If you can suspend disbelief over ghosts, theater troupe managers driving Jaguars, and wills going through probate in two weeks time, you will like The Famous Flower of Serving Men by Deborah Grabien. And if you are a closet Anglophile with a hankering for embroidered history (particularly those juicy bits about monarchs run wild with power and lust), gory but palatable ghosts, and too-good-to-be-true heroines, you will love this book. I had a lot of fun — chills and thrills and laughs — reading this second in a series of five “Haunted Ballad” mysteries about Penelope Wintercraft-Hawkes, a woman who leads her own troupe of actors, drives a Jag, lives in a picture-perfect cozy apartment, has parents out of Enid Blyton, and talks in perfectly idiomatic English (ta, lovely, brilliant, barmy, criminy, bloody hell, etc). Penny has friends in high places (just where she needs them) and the capability to attract and channel ghosts, whether she likes it or not. She also has Ringan, a boyfriend with his own fancy car and his own stone treasure of a cottage, and a stunning ability of singing the wrong song in the right place, awakening the undead.
In this book Penny inherits a bit of property that comes encumbered with a horrible smell and worse: when checking the site out, Ringan lets loose with a gruesomely detailed song that dates from the time of the Plantagenets and the lyrics set off a powerfully pissed-off ghost — who seems to have been the original inspiration for the ditty. Penny finds herself channeling this Lady from centuries past, bastard child of some royal or another (I can’t give anything away) who did something really bad and burned for it — or did she? That’s what Penny, Ringan, and their devoted cronies have to find out. Rest assured our determined, well-placed, beloved, and irresistible (to anyone she asks to do anything) heroine Penny will make sure the job gets done and that her plays will go on.
The Famous Flower of Serving Men is perfect escapist reading for the beach (or for a winter’s day before the fire or a fall day under red-tinged trees or for reading in a warm bed on a rainy spring day): there is enough intelligence and challenge in the writing to feel good about the book and more than enough pleasure, atmosphere, and scary bits to enjoy it thoroughly. There is nothing deep here, the characters are engaging caricatures, the plot dips and turns just enough to keep you guessing, the ghost story chills appropriately and effectively, and finally, there is more than enough of past and present English lore, history, and customs to satisfy any thirsting Anglophile. Ta.
