The Crimson Rooms: A Novel

Written by Katharine McMahon

Narrated by Josephine Bailey

Evelyn is a young woman who has defied convention to become one of the country's pioneer female lawyers. Living at home with her mother, aunt, and grandmother, Evelyn is still haunted by the death of her younger brother James in the First World War. Therefore, when the doorbell rings late one night and a woman appears claiming to have mothered James's child, Evelyn's world is turned upside down.

Evelyn distrusts Meredith at first, but she also finds that this new arrival challenges her work-obsessed lifestyle. So far her legal career has not set the world alight. But then two cases arise that make Evelyn realize that perhaps she can make a difference. The first concerns a woman called Leah Marchant, whose children have been taken away from her simply because she is poor. In the second case, Stephen Wheeler-a former acquaintance of Daniel Breen, her boss-has been charged with murdering his own wife. It is clear to Breen and Evelyn that Wheeler is innocent but he won't talk.

After being humiliated in court, Evelyn is approached by the dashing lawyer Nicholas Thorne. She is needled by his privileged background and old-fashioned attitudes, but, despite being engaged, he cannot seem to resist sparring with this feisty young female. In the meantime, Meredith makes an earth-shattering accusation about James. With the Wheeler case coming to a head and her heart in limbo, Evelyn takes matters into her own hands.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Mar 29, 2010
• ISBN: 9781400186570

Reviews for The Crimson Rooms

[candacevan_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I got this book as a first-read, and I guess I expected a lame book in desperate need of publicity. Not so! "The Crimson Rooms" is extremely well-written and grabbed me from page one. In fact, I stayed up all last night, trying to finish it.

Our heroine is a female junior law clerk in 1924 London, one of the first few women admitted to the bar. Her entire family is a frozen tableau of grief for her younger brother, Jamie, killed in WWI, and her father, who, heart-broken, drank himself to death. She lives in a dark cloud surrounded by her mother, grandmother, aunt, and two ancient female servants, who are all scraping by on the tiny bit of money left to her once-more-successful family. Her brother's room is still as he left it, and Evelyn Gifford's ground-breaking status as a female lawyer is not lauded within her very traditional family. Still single as she approaches 30, she is seen as an utter failure in female terms.

Thundering into her life comes a young Canadian woman, Meredith, who arrives in the middle of the night with a six-year-old boy, Edmund, in tow. Meredith claims that the boy was fathered by Jamie in a hospital behind the lines in France. Evelyn is mistrustful of the woman, and her family is appalled by her arrival.

Meanwhile, Evelyn becomes involved in two cases, one involving a woman who gave up her children to a charity home and now cannot get them back, and the other a war veteran who is accused of having shot his beautiful bride of only three weeks.

And much to her surprise, a handsome young lawyer, Nicolas Thorne, who is involved in the murder case comes into her life. Although he is betrothed to another woman, the two of them spark immediately.

Evelyn wrestles with several mysteries: Can she help the mother of three children get them back before they are sent off to Canada or Australia? Did the bereaved husband really murder his bride? Is Thorne really in love with her? And what's the deal with Meredith?

*****SPOILER ALERT — READ NO FURTHER TO AVOID PLOT DETAILS*****

The character of Meredith never quite comes together for me. I guess she is supposed to represent some of the brokenness of all who participated in the horror of WWI, but she seemed very inconsistent to me. She was also the source of a heckuva lot of coincidences that weren't explained convincingly by the plot. She felt like a plot device more than a person to me.

I also didn't understand Evelyn's complete rejection of Thorne at the end of the book. It did turn out that he had some involvement in the cover-up of a dreadful crime, but his involvement was largely unwitting. I half expected the sudden huge twist of a Sarah Waters novel, where love is revealed to be nothing more than intrigue and betrayal, but that was not the case here. So, why the need to so utterly reject him?

She was able to forgive her mother's betrayal (withholding Jamie's last letter), but not Nicolas, who never really did betray her. I just don't get it.

And why, at the end, would she move in with Meredith, who seemed to me to be hellbent on her own slow, eventual dissolution?

I guess the author wanted to avoid the usual "happily ever after" of most heterosexual romances, but she didn't do it in a way that felt believable or uplifting. It felt like Evelyn was choosing to define herself as Edmund's spinster auntie, and that didn't really make sense to me.

