An homage to the classic murder mystery set in post-WWII London where a stranger’s arrival at a boarding house sets a deadly chain of events in motion.
The Kindness of Strangers is part historical fiction, part murder-mystery and has just a sprinkling of melodrama. About two too many plot strands are neatly tied up by its end, as though Garman couldn’t resist a few final flourishes. But such indulgence is forgivable when a book is this vivid and entertaining, and powered by such a wonderfully dry wit.
This is not only an excellent mystery, but an evocative portrayal of a group of people displaced socially and geographically by war and its aftermath, with the moral and topographical landscape of 1950s London superbly rendered.
An intriguingly tricksy story ... The 1953 setting is perfectly realised by Garman, with smoky, boisterous pubs and down-at-heel drawing rooms. Her vivid characters find themselves at the mercy of old-fashioned ideas that compress their lives into clandestine shapes.
