Customer Reviews

Next of Kin: A Novel

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John Boyne's "Next of Kin" is a unique form of mystery - neither a whodunit nor a how-did-he-do-it, but a will-he-get-away-with-it. And Boyne is just the writer to carry off such an imaginative approach. He has a good sense of place and a well-crafted style and is able to sustain an intricate and labyrinthine plot. Despite its slow start, my only complaint, I highly recommend "Next of Kin."

Part of the appeal of the book is the setting. Boyne recreates an aristocratic England of the mid-1930s of country estates, London townhouses, private clubs, and luxurious gambling dens. The people found in these venues are surrounded by impending change, although they steadfastly plod along as if nothing at all is different. Yet, Hitler is rising in Europe, and at home London is abuzz with rumors of the king's affair with an American divorcee. Society itself is permeated with ruthless people who are looking for opportunities to seize wealth and power, while the unwary refuse to admit anything is different. Into this seething cauldron come two young men: Owen Montignac is a disinherited amoral aristocrat who would do anything to pay his monumental gambling debts, and Gareth Bentley, a hapless man-about-town who would do anything to avoid work.

The two form a partnership that eventually involves an art theft, a murder (with two more to be revealed), a conspiracy to force the king to abdicate, and a sensational trial with a framed defendant. With the exception of the murder victim and Gareth's parents - especially his mother, a vapid society lady who transforms herself into a formidable lioness at the end - the characters in this book range from mildly unpleasant to truly repellent. It is to Boyne's credit that he makes them so fascinating and this novel so compelling.

Absolutely absorbing and thrilling. Full of rich details and fascinating characters. A well-crafted murder mystery. And in the end, a book you'll never be able to put down.

The book is filled with anachronisms ("media", "drama queen") and dangling phrases. There are even Americanisms, and a misunderstanding of How Things Were that I thought was peculiar to us Americans. Boyne allows a climactic courtroom scene with a mine of dramatic potential to fall flat for lack of emphasis in the right places. Yet I still have to give it five stars for the great plotting and the subtle parallels between the characters. There is even a "character" who never makes an appearance and whose destiny we can only speculate about. That's cool. It's like life...you never know who is going to come along and skew your plans...most novels wrap everything up neatly. This one is neat in the very ambiguity of its ending. Some readers may think this ambiguity is carelessness on the author's part, but it's not; it was foreshadowed. I must search out Boyne's other books.

In 1936, Hitler is becoming the rage on the continent; in England, the public affair between King Edward VIII and the commoner widow Mrs. Simpson holds the public's attention, but not Owen Montignac. Instead he believes his prayers have been answered with the timely death of his wealthy Uncle Peter. Owen owes £50,000 to casino boss Nicholas Delfy that must be paid in full by Christmas or he will spend the New Year and beyond with his deceased relative. However, to his dismay Owen learns his prayers went unanswered as dear Uncle Peter left him out of the will as deserving cousin Stella got everything. Desperation calls for desperate measures.

Gareth Bentley's responsible father a judge is outraged at the irresponsibility of his son as he only pursues pleasure ever since Stella imitated him when she was sixteen and he fifteen. Dad, a lawyer, considers cutting off funds to his son. However, before his parents consider leaving him without a pound to his name, the police suspect Gareth killed Stella's beloved Raymond. Stunned he pleads with his father to help him; insisting he is a victim of a clever frame from someone who knows him intimately and took advantage of his escapades. Desperation calls for desperate measures, but who would go that far.

This is an interesting historical mystery that uses King Edward's final days on the throne as a backdrop to a fascinating murder mystery that has its roots back a decade ago. However, Owen and Gareth are despicable individuals with no redeeming qualities. It is Gareth's parents who struggle with their conscience as they go out of their way to save their son; Judge Roderick especially hurts thinking back to those he condemned for hanging without an ounce of pity as he must choose between his values and his son. Readers will enjoy NEXT OF KIN as the past haunts their present.