On the other hand, the writing was strong, and the plot really involved me.

~~~

Note: The version of the book sent to me was supposedly an "uncorrected proof," and yet I found only a very few typos and perhaps one error. (Don't the well-to-do English go to "public schools" rather than "private" ones?) That impressed me because so many modern books come to us riddled with typos and mistakes. Obviously, some care went into its preparation. I am also supposed to note that I received this book via one of Goodread's First Reads, which offers us the chance to enter to win various books.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

 This is a really enthralling book. It's set in 1924. James Gifford was killed in WW1 and his sister Evelyn and her family have been living in the shadow of this event ever since. His hat still hangs on the hatstand in the hall and the book opens with Evelyn having what seems to be a regular nightmare about trying to save him from the sea of mud. She's awoken by the door and the arrival of a stranger with her son, who she claims is James'. The book then follows several strands. the first is the family trying to adjust to the arrival of Meredith and Edmund, as well as the sometimes uncomfortable information that she brings with her about James's last few weeks. Intertwined with this are Evelyn's cases concerning a man supposed to have murdered his wife and a woman who surrendered her children to a charity home and now wants them back. In each case, Evelyn is the junior clerk on the case, as they've been assigned to the only chambers that would take her. and while Evelyn is set om law and being one of the first women lawyers, she is also struggling with the concept that she is only here because James isn't - he was supposed to have followed in his father's footsteps and taken up law. There is also a romance that, it turns out, wasn't what it seemed. The cases become mingled with her private life and her past, such that the war is still a significant impact on the murder case, and the real cause is murkier than it might appear.

[ant.harrison · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Crimson Rooms is a great story well told. Katherine McMahon’s tale of First World War trauma and loss is set in the mid-1920s, as Britain is trying to recover from the four years of bitter conflict. Evelyn Gifford is the protagonist, one of the first female trainee solicitors. The story is told through her eyes and encompasses a wide range of themes – her struggle to be taken seriously as a lawyer, the inability to have a rewarding career and to still be a woman, and how her gender often felt like a hindrance in trying to fight for justice for those she represents – all of which are warped by her grief at the loss of her younger brother in the trenches.

This is an atmospheric novel, rapidly and convincingly transporting the reader to London in 1924; there’s a real believability to the writing, but no soap opera, overly romantic slush. The characters are real and well drawn, and I enjoyed their company, despite the harrowing nature of some of their situations and dilemmas. There are no battle scenes or different time frames, yet the horror and obscenity of war permeates the narrative. Evelyn’s slightly dysfunctional family – shaken and bemused by the arrival of her dead brother’s wife – is well drawn, and it was moving and interesting to consider how hundreds of similar families must have been torn apart in the same way as the Giffords, and how they spent the next decade and more trying to adjust and over-compensate as a result of their stalled grief.

The three main narrative threads – Evelyn’s search for love, the arrival of Meredith with Evelyn’s young nephew, and the murder trial of Stephen Wheeler - all work seamlessly. This is good quality writing and I will be on the lookout for more of McMahon’s books. This really is a great read.

© Koplowitz 2013

[dubaireader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A good feel for the times.This book gave an excellent feel for the effects of WWI, not just on those who fought, but also on those who nursed the injured and the families of the soldiers, whether they survived or were lost.Evelyn lost her beloved brother to the war and her family has been mourning ever since. She harbours guilt for the fact that, due to his death, she has been able to study law, using the money that would have been used for James's education. Being one of the first lady lawyers, she also has to wrestle with the fact that, due to the attitude of most men of the legal profession, her clients will be disadvantaged if she represents them.She works with her employer, a Mr Breen of Breen and Balcombe, on two cases. The first is a mother who voluntarily deposits her three children into a children's home because she is unable to care for them properly. However, when she returns to claim them she finds that she has signed away her rights to them when she put her 'X' on the form. This case also brings in the issue of exporting 'orphaned' young children to the colonies to new homes, a misnomer for free labour.The second case is a man accused of murdering his wife. He is an ex-soldier and his experiences in the war have shaped the man he is now. He was a school chum of Mr Breen's and they are desperate to save him from hanging.Meanwhile, a young lady and her son have turned up on the doorstep of Evelyn's home, claiming to be James's son and his mother. Some correspondence had gone on with Evelyn's father before he died, but Evelyn knew nothing of the existence of a nephew. Along with Evelyn's mother and aunt, the family must struggle to accomodate these two new members.There is quite a lot going on and it was an enjoyable read. The ending felt a bit rushed and was in some respects frustrating, although I guess it would be believable for the era. Not quite five stars for me because I wasn't sure that the characters of Prudence (the aunt) and Meredith, were quite consistent throughout the book.Also read:The Rose of Sebastopol (4 stars)

