s point of view, and it alternates back and forth.

Here’s the first line: St Thomas House, Singapore Friday, 12 August 1910. Beneath the floor of a cellar in Hilltop Crescent Camden Road, the mutilated and battered body of a woman which had been buried in quick lime was found.

That is actually Harriet reading a newspaper article, and it is about the body of Mrs. Crippen. So there’s a famous real life true crime case that obviously they were fascinated about, fascinated with Singapore as well as around the world. So I think it’s really interesting that we’re so into true crime now, and it was obviously something that fascinated people, even in 1910.

Themes and Tropes

Okay, so let’s talk about some of the themes first. This time, one of the big things in this book is dealing with the past, and we have backstories of both Harriet and the Inspector, and Harriet’s backstory deals with her involvement in women’s suffrage. And Inspector Curran’s backstory deals partly with his father’s legacy. I won’t go into what that is and what that involves, but it obviously impacts him still today.

And this dealing with the past theme is also echoed in several ways in the book. So there’s a festival that’s going on; it’s called the Hungry Ghost Festival that the locals are celebrating. And it brings up the issue of dealing with the past.

And then you also have Curran who has to deal with the recurrence of malaria. It’s something he had before, but it’s basically come back to haunt him again. And that also means because he’s ill and can’t get around and interview with people like he would like, that means it’s an opportunity for Harriet to be more involved in the case.

She’s also connected into this because she is connected to these people through British society, through the sports that they play together, the ladies meetings, the different things she does with the British community there in Singapore.

Another theme in Revenge in Rubies is this split society that they lived in at this time. There was the divide between men and women. There were certain things that men could do and certain things that women could do. And it didn’t really cross. And so for Harriet to be involved in the case, it’s a little bit unusual, but especially in this book, with the Inspector being ill, that gives her more of an entry into that society.

But then there are things that Curran can’t do, or he has a difficult time to do, difficult time interviewing the women. And he often asked Harriet to come along because she will ease things along for him by including another woman in the interview.

And then there’s also the split between the police and the military. So the death occurs. The mystery focuses on the murder of a military commander’s wife. She’s much younger than he was. And so the British military kind of closes ranks, and they want to keep the Inspector out, and they want to handle it themselves. And so there’s a tension there.

And then there’s also a split between the British and the native society, and they really just don’t mix. So there’s this kind of different striations of society, and they don’t cross that often. So in this book, there’s Curran crosses the social divides. And then Harriet begins to do that as well. And so there’s some interesting interactions that come because of that.

As far as the tropes, we’ve got the closed community, and we’ve seen this sometimes it’s closed because of the location. Sometimes it’s closed because it’s a single family that’s involved. But this time it’s closed because it’s a military unit. They close ranks against the Inspector. They don’t want the reputation of the unit to be tarnished.

They do their best to kind of keep things within “the family” as they think of it. And I’m familiar with this because my Ellie books; I use this a lot because those books are about a military spouse. So she is on the inside, and so if you’re on the inside, the military community, that’s another way you can write about this. But in this case, we’re looking at it from the outside. And Curran and Harriet are trying to figure out what’s going on in this world that they’re not part of.

As far as the romantic subplot in this book, it’s a little bit different, and I like the way it’s playing out because it’s a little unusual. There’s a Will They, Won’t They trope. Usually you have the romantic tension between the male and female POV and the novel, so that’s the set up and they’re going to fall in love is like you pretty much know that’s what’s going to happen in most amateur slot or cozy mysteries. But this time that’s not the way it’s played out.

So far over the first two books, Curran is paired with his housekeeper Leanne, and he has a deep relationship with her, and they’re very caring and obviously in love. That’s kind of a very different set up because there’s hints that Harriet is looking to other men romantically rather than focusing on Curran. It’s an interesting twist on the romance trope in this book, and I’m interested to see where it goes.

Story Behind The Story

As far as the story behind the story, Stuart wrote romance before writing mystery, the first book in the series was written during Nano 2011, according to her website. Nano is a month a novel writing month in November where you try and write 50,000 words during one month. So she participated in that in 2011, and then she said she spent the next eight years revising and polishing it.

So there’s a long post on Stuart’s website about how this book came to be in the background. And she’s lived in Singapore, and she went through kind of the same thing that Harriet’s going through. She found society very split there, and her identity was completely linked with her husband because his job took them there. And she had kind of lost her own work and identity that she had before she moved there with the things she was involved with. I will link to that in the show notes, and you can read the whole article for yourself because it’s quite long and detailed and it will give you a really good background on A.M. Stuart.

Who would I recommend this book for? Okay, so I would recommend this book if you enjoy reading the 1910’s time frame. That’s the Edwardian time frame. And there’s not as many books in that time period. There’s lots of historical mystery set in the 20s, in the Victorian era; there’s medieval mysteries. The Edwardian age is a little overlooked. There’s a couple of books that are pretty well known from that time frame. So if you enjoy different time setting it for historical mystery, but you want it to be fairly recent past, then you’d probably enjoy this.

If you like British colonial mysteries, and we did another one recently The Mimosa Tree Mystery. That was Season two, Episode five. So if you like colonial mysteries, then give this one a try. This one is a different view. The Mimosa Tree Mystery was a view of Singapore society kind of inside from the inside. This one is the British colonial view on the outside. So it’s just two different perspectives, and it’s interesting to read both of them and see the contrast.

And then if you like books with deep character development, this one, you’re really going to get to know Harriet and the Inspector really well, and you’re going to understand how the things in the past have shaped them. And then there’s a couple of mysteries that are going to continue forward that we don’t quite know the whole story. So if you really like the kind of in depth character development, I would recommend Revenge in Rubies. All right.

Quotes

So we’re going to end with a quote. Now, this scene is in a tree. Curran is trying to figure out how someone got into and out of an upstairs room that was locked. He climbs out the window and test the tree branches to see if it’s possible to get out that way. And that is the point that Harriet arrives. And this scene is told from the inspectors point of view.

“Curran, what on Earth are you doing up there?” A familiar female voice broke his train of thought, and he glanced down at the ground. A woman stood on the path below him, looking up, one hand holding onto her hat and the other on her hip.

“Missus Gordon, good morning,” he responded automatically, although there was nothing good about this particular morning. “I’ll be right down,” he added with the long patience of a childhood spent climbing trees in the park at Dearborn Hall, Curran descended to the ground. He stood for a moment, looking up the window while he peeled off his gloves. The flimsy curtains fluttered like white flags above him. “At least the mystery of the locked door is now solved,” he said aloud, and turned his attention to the ground around the tree. But the hardy grass that passed for a lawn in Singapore did not retain the memory of useful footprints.

So that gives you an idea of the relationship between Harriet and the Inspector. He’s surprised to see them there, but he’s not off putting, and he doesn’t tell them to leave. Some mysteries, there’s a push pull between the woman kind of amateur sleuth and the police Inspector or Detective like he’s trying to keep her out. And he does that a little bit, but he definitely sees that Harriet can be an advantage. And so it’s a different dynamic than you get in some mysteries.

My question for you is, what are your thoughts on nonromantic protagonist pairings? Do you like the idea, or do you always want some sparks between the lead characters? Let me know what you think. You can find me on Instagram @SaraRosett, or leave a comment on the show notes for this episode, which will be at sararosett.com/rubies. I hope you’ve enjoyed this podcast and it has let you revisit a favorite book or perhaps helped you discover a new author to try.  If you’ve enjoyed this podcast,  I hope you’ll tell a fellow mystery reader. Thanks for listening and see you next time!