Fire Must Burn – Allison Montclair

I’m a fan of the Sparks and Bainbridge mysteries centering on old friends who create a marriage bureau (The Right Sort) in London in the post WWII era. Fire Must Burn, the eighth entry in the series, started slow for me and then totally met all of my expectations and more for the series. A good historical fiction book teaches me something about the social and political culture of the era, has believable characters and a plot that makes sense. within the social and political times. Fire Must Burn addresses a number of social issues as well as the post war intrigue of international relations. Iris and Gwen get pulled into a scheme they would prefer to avoid, connected with Iris’s past as an intelligence worker and an old friend from university who has returned to London, Tony. Gwen’s upper crust status puts her in a position to deal with some of the class connected concerns that arise in their investigation of a crime I cannot divulge as it would be a spoiler. There are fun matters relating to each of the women’s lives and interests but the main focus in this entry is the story itself, with some back and forth in the timeline between Iris and Tony in their university years and in 1947, the year of this novel. Their business offers some fun, with a man they cannot match because all he cares about in life at all is fly fishing. All in all a very good entry into a very good series. 4.25 stars for me on StoryGraph.