[bookbets50 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

World War I- Evelyn is a female lawyer, which was highly unusual during that time.. She lives in an all-female household, whose dull equilibrium is disrupted by the sudden appearance of a young woman and the son of Evelyn's dead brother. The other part of the story involves two of the defense cases Evelyn works on as well as the details of her falling in love with another (engaged) lawyer. Much of the book didnt really hold together as some things were not explained very well or did not seem to fit, but I kept reading it and did enjoy it overall.

[mmoj_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A well-written first novel about one of the first femaile lawyers in Britain. Evelyn Gifford is a lawyer who finds herself on the outside of a men's only group - lawyers in London. Even other women don't want her for their lawyer. As Evelyn tries to break-through the walls surrounding her chosen profession she is faced with a new challenge - adding two more people into the household which is already stretched to the limits due to her father's death and failed money ventures he tried before he died. The two new people are her nephew and his mother - people she didn't even know existed until a late night knock at the door. The nephew is the son of her deceased, beloved brother, Jamie. Clearly Evelyn and the household women have been coasting through life since the death of James and the father. They not only have kept the household the same but they have insulated themselves from each other. How the household deals with the new residents and how Evelyn's character begins to develop mae for an irrestible story. The side stories of the two cases Evelyn is working on are typical of the times and are heart-rending in their own ways. McMahon does an excellent job of not letting the legal cases over-shadow Evelyn's story. I couldn't wait to find out how each of Evelyn's problems would be addressed. The book made me want to read more about this time period, the aftermath of the war, and about the children who were sent overseas. I look forward to future books by McMahon.

[bookaddictdiary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Okay, I'll admit I kind of took a chance on this one. I've never read anything by Katharine McMahon before. The only things that drew me to this book were the stellar online reviews, the beautiful cover and the semi-interesting plot summary on the back. But I had the opportunity to read this book, so I thought it was worth taking a chance on, even though I tend to be a little picky with what I spend my time reading -and I'm very glad that I did. The Crimson Rooms is everything that I was hoping for and more. Author McMahon is a master of crafting absolutely beautiful prose and weaving that vivid beauty together with an elaborate and unexpected plot.Set in post World War I London, Evelyn Gifford is a single woman living with her family who dreams of being a lawyer. In this period, female lawyers were virtually unheard of in England, making it practically impossible for Evelyn to find employment in the legal world. Through a lucky break she finds employment with a small law firm, though she is told she will never see the inside of a courtroom. Aside from her difficult career aspirations, a nurse and her son show up on her family's doorstep, claiming to be the wartime lover -and child -of Evelyn's brother, who died in the war. While Evelyn struggles with her shattered perception of a supposed perfect brother, Evelyn finds herself as the lead attorney in both a kidnapping and murder case. Though Evelyn believes in her client's innocence, Nicholas Thorne, a dashing attorney, constantly thwarts her investigation, but Evelyn finds herself growing fonder and fonder of the engaged attorney...Told in descriptive prose, The Crimson Rooms is an engaged historical mystery with a dash of believable romance. Not only that, but the plot moves so quickly that readers barely have room to take a breath between all of the details -and if you're not paying close attention, you'll miss something. Sure, the book is a little depressing. McMahon tackles women's issue in post WWI England, the violence and loss of the "lost generation" in WWI and other issues, but it only serves to gives the characters greater depth and more compelling conflict that will keep readers turning pages. Some readers may not like this approach, but every now and then it's good to read something that's a little heavier, but drips with truth about history.Ideal for fans of historical fiction with flourishes of mystery and romance, The Crimson Rooms is one of the most well-written literary historicals I've read in a while.

