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The Crimson Rooms

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The Crimson Rooms is set in post World War I London, England in the year 1924. Evelyn Gifford is haunted by the death of her cherished brother James, who died in the Great War. Evelyn is stunned when a young woman named Meredith and her 6 year old son Edmund show up on the families doorstep. Meredith who is a nurse, claims that Edmund , conceived in a battlefield hospital, is the son of her brother James. The family take Meredith and Edmund in but they are still grief stricken from James death as well as the recent death of Evelyn's father.

Evelyn is 30 years old, unmarried and lives with her mother, grandmother and Aunt Prudence and supports her family. This is quite unusual as Evelyn is one of few female lawyers and is struggling in a field that is dominated by men and a society that is not accepting of female lawyers. Most women of this time do not attend college and have their own careers. They are to focus on finding a husband and starting a family.

Evelyn is soon swept up in two legal cases that effect her life in many ways. One case concerns a young mother whose children are taken away from her because she is poor and she cannot care for them. Evelyn learns about the plight of the poor in London and uncovers some unknown secrets about what happens to some of the children who are being taken care of by these charitable organizations. In another case, a man that is an acquantance of her boss is charged with the murder of his wife but won't speak to anyone. Evelyn meets and falls for a lawyer that appears to show interest in her and the murder case she is working on.

Evelyn must deal with a shocking allegation that Meredith claims about her brother James. It shatters her perceptions of her brother and she uncovers the layers of deception within her own family. Meanwhile, Evelyn must contine to fight for recognition and respect in her role as a female lawyer while trying to help these two cases. Both cases end with drama and mystery with some unexpected twists at the end.

Ms. McMahon skillfully builds a story that is complex and layered with great detail. There is great depth to the story as McMahon builds strong characters and a complicated plot. At first, the story seems a bit mired in detail but I soon realized that the depth and detail was needed to weave the story that would unwind at the end. I enjoyed the historical aspects to the story which seemed to capture the spirit of this time period of London in the 1920's. There is murder mystery, courtroom dramas, social history and even a bit of love and romance mixed in. Highly recommended for those who enjoy historical fiction with a dash of mystery and romance worked in.

Though most of the action in "The Crimson Room" takes place in the mid twenties the real impetus comes from World War I. That war shaped the characters; warped them, saddened, bent or strengthened them. When her brother James is killed in the war Evelyn's family allows her to use the money set aside for James' education. She becomes one of the first female lawyers. Meredith, a young woman who'd met James while nursing near the front, appears on the family doorstep with a young boy who looks inexplicably like James. Evelyn, her mother, her grandmother, and her aunt are dismayed at meeting this unknown child but also charmed by his resemblance to their lost loved one. They let Meredith and her son move in with them. Evelyn has had few opportunities to find love because she's so bookish and isolated AND because she doesn't believe in her beauty. During one of Evelyn's first law cases, a child custody trial, a handsome fellow lawyer chases her down to talk and she's smitten though she soon finds out he's already engaged. It doesn't matter though. She's already lost her heart. Their paths cross again when Evelyn becomes involved with a murder trial and her not to be lover's upcoming father in law is the defendant's boss. There are some interesting twists and turns in "Crimson Room" and Evelyn is a delightful protagonist. On the dust jacket Mosse compares McMahon to Sarah Waters but I'd say she's more like Anne Perry, whom I love as well. Both Perry and McMahon are excellent at creating period settings and deft mysteries.

"The Crimson Rooms," by Katharine McMahon, opens in 1924, with thirty year old Evelyn Gifford shaken by a recurring nightmare involving her brother, James, dying in agony at the age of twenty on a muddy French battlefield. She is startled to hear a knock at the front door in the middle of the night. Much to her bewilderment, a woman is standing in the entrance with a little boy who looks exactly like Evelyn's late brother. The stranger introduces herself as Meredith Duffy; she is accompanied by her son, six-year-old Edmund, whom she claims is James's child. The arrival of these guests throws the Gifford household, consisting of Evelyn, her mother, grandmother, aunt, and two maids, into turmoil.

