Reviewed by Jess

TITLE: Midnight Flit

SERIES: The Carstairs Affairs #2

AUTHOR: Elin Gregory

PUBLISHER: Manifold Press

LENGTH: 210 pages

RELEASE DATE:  March 14, 2019

BLURB:

Miles Siward and Briers Allerdale return for another thrilling Jazz Age adventure.

“Silk stockings on expenses.”

Miles’s aristocratic mother has information of importance to the British Government and he must escort her home from Bucharest immediately, but their plans go violently awry and Miles and Lady Siward find themselves on a train to Belgrade – where Miles’s lover is posted. Since their pursuers are looking for a man and a woman, might two women slip past them unnoticed?

“Is anyone on this train who they say they are?”

Briers doesn’t know whether to kiss Miles or punch him but is delighted to accompany him and his mother on their journey. All he has to do is keep an eye open for their enemies – but who exactly are they; the enormous Russian, the sinister priest, the handsome jazz pianist, or maybe the winsome young movie star? And his mother-in-law might just be the most terrifying of all!

All aboard for the ride of a lifetime, with a cast of characters you’ll never forget!

REVIEW:

I adored the first book in this series, The Eleventh Hour, giving it five stars in my review. But now I’ve reached a conundrum—how do I rate I book I liked even more than that one? Because this book, the second in Elin Gregory’s historical espionage “Carstairs Affairs” series, is tighter, funnier, wilder, and even more compelling than the first. Five stars abound for this amazing series!

It’s been about three years since Briers and Miles met and went on their first secret mission as newlyweds Brian and Millie Carstairs. While they write often and see each other a few times a year, the distance only makes them long for each other more, and they are both tiring of quick vacations and furtive meetings. When Miles’ mother, Lady Emily Siward, becomes embroiled in the confusing murder of a foreigner with incredulous intelligence in Romania, Miles is quick to come to her aid in Bucharest. When the plan goes off the rails and they must go into hiding. To avoid being clocked, Miles adopts his Millie persona while they travel towards Briers in Serbia, making him excited to see his lover—but wary of introducing both Briers and Millie to his mother.

Usually, I only like to give a plot summary as a taste before I get into my review, but the above paragraph doesn’t even come close to the action and adventure that actually happens in this story. There’s glamor, intrigue, old friends and new. We find ourselves in car chases and in exploding trains, secreted into seedy motel rooms and whisked into luxury hotels. This feels as close to an Agatha Christie novel any modern writer can get. There are so many recognizable cues—the ingenue, the train full of possible suspects, the secrets around every corner. And we’re kept guessing until the end, when a final bombshell of a mystery sets the scene for future books.

This is definitely a mystery with a bit of romance rather than vice-versa, but it works perfectly. Briers and Miles hit a lot of relationship milestones in this book, such as saying their first “I love you’s” and meeting the in-laws. I was a little disappointed they didn’t get their naughty ending, especially since these two couldn’t catch a break with everything literally exploding around them. But there’s much more fun to be had between these two. Their banter is even sharper, and they are slowly falling into those swoon-worthy married-couple patterns that happen naturally.

Now, for my favorite part of the book—the secondary characters. They blew me away from first to last. Though the genres greatly differ, I could compare this series to Roux and Urban’s infamous “Cut & Run” series in that they both do an excellent job of introducing complex, memorable, and unique secondary characters that make perfect appearances in future books (some even getting books of their own someday). Briers and Miles are the heart of the series, but the book wouldn’t be half as good without the whip-smart Lady Siward, the unflappable Pritchard, the ever-annoying and equally dangerous Falk, the bubbly starlet Ruby, or the capable companion Diana. Add an American jazz pianist who isn’t who he says he is, his burly Russian buddy, a conniving Hollywood manager, a ditzy society matron…well, I’m sure you get the picture. A lot of the characters could fall into the trope category, but they all work, and they all fit perfectly into the time period and narrative.

At this point, I’m absolutely obsessed with speculating what Briers and Miles (or Brian and Millie) will get up to next. I’m not sure how long they can keep their married personas, since they’ve traveled across at least four countries in disguise, so maybe Millie will be getting a makeover soon? And I’m hoping we travel with them to new locations and cities—maybe even America. This is the Jazz Age, after all!

RATING:

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