I loved ‘Miss Aldridge Regrets’, the first novel by Louise Hare to throw singer Lena Aldridge into a new role as detective on board a transatlantic liner bound for New York in 1936. This second book, ‘Harlem after Midnight’, picks up the story of Lena’s arrival in New York with new beau and ship-board musician Will Goodman.
Thanks to NetGalley for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
This book opens in dramatic style: a woman has fallen from a window at a party in Harlem. Clutched in her hand is a passport bearing the name Lena Aldridge… The narrative then moves back 9 days to Lena’s arrival in New York when Will arranges for her to stay with friends of his, Claud and Louis. Instead of Will returning to England on the ship, he decides to take some leave, something that gives Lena hope that they can work out whether their relationship has a future. However, things are far from smooth due to Will’s awkward sister, a host of family secrets and Lena’s inability to decide whether she can find a home in Harlem. Added to this, Lena is in investigative mode as she tries to uncover her own family secrets about what happened to her father in New York in 1908 that caused him to leave for England.
It took me a while to get used to the time-hopping between the night of the accident, the events beforehand (both 1936) and Lena’s father in 1908. However, it cleverly built the tension towards the main mystery: who pushed the woman from the window and why? Along the way, there’s lots of fabulous period detail about the Harlem social whirl, the nightclubs and music scene – an aspect I loved.
As before, I liked the character of Lena Aldridge. She makes a compelling main character as she tries to do what is right by everyone – herself, Will, her new Harlem friends, the memory of her father and her best friend at home in London. She’s at a kind of crossroads in her career and life so we get lots of insight into her thought processes and begin to root for her to have her happy-ever-after ending.
Hare explores the race relations of the era in an interesting way – Lena is of mixed heritage but passes as white, yet Will is black. This partnership is mirrored elsewhere in the novel – with Alfie (Lena’s father) and his white girlfriend, plus in what Lena uncovers about her family’s past. In each case, Hare draws out some contemporary reactions to such relationships, touching on society’s expectations and prejudices, the awful lynchings in the South and the exploitation of black women by powerful white men. There are some really sobering moments in the novel for this reason and it’s far from being a cosy crime novel.
The central mystery was well sustained by the use of flashbacks and the diversions into Lena’s family’s past. I didn’t find the mystery quite as compelling as the first novel, but appreciated that more space was given to developing Lena as a character.
I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoyed ‘Miss Aldridge Regrets’ and would suggest that this second book is more easily accessible to those who have read the first novel – there’s lots of references to the revelations in that first book and several of the characters reappear. It’s a well-researched slice of historical fiction and an engaging read.
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Header photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
