Book Review: Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare

Miss Aldridge Regrets
Author: Louise Hare
Series: A Canary Club Mystery (Book 1)
Publication: Berkley (July 5, 2022)

Description: The glittering RMS Queen Mary. A nightclub singer on the run. An aristocratic family with secrets worth killing for.

London, 1936. Lena Aldridge wonders if life has passed her by. The dazzling theatre career she hoped for hasn’t worked out. Instead, she’s stuck singing in a sticky-floored basement club in Soho, and her married lover has just left her. But Lena has always had a complicated life, one shrouded in mystery as a mixed-race girl passing for white in a city unforgiving of her true racial heritage.

She’s feeling utterly hopeless until a stranger offers her the chance of a lifetime: a starring role on Broadway and a first-class ticket on the Queen Mary bound for New York. After a murder at the club, the timing couldn’t be better, and Lena jumps at the chance to escape England. But death follows her onboard when an obscenely wealthy family draws her into their fold just as one among them is killed in a chillingly familiar way. As Lena navigates the Abernathy’s increasingly bizarre family dynamic, she realizes that her greatest performance won't be for an audience, but for her life.

With seductive glamor, simmering family drama, and dizzying twists, Louise Hare makes her beguiling US debut.

My Thoughts: This historical mystery is set in 1936 and stars Lena Aldridge who is Black but passing for White. She is a singer in a seedy club when she is offered the chance to go to New York City to star in a Broadway musical. This couldn't come at a more perfect time. Her married lover has just left her. She's been kicked out of her room at her rooming house and has been fired from her job at the club. 

She has also just witnessed the death of her boss who also happens to be her best friend's husband. Tommy Scarsdale wasn't much of a husband flaunting his younger and younger lovers in front of his wife's face. Even worse, he has just asked her friend Maggie for a divorce and plans to leave her destitute. When he dies from cyanide poisoning, Lena suspects Maggie but decides to cover up any possibility of her involvement. 

Once onboard the ship, she finds herself seated at the table of the powerful Abernathy family. The head of the family is Francis Parker who is a very wealthy man who has suffered a stroke and is dying. However, he still has a tight grip on his family which includes his son-in-law Jack, daughter Eliza, and grandchildren Frankie and Carrie. Also in the entourage is his personal physician Dr. Wilding and Parker's secretary Daisy.

Lena is wondering why Charlie Bacon, who is supposed to be her guide to New York, wants to have her get to know these people. It soon becomes clear that he is eager for her to ingratiate herself with them in the hopes of having them support the upcoming Broadway show. 

Then Francis Parker is also poised with cyanide and Lena is sure that she will be blamed. Two deaths having the same cause is just too coincidental. She's right that she'll be blamed because that's what a hidden enemy has planned. But why Lena has been chosen to be the scapegoat only slowly becomes clear. 

Luckily, Lena has an alibi for the third murder in the person of bandleader Will Goodman. It is Will who brings the theme of prejudice into the story. He's a Black man who is knowledgeable about the difficulties Lena will face in New York if anyone learns that she's passing. 

This was a complicated story with a variety of flashbacks and viewpoints. I found Lena to be morally ambiguous and I'm not sure I agree with her choices even while knowing there was no other real choice about what she did. 

The time period was well drawn and the characters interesting and complex people. I enjoyed the story. 

Favorite Quote:

Alfie had told me that there were two sets of rules in America -- one for them and one for us. In England, there simply weren't enough colored people for most people to have thought about it that hard. 

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.