Harriet Klausner

I am editor and publisher of The Duke & Duchess of Windsor Society Quarterly. I wrote this review for our most recent journal issue (1-2009):

NEXT OF KIN by John Boyne is a literary thriller set in London in 1936 amidst the unfolding crisis over King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson. This is a first rate novel that kept me in suspense every single moment and had me enthralled with its use of the abdication as its central story.

Society members who enjoy reading fiction will love this book which is a very clever story within several stories, with the abdication crisis at the center of a fascinating drama with very interesting and fully developed cast of characters. The Windsors themselves appear only once in a very brief cameo appearance.

The book's wrapper notes gives us a hint:

It is 1936, and London is abuzz with gossip about the affair between King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson. Owen Montignac, the handsome and charismatic scion of a wealthy family, is anxiously awaiting the reading of his late uncle's will. He must pay £50,000 worth of gambling debts by Christmas or he'll soon find himself six feet under. In his desperation, he discovers that the royal scandal could provide the means for profit...and for murder.

What Boyne accomplishes, and quite impressively I might add, is to interweave various thematic messages or allegories among the various plotlines throughout the novel.

What Boyne also does quite effectively, and Society Members will be pleasantly surprised, is portray the abdication crisis and all of the various facets of public and private opinion of all classes of British Society. Mr. Boyne has obviously read some informative books about King Edward VIII. Even though this is a work of fiction, I think that Mr. Boyne has accurately reflected the history of the abdication in a balanced and thoughtful way. Unlike other recent thrillers which featured a leather-wearing, whip-snapping Mrs. Simpson as a dominatrix, NEXT OF KIN portrays both the King and Mrs. Simpson, and a few of the key government officials in an historically accurate way.

The novel involves a committee of select expert lawyers who are brought together to develop recommendations for Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin regarding handling of the abdication. Through this committee, as well as various characters in the book, we see a full spectrum of what people thought at the time about the King's affair with Mrs. Simpson. This is historical fiction, I remind you. That genre (and several non-fiction books, in my opinion, that were written as biographies of the Windsors should be classified as historical fiction) is a very difficult category to work in and not many writers effectively manage to find the right balance of historical fact within their artistic license with fiction. Fortunately, John Boyne gives an excellent example of historical fiction at its very best.

Many of the main characters, who are in their twenties, and the conflicts they endure represent the shift in British society from the old ways of the Edwardian and Victorian eras. That theme is very much a part of this book, the divergence from the old ways and the conflicts involved. And, of course, we know that Edward, Prince of Wales, was a chief instigator of change. Boyne's novel even suggests that this is essentially the reason for Edward's abdication, not his infamous mistress, Mrs. Simpson. 1936 was, after all, the year of three kings. In the book (as in reality), King Edward VIII seems to represent everything about a new generation and a beginning in a shift of collective consciousness. One of the book's characters who is on the abdication committee, Lord Keaton, says:

`Personally I couldn't care less if the king wanted to marry a donkey. It doesn't make a blind bit of difference to me. But the man has a way about him that has to be stopped. All this business with the miners in the North-East. The little visits he makes. This nonsense of `something has to be done.' He thinks the monarchy is there to be shared with the people. He understands nothing about our ways. It's as simple as that. But Baldwin....now he understands. He can see the damage the man is doing.'

The following discussion in the novel also illuminates a number of interesting issues/concepts especially related to the abdication of Edward VIII. One of our members recently pointed out that the morganatic marriage option is essentially what Edward finally ended up with, only crownless. (Ironically, it is also essentially what his successor, Prince Charles, was allowed to do in taking his second wife, the divorced Camilla Parker Bowles, and who was not required to sacrifice his crown.)

'The king proposes that he and Mrs. Simpson marry but that their marriage be a morganatic one--...A morganatic marriage,' repeated Monckton.
`Whereby the issue of the marriage would not be in line for the throne.'

'Good God,' said Keaton. `She's not pregnant, is she?'

