Farthing by Jo WaltonTor, 2006

Farthing is a satisfying English-country-house murder-mystery set in an alternate 1949 in which England made peace with Hitler in 1941, and now exists across the Channel from the Third Reich. The book alternates, chapter by chapter, between the first-person narrative of Lucy Kahn, at whose parents’ house the murder takes place, and a third-person narrative centered on the lead investigator from Scotland Yard, Peter Anthony Carmichael. Lucy’s parents are at the center of “the Farthing Set,” “a group of loosely connected movers and shakers, politicians, soldiers, socialites, financiers: the people who had brought peace to England” (22). The deceased, James Thirkie, is also part of the group, and when he’s found dead with a Star of David pinned to his chest, Lucy’s husband David, who is Jewish, is suspected by some: maybe the murder was an act of political terrorism. But as Carmichael puts it, “Murders aren’t political, or anarchist, not one time in a thousand. Murders are sordid affairs done between people who know each other, nine times out of ten for personal gain, and the tenth time because someone lost their temper at the wrong moment, the crime passionel as the French call it” (31). I like Lucy’s narrative a whole lot, and Carmichael is great, and the ending is depressing but apt, and I’m looking forward to reading the next two books in this trilogy.