[whitreidtan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I generally don't read anything that has a body or blood in it because I am prone to nightmares, coward that I am. So it is probably completely incongruous that I would cheerfully agree to read a book in which one of the first female lawyers in Britain is helping to defend a man accused of murdering his wife. I am nothing if not inconsistent. Then again, I am up writing this review in the wee hours of the night when I am usually asleep because the image of a pink shoe on a lady's foot poking out of the underbrush has crawled into my brain and horrified me beyond sleep. Tame stuff for afficianados of the scary and gory but disturbing and lasting for babies like me.Six years after her brother's death in WWI, Londoner Evelyn Gifford opens the door to find a small boy the spitting image of her brother standing with his mother on the stoop. There is no doubt that the child is her brother James' son, conceived just before his death. The household has been in a sort of grieving stasis since the telegram announcing James' death six years ago and the presence of small Edmund and his mum Meredith is about about to change everything. And while Evelyn's family life is undergoing this major upheaval, she is struggling in her professional life and opening up to an opportunity in her personal life as well.One of the first female lawyers in England, Evelyn is still in training and facing the almost inevitable prejudice of being a trailblazer. Her boss has relegated her to mostly unimportant (and non-paying) clients. When he is out of town, by default she is given the case of a poor mother, a bit too fond of drink, who is accused of having kidnapped her own child. Leah Marchant willingly surrendered her children to a charity home while she tried to get back on her feet but in so doing, she didn't fully understand the consequences of her actions or the potentially terrible complications. In fact, neither did most of society fully understand the possible fates for children like Leah Marchant's. A seemingly insignificant case, it blossoms out of control as Evelyn undertakes to reunite the mother with her children.Meanwhile, she is also called on to assist at a spectacular murder trial where a former soldier is accused of having shot his new wife in the heart while out picnicking and then cold bloodedly heading to a pub for a few drinks. The evidence against Stephen Wheeler is overwhelming if circumstantial and Evelyn may be the only person who believes his innocence. And proving that innocence could be beyond her capabilities.As I've already mentioned, the murder storyline left me sleepless over the two nights it took to read the book. This is not because it was difficult to figure out who the killer was though. As a matter of fact, it seemed to me to be glaringly obvious from the first. But as the novel is much more than the mystery, this seems less a handicap than it might. The obstacles faced by women in the time between the two world wars, as they not only entered the workplace but entered in educated professions which had always been the sole province of men, were enormous. And add to that the lack of rights of women in general during this time and it becomes clear the sorts of odds a character like Evelyn faced. She should have been a wonderfully admirable character but I just couldn't warm to her. She was somehow more insipid than I had expected given her drive to become a lawyer despite general public sentiment. Perhaps this was intended to show her complexity and make her multi-dimensional but it left me without a character with whom to identify. As for Meredith, the mother of James' son and the character who stands as a foil to Evelyn, I didn't care for her either. She was flighty and cruel, fickle, inconsistent, and grasping and I suspect she was not meant to seem that way. Evelyn's budding lust for Nicholas, a man who represents everything she abhors, was a distraction given everything else going on in the novel but his very presence was necessary to the meat of the plot, making for an interesting conundrum: how to include him without the busyness of yet another plot thread.Given the fact that the novel was certainly out of my comfort zone, I probably zeroed in on things that wouldn't have struck other readers quite as strongly. And as evidenced by my lack of sleep, the detail of the story is quite vivid. The touches of historical information, the reaction and prejudice against the first female lawyers, the shipping of children from English charity homes to Canada where they could be ill-used, the toll the war had on the survivors, both soldier and civilian, all of these were fascinating and woven into the novel well. I just couldn't make a connection with the characters that didn't leave me irritated and so my overall enjoyment was lessened. I do think, however, that mystery readers will enjoy the threads of the story that kept me awake and historical fiction readers will find interesting nuggets scattered throughout this post-WWI set novel.