Evelyn is a graduate of Cambridge with a bachelor of law degree, but "tradition dictates that women should not be lawyers and the law is governed by tradition." She considers herself fortunate when Daniel Breen, who is a champion of the downtrodden, takes her on as his articled clerk. She soon becomes embroiled in two very different legal matters: One involves a destitute woman, Leah Marchant, who is desperate to regain custody of her three children; the other concerns a former soldier, Simon Wheeler, who will hang if he is convicted of murdering his wife, Stella. Evelyn works tirelessly conducting research, interviewing witnesses, and uncovering surprising new evidence that could influence the outcome of both cases.

This is an engrossing work of historical fiction that is almost impossible to put down. The admirable heroine, Evelyn Gifford, is a highly intelligent and tenacious fighter for justice. In spite of the jibes she is subjected to about "women lawyers," she perseveres, knowing that if she is to become a respected advocate, she will need to be tough. The plot thickens when Evelyn is attracted to a dashing and charming barrister, Nicholas Thorne, who is already engaged to the gorgeous and wealthy Sylvia Hardynge. When Thorne appears to reciprocate her interest, Evelyn must decide how to handle this awkward situation. Her decision becomes even more difficult when she is forced to choose between desire and personal integrity.

Eventually, Evelyn faces some hard truths about herself, her family, and the society in which she lives. Edmund, Meredith, and Nicholas penetrate her psychological defenses, and she allows herself to feel deeply for the first time since that day in 1917 when she learned that James was dead. Her work with Breen reinforces Evelyn's outrage at the favorable treatment afforded to the rich and well-connected, while indigent females are denied basic civil rights. In addition, as Jacqueline Winspear does so effectively in her Maisie Dobbs series, McMahon creates a grim portrait of the ways in which the Great War decimated the flower of English youth. Those who survived often returned home maimed both in body and spirit. "The Crimson Rooms" is old-fashioned storytelling at its best. It is compelling on so many levels: as a suspenseful murder mystery, an incisive tale of social injustice, a poignant love story, and a gripping family drama. Although some readers might have wished for a more upbeat conclusion, the author shows courage in wrapping up her complicated story realistically. Truth be told, a sequel to this wonderful book would be most welcome.

Okay, I'll admit I kind of took a chance on this one. I've never read anything by Katharine McMahon before. The only things that drew me to this book were the stellar online reviews, the beautiful cover and the semi-interesting plot summary on the back. But I had the opportunity to read this book, so I thought it was worth taking a chance on, even though I tend to be a little picky with what I spend my time reading -and I'm very glad that I did. The Crimson Rooms is everything that I was hoping for and more. Author McMahon is a master of crafting absolutely beautiful prose and weaving that vivid beauty together with an elaborate and unexpected plot.

Set in post World War I London, Evelyn Gifford is a single woman living with her family who dreams of being a lawyer. In this period, female lawyers were virtually unheard of in England, making it practically impossible for Evelyn to find employment in the legal world. Through a lucky break she finds employment with a small law firm, though she is told she will never see the inside of a courtroom. Aside from her difficult career aspirations, a nurse and her son show up on her family's doorstep, claiming to be the wartime lover -and child -of Evelyn's brother, who died in the war. While Evelyn struggles with her shattered perception of a supposed perfect brother, Evelyn finds herself as the lead attorney in both a kidnapping and murder case. Though Evelyn believes in her client's innocence, Nicholas Thorne, a dashing attorney, constantly thwarts her investigation, but Evelyn finds herself growing fonder and fonder of the engaged attorney...

Told in descriptive prose, The Crimson Rooms is an engaged historical mystery with a dash of believable romance. Not only that, but the plot moves so quickly that readers barely have room to take a breath between all of the details -and if you're not paying close attention, you'll miss something. Sure, the book is a little depressing. McMahon tackles women's issue in post WWI England, the violence and loss of the "lost generation" in WWI and other issues, but it only serves to gives the characters greater depth and more compelling conflict that will keep readers turning pages. Some readers may not like this approach, but every now and then it's good to read something that's a little heavier, but drips with truth about history.