'No she's not,' said Monckton quickly and angrily. `And let us remember that we are discussing the king here and that some level of decorum needs to be maintained. As I was saying, the issue, should there be any,' he added loudly, `would not be in line for the throne. After the king's death, the throne would pass to the Duke of York or, should he predecease him, to the Princess Elizabeth.'

'He can't be serious,' said Altringham.

'He's perfectly serious,' said Monckton, sitting back. `And it seems a perfectly fair proposal if you ask me.'

'It would satisfy both sides of the debate,' said Roderick, nodding his head. `And Mrs. Simpson. What title would she expect?'

'She would be willing to reject the title of queen, instead she could use the consort equivalent of one of the king's other titles. The Duchess of Cornwall is the preferred option.'

I was fascinated with the main characters of the book. They all exhibit some sort of serious flaws as humans but I was still sympathetic to them, even perhaps the most flawed of them all, the protagonist Owen Montignac. The characters often do rather horrible things to each other and yet you somehow understand what motivated them or how they found themselves doing the things they were doing.

The cameo appearance by King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson, both central characters to the central plotline in NEXT OF KIN, occurs about two-thirds of the way through the book. It is an intimate meeting between Owen Montignac and the King and Mrs. Simpson at a gambling bar in London the night before the abdication:

The guests laughed and Montignac watches as Mrs. Simpson laid a hand gently on the king's arm, an affectionate gesture, entirely truthful and unpossessive, and the manner in which he used his other hand to tap hers affectionately while she did it. He observed them in their intimacy and envied them.

It is in this scene that I encountered the only instance (that I could find) of the author's artistic license at hand with the actual circumstances that occurred. As Society Members know, Mrs. Simpson was sequestered in France for many days leading up to the abdication. This scene has Mrs. Simpson in London the night prior to the abdication. But that is the fun of historical fiction...the writer has the ability to create scenes which could not have occurred. In this case, Boyne does so and provides us with a wonderful sympathetic portrayal of the King and Mrs. Simpson.

Boyne's book is just so very clever and I was constantly in awe of the author's ability to continue to weave recurring themes into so many different plotlines (e.g., birthright, definition of a family). My copy of NEXT OF KIN looks like some college textbook with dogeared edges and highlighted paragraphs on so many pages.

I strongly recommend this book. It is a very intelligent and exciting read, whether you are a Windsor-phile or not. But for those of you that are, I'll leave you with this final excerpt of why you'll be thrilled to read this book (for so many reasons) and you won't want to miss NEXT OF KIN:

In Buckingham Palace, King Edward VIII slept alone but lay awake now, his mind torn by the twin tortures of duty and love. He didn't know why he wasn't simply allowed to do as he pleased--no one had ever denied him anything before--and he thought of his late father's prophetic words that after he was gone, his heir would destroy himself within a twelve-month. But he knew what he wanted and he knew who he could not live without. And if that meant giving up the throne, his own birthright, then so be it. But he would wait no longer to be married. They had plagued him for so many years to take a wife and now that he had chosen one, they claimed that she was unacceptable. The whole thing was a ridiculous irony.

First Sentence: Many years earlier, when he was a lieutenant in the army stationed just outside Paris, Charles Richards had come across a young recruit, a boy of about eighteen year of age, sitting alone on his bunk in the mess with his head held in his hands, weeping silently.

Owen Montana is a charming young man with a big gambling debt owed to a demanding casino boss. He expects all this problems to be solved with the death of his wealthy uncle. He did not expect to be cut out of the will and the estate left to his cousin Stella. Owen is determined to get what he feels should be his, no matter who is in the way.

This should have been a really good book. It started out well; the characters were good, although two of them had no redeeming qualities whatsoever, the dialogue excellent, the setting against the backdrop of Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson interesting.

However, I have one major requirement for the author of a crime novel. It's not possible for me to say what that is without spoiling the book but the author violated that requirement and the book went flying across the room. Boyne is a very good writer but, the biggest problem of an author doing such an ending is that I'll no longer trust that author or read anything else by them.