Council's Best Mystery of 2019. Under her real name, she has written more mystery novels and a damn good werewolf book, as well as short stories in many genres in magazines and anthologies. She is also an award-winning librettist and lyricist with several musicals to her credit that have been performed or workshopped across the USA. She currently lives in New York City where she also practiced as a criminal defense attorney.
Montclair applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, An Excellent Thing in a Woman, and reported the following:
On page 69 of An Excellent Thing In A Woman, Iris Sparks, co-proprietor of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau, is interviewed by DS Michael Kinsey after discovering the body of Jeanne-Marie Duplessis, a Parisian dancer:Visit Alan Gordon's website.‘I suppose you’re going to tell me this has nothing to do with you, Sparks,’ he said.This is a nice test for this book. Amateur detectives have contentious relationships with the police, and this is particularly true for Iris and Mike — because he’s also her ex-boy friend.
‘I wish I could, Mike,’ she replied. ‘She was a client.’
‘Of The Right Sort?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘But she’s from Paris. How did she manage that?’
‘She walked in two days ago,’ said Sparks, and she recounted everything she could remember of the interview. By the time she was done, he was shaking his head in disbelief.
‘Strange,’ he said. ‘Any idea why she was in such a rush to get married?’
‘Nothing specific,’ said Sparks. ‘She mentioned something about Paris, about not being able to continue on there, but we didn’t get any more detail than that.’
‘She’s here with a dance troupe,’ said Kinsey. ‘Maybe one of them will know. I wish my French was better.’
‘Would you like me to translate?’
‘No thanks, Sparks,’ he said. ‘You’re a witness.’
‘Not a suspect this time?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I must be losing my touch.’
Mike is not in all the books — Scotland Yard has more than one detective — but he’s back and things continue to be tense between Iris and him. Iris and Gwen both have varying encounters with the different detectives they run across in the series, but Mike and Iris are a special case. She considers him the man she loved the most in her life, but her work for British Intelligence during the war led her to betray him, an act that wounded both of them deeply. Her continuing silence as to what happened is required by the Official Secrets Act, so reconciliation between them may never be possible. Yet here they are, once again.
--Marshal Zeringue