Ideal for fans of historical fiction with flourishes of mystery and romance, The Crimson Rooms is one of the most well-written literary historicals I've read in a while.

"The Crimson Rooms" is a tragedy-style historical set in 1924 in England. It also contained a mystery and a romance. The characters were complex. Historical and setting details were expertly woven into the story and brought the story alive in my imagination.

However, it's a depressing story. Evelyn's family is stuck in their grief. Her two main legal cases can't really have "happy endings" even if won. And, due to the high post-war female-to-male ratio and her low self-image, Evelyn's desperate to have sex with the first willing male (even if she knows he's just using her) so that she can have sex once in her life.

Furthermore, I couldn't believe that Evelyn really had the guts to defy her family and society to get her legal training when she's so compliant to everyone's wishes and whims at the beginning of the story. By the end of the story, she'd gained my respect in her lawyer role but lost it in how she behaved in the romance role.

So the historical part of this story was excellent, the mystery was interesting (though the court scenes at the end were a bit slow paced), but the romance didn't work for me. There was a very minor amount of bad language. The story also contained some "hot" kissing and a brief, not particularly graphic sex scene.

I received this book as a review copy from the publisher.

Reviewed by Debbie from Genre Reviews

Katharine McMahon's novel, "The Crimson Rooms" is a splendid read, set in London in 1924, but harking back to the Great War and the insanity and intense heartbreak - both physical and emotional - that the war wrought on the survivors. Evelyn Gifford is a newly-minted lawyer - a rarity in England at the time - who has lost her much beloved younger brother James in France in 1917. The children of a lawyer, it was James - the son - and not Evelyn - the daughter - who was thought of as the lawyer-to-be. However, Evelyn trains for the law at Cambridge University's Girton College and returns to London to look for work. She lives with her widowed mother and grandmother and great aunt in a large house. It's a household brought low by the sadness of losing both James in battle and Evelyn's father from grief soon after his son's death.

Evelyn finds a job with a "progressive" law firm and is soon launched into two cases. One's a murder case and the other's a child-custody case. And into the saddened ladies-household arrives Meredith - a Canadian nurse - and her six year old son, who's James' illegitimate son by the nurse. In between the cases, a possible new love, and her newly-discovered nephew, Evelyn's life is in turmoil. Author McMahon makes the most of both her story and her characters. It's a wonderful read; totally original. I never knew where the story would lead, and ultimately, end. I hope this stand-alone novel will be the first in a series.

In 1927 London the forces of the Great War remain powerful in the lives of Evelyn Gifford, her mother, grandmother and her dear Aunt Prudence, all haphazardly ensconced gloomy Clivedon Hall Gardens. These spinsters are forced to face the inevitable. Although they have yet truly accepted the reality of their situation and seem destined to eke out a life of penury, they are still reeling from the loss of James, Evelyn's beloved brother who was killed in the War. Soon enough Evelyn is feeling the familiar tremor of apprehension because now, as always, will begin the series of events that have bought the telegram telling her James was dead. But life must go on, and Evelyn, who -as the novel opens - is seeking employment as a lawyer and is finding it a tall order in this world where the legal profession is as obstructive as it is dominated by men who want nothing to do with women. Certainly if James was alive his path would have been far smoother with a combination of his own talents and his father's connections.