[birdsam0610 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Katharine McMahon’s books are quite difficult to get in Australia- very few stores seem to stock them. I was introduced to this author after seeing Confinement on the shelves at Borders in Singapore, misread the blurb (I thought it was about a hospital- ‘health’ but it was about a school ‘heath’) but really enjoyed it even though not a great deal was resolved by the end of the book. So when I started The Crimson Rooms, I really didn’t know whether it would be in the same vein or not. The short answer is yes- things seem resolved in some respects, but not in others. It could be a case of too many different plots or a trait of this author’s writing.This book opens with Evelyn Gifford, the main character, opening her door one night to find a woman and boy standing there. The woman, Meredith, claims that Edmund is her dead brother’s son. Is she telling the truth? James died in the war (WWI) and the house has remained on tenterhooks ever since.Evelyn is also one of the first women to graduate with a law degree and is currently working with Mr Breen and co. Recently she has undertaken her first case- reunite a woman with her children. Then her boss asks her to become involved in a murder case, which finds Evelyn investigating and finding that everything is not as it seems. To top it off, there’s a romance.The ideas covered in the book were interesting, but I felt that there was too many plots to do justice to each. Meredith’s character floats in and out as she pleases and the ‘shocking truth’ is revealed too early in my book and then simply accepted. The love affair is potentially superfluous. The murder mystery was the most interesting and the best completed plot. While Evelyn’s championing of careers for women is important, it is too often relegated to a back role.Will I read another book by this author? Actually, I’ve got another one on the way. They are very well written, true to time and place but I’m hoping that the next book I read (The Rose of Sebastopol) doesn’t make me think ‘so what actually happened?’

[picardyrose · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

 Three stories: a poor woman who loses custody of her kids, a man wrongly accused of killing his wife, and a mysterious woman who shows up with the dead hero brother's child five years after the Armistice. Didn't believe a word of it.

[silenceiseverything · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I won this book from the First Reads program on Goodreads and it really sounded promising. But I've been having terrible luck with historical fiction recently and unfortunately, The Crimson Rooms has fallen into that stigma. First, let me say that I love historical fiction books. They usually allow me to be immersed in a time period that I would never have been a part of and they have the added element of teaching me something that I didn't previously know. But the thing with The Crimson Rooms was that it was boring. I think what mostly killed me was that The Crimson Rooms is supposed to be sort of a mystery. And I can get into mysteries no matter how badly written (ahem...James Patterson), mostly because they have this thrilling atmosphere. The Crimson Rooms wasn't like that. All of the tension that you could've felt, just fell a tad bit flat for me. Sure, there were interesting aspects of the book, but they were overshadowed by the boredom I felt throughout most of the book. The main character Evelyn was intriguing, but even she couldn't save me from the boredom I felt. I found that I was doing things that I didn't enjoy (homework, cleaning, etc) just to avoid picking up the book again. Finally, I just sat down and said "I'm finishing this". Trust me, had I not won this book, it would've been gone so fast. So, alas, this First Reads book was a miss. Hopefully, this one and Mistress of the Art of Death were just bad luck and I'll have more good luck with the historical fiction genre as a whole.

[pharrm_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book if you love a good English story. Evelyn Gifford is one of the first women to study law - shocking many. She lands a position as clerk with a firm who has two clients she is assisting: one who is accused of murdering his new wife; one if a mother who is attempting to get her children back.The story is invigorated by a woman and child who show up from Canada claiming be the lover and child of her deceased brother (killed in the war) whom she adores.Just couldn't put this down.

[kiwifortyniner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a book I really enjoyed, the first of hers that I have read. The chief character is Evelyn Gifford who is one of England's first woman lawyers in the 1920s. Evelyn lives at home with her mother, aunt and grandmother, and all of them are feeling lost and distressed after the death of Evelyn's brother in the war. Evelyn admired him greatly. One evening a woman and child appear on the doorstep and the woman claims to be James's wife and her child James's son. Evelyn is troubled by this as she knew nothing of their existence and wonders what Meredith wants and why she had not made herself known before. That is one facet of the story as Evelyn gradually gets to know the woman Meredith and obtain some answers.The other plot lines deal with the cases that Evelyn is involved in. The first is the story of Leah Marchant a single mother who gave up her children when she couldn't cope but who now wants them back and the authorities are not prepared to cooperate.The second is the story of Stephen Wheeler who is accused of killing his wife but Evelyn strongly believes that he is not guilty. However it is difficult to get him to talk. The answers to all three mysteries take time to uncover. The book is a great read. The characters are interesting believable and likeable. The mystery element really got me in and I found it a difficult book to put down. The end itself was very moving and almost brought me to tears.