Mystery set in Brighton (“So good that I’ve already bought the next two in the Mirabelle Bevan Mystery Series”)

  • Book: Brighton Belle
  • Location: Brighton
  • Author: Sara Sheridan

Review Author: tripfiction

Location

Content

1951 sees Mirabelle Bevan retired from her wartime job with the Secret Service and living a rather lonely and limited life in Brighton. Following the death of her lover and hopes of a cosy domestic life, she has left London with all its memories and taken a job well beneath her capabilities in a Brighton debt collection agency. Life seems to have little to offer her, apart from frequent nips of whisky and the daily challenge of outwitting the beach attendant so she can occupy a deckchair for free and eat her solitary lunchtime sandwich looking at the sea.

IMG_3171When her boss, Big Ben McGuigan, takes some sudden leave because of illness, Mirabelle is left in charge and that’s when Bert Jennings shows up wanting assistance in recovering a £400 debt from a pregnant Hungarian refugee, Romana Laszlo, who has supposedly come to Brighton to have her baby. Mirabelle starts to work the case and soon finds that facts about Romana don’t add up and she just can’t resist doing a little detective work to discover the truth. For this, she enlists the help of the delightful Vesta Churchill, a young black woman who works in an insurance office in the same building as Mirabelle. Mirabelle and Vesta, when the latter can be persuaded away from her chocolate biscuit tin, uncover a complex and deadly plot, involving prostitution, Nazi war criminals and numerous brutal deaths.

Sara Sheridan is better known as a writer of historical fiction and one of the best things about this novel is the way in which post-war austerity, fifties dress, food (or lack of it) and décor are so brilliantly evoked. Sheridan also doesn’t shy away from spelling out for us the racism endemic in 50’s Britain. Vesta’s philosophical acceptance of the cruelty, insults and unfair treatment speak volumes.

Brighton Belle has all the necessary qualities of good detective fiction and thankfully it tells the story in a clear and straightforward manner. How unusual is that nowadays? But it does more. The setting combined with a female detective and female side-kick/assistant feels very fresh. Mirabelle, too, is a very engaging character and certainly not two-dimensional as many fictional detectives are. The only negative thing I could say about this book (and this is probably just a fault of my too-vivid imagination) is that Mirabelle is portrayed as a very elegant and sophisticated woman and yet she is described as leaping over walls and vaulting fences and I just can’t see that in 1950’s dress. Just ignore me – way too picky.

All in all, this novel is Sara Sheridan’s first foray into the realm of crime fiction but by no means her first book. She has written much in other genres and it shows. Brighton Belle is slick, fast paced, well-crafted and just darned good. So good that I’ve already bought the next two in the Mirabelle Bevan Mystery Series.

Praise indeed.

This review first appeared on our blog

Back to book

Sign up to receive our e-newsletter

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.