Then in the small hours with the dream of James still fresh, the arrival from Canada of Meredith and Edmund, her son and James's child both coming unreachably out of time. The house seems to sag under the weight of the new arrivals, the Giffords truly flummoxed at the appearance of this strange woman and her little boy. James had written a fortnight before his death, but he had never mentioned this woman Meredith who is short of money and wants her boy to have an education as much as she wants to love in the house presumably rent free. Telling them she was a nurse on the hospital to which James was sent when he was wounded, the women of Clivedon Hall are positive that he might want a lot of money which they don't have. As the new fragments of James dangled before Evelyn, Meredith soon becomes obtuse, passing judgment on the constrained lives of Meredith and her family. Her manner is very direct, something to which they were not accustomed: `I want you to be on my side, I want a life here, And I want to see Edmund settled in school." It's almost as is she had stage-managed the sequence of events. James's death still a raw wound in her consciousness, the pain made all the more acute by the addition of one small detail, a scrap of paper unspeakably stained upon which James had scrawled Meredith's name.

Eventually finding employment in the service of the wiry-haired Daniel Breen of Breen & Balcombe and his partner Theo Wolfe, Evelyn is given the job of defending Leah Marchant accused of kidnapping her own child in foster care; she couldn't get it back by legal means so she snatched it while it was left outside a butcher's and her two little girls, surrendering them to the care of a children's home who are now refusing to hand them back on the grounds that she is not a fit parent. Beyond Leah's sad story, Evelyn is also given the task of investigating the murder of Stella Wheeler, her husband Stephen the prime suspect. After a picnic Buckinghamshire he left her alone while he had a drink at a local hostelry. Her body was found in the woods nearby and nearby, along with Wheeler's own military gloves and his Webley service revolver. Shot through the heart in a secluded area, Wheeler perhaps hiding his gun and gloves next to her body. Instructed be Breen to uncover Stella's secrets in the Wheeler house and its abandoned contents, she soon discovers a link between Stephen forming part of a firing squad in the War and his wife meeting her death through a shot in the heart.

McMahon gorgeously ties the threads of Evelyn's everyday-life with the social difficulties of a woman of her station along with the ghost of James as he marched off to war. Her heroine is made all the more realistic and poignant by the intricacy of emotional connections: the shocks, and journeys and the new faces of demanding people Leah, Marchant. Meredith herself, poor Stephen Wheeler, in his prison cell, and her new love, the dashing Nicolas Thorne whose smile hovered over her inner eye "like the Cheshire Cat's," the most beautiful man she had seen in years, and Carole, a waitress who worked with Stella, telling Evelyn she stayed out all night and wouldn't say where she'd been. Evelyn engulfed in this new tragedy is determined to defend Wheeler with every last atom of her breath even as she copes with the rusty emotions generated by two stillborn love affairs and the sense that even though James was gone, her life was full enough, love was what she wanted. In McMahon's London of tea rooms and omnibuses, gabled cottages and grand Georgian homes, cobbled alleys, and ladies with silk stocking and hats adorned with pleats and feathers, a bloody war that goes on and on in the minds of the author's characters.

The ghost of the murdered Stella and the gradual unraveling of evidence against Wheeler, along with the dilemmas of Meredith, becomes all too much and Evelyn finds herself caught up in a conflict of conscience torn between her growing attraction to Thorne and her duties to Breen. The mark of a consummate storyteller, McMahon's book is elegant and intimate, retaining an air of constant sophistication while also reveling in the revelations that there are darker forces at work, and the beloved James was not all he seemed to be. Mike Leonard April 2010.

I recently read and loved 'The Alchemist's Daughter' by Katherine McMahon and was eager to see if her other novels were as good. This one certainly was and I think I may have found a new favorite author. One of the things I liked about 'The Alchemist's Daughter' was the strong female protagonist that McMahon created and while their characters are completely different the strong female protagonist in this story is equally compelling.

Evelyn Gifford is a thirty year old, Cambridge educated, lawyer earning a living as an assistant clerk in a law firm. She faces constant sexism in her daily work and when at home feels a similar bias from her own mother. Seven years after the death of her brother James, during World War I, her family still hasn't recovered from his loss. Now a woman has arrived on their doorstep with a child who is the spitting image of James. She claims he is James's son but Evelyn and her family are unsure about the woman's motives. At the time of the woman's arrival Evelyn has taken on a case representing a woman charged with kidnapping her own son from his foster mother and her law firm is involved in the defense of an accused murderer.

Once again I don't want to give away any details that might spoil the story for a potential reader. But I will say that I enjoyed everything about this novel, it was flawlessly written with great attention to detail, the characters were alive with emotion, their interactions were realistic and every turn in this story was believable. I especially liked Evelyn Gifford and the work she does investigating the murder of Stella Wheeler, I also like the way she's transformed by the arrival of her nephew and her feelings for the handsome barrister Nicholas Thorne. I enjoyed this period in history and while I've only read a few novels set after World War I after reading this I would consider more.

Overall, I found this to be an engrossing and satisfying story, the only thing that could have made it better, in my opinion, would have been the addition of several hundred more pages. I have already reserved two more of Katherine McMahon's novels at my local library and I'm looking forward to reading them soon.

In 1924 London, Evelyn Gifford's awakens from a nightmare about her brother James who died in the Great War. That very night, a nurse, Meredith, comes to the door claiming that her six-year old son was fathered by James shortly before he died. Although Edmund looks so much like James, Evelyn is not quite sure she trusts Meredith. What are her motives? As a struggling attorney in a world that doesn't quite accept women lawyers, Evelyn must now support the rest of her family. When Daniel Breen takes her on as his clerk, she sets about to help a downtrodden woman, Leah Marchant, gain custody of her children. Also, soldier Simon Wheeler has been accused of killing his wife, Stella. His case seems hopeless, but nevertheless, Evelyn sets out to investigate. Handsome barrister Nicholas Thorne takes an interest in her career. Although Nicholas is already engaged to Sylvia Hardynge, Evelyn finds herself attracted to him and to make matters more complicated, the attraction seems reciprocated. Will Evelyn be able to solve the mysteries before her, not only the truth behind Stella's murder but also the motivations of Meredith? Will she be able to help Leah when the system seems stacked against her. Will Evelyn find romance with Nicholas Thorne?

Katherine McMahon's THE CRIMSON ROOMS is a book that grabs a reader from the beginning with an intriguing mystery, but the mystery doesn't stop there. Each situation presents a kind of mystery of its own, all seamlessly interwoven within the story. Even Leah's case, a case which gives insight into the historical period and its institutions, develops into a mystery as Evelyn wades through all the layers of society from the law to charity that separate Leah from her children. THE CRIMSON ROOMS integrates period history within the story without distracting from the characters and storyline. THE CRIMSON ROOMS presents a portrait of many different sides of post-WWI society, from the wealthy world of Nicholas Thorne to the less fortunate Leah, from the soldier and nurse to women struggling to make ends meet. Evelyn Gifford is a delightful character as are the characters who surround her. Unexperienced in love, her account of her feelings Nicholas Thorne has charm and freshness. Nevertheless, Evelyn is a woman with quite a lot of determination, not only in her choice of profession, but in her dedication to do all she can for her clients. Above all, she is a woman who grows throughout the story.

THE CRIMSON ROOMS has everything --- history, mystery and a bit of romance --- to make for great cover to cover reading. Once a reader enters into the world of Evelyn Gifford, the story itself and the characters are so memorable, that one easily re-enters the story from reading to reading. THE CRIMSON ROOMS is a great book to keep on the bedside table, but once begun, a reader might find oneself stealing more reading time. THE CRIMSON ROOMS is more a great story set in a historical period than history told through fiction. Historical details are accurate and give much insight into the period. Readers who like a good mystery will find several intriguing mysteries within the story, and yet, the development of the mysteries flow fluently from the story itself. Katherine McMahon is a superb storyteller!

Courtesy of Book Illuminations

I really enjoyed "The Crimson Rooms". It had an excellent historical perspective, a not too dramatic murder mystery, fascinating characters and relationships, which are so foreign to me despite a mere century separating us. It was also very well written and a very enjoyable read.