I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of All the Wrong Places from Lisa Lieberman in exchange for a review on this blog. Lieberman is an author with a hand full of books about Europe and the effects of World War II on the area. This book takes place in that time frame from the Summer of 1941 through the Fall of 1956.
This book starts with our protagonist, Cara Walden and her half-brother, Gray, moving to London. Cara is moving because she had a baby with a famous star when she was only 17 and to keep the birth secret, gives up the baby and flees America to avoid the scandal. Gray is a known Communist in the Hollywood community and is fleeing to England to avoid prosecution. Our adventure follows Cara all over Europe, with flashbacks to past events, including her mother’s death. This goes through a lot of dark stuff through this adventure including a possible suicide, a murder because of race, a sudden rape from a current boyfriend, numerous scandals, communism, the effects of the Jewish Holocaust, Gypsies and an interesting road trip.
This book mixes a lot of true to fact historic events, people, and movements with our fictional characters. This gives us an interesting story line. I honestly didn’t know a lot of these issues that effected Europe as it recovered from the war and was still struggling in many ways. We also get a look at the golden era of film as well as books, music and celebrity from this era.
This book is classified by the publisher and the author as a Historical Noir and is said to have a thrilling finale straight out of Hitchcock. It is an interesting read that is different than most noir novels I read. I would recommend it to fans of noir that want something a bit out of the ordinary and those that love historical fiction and historical mysteries.
This book will be out on 4/8/2015 from Five Star Publishing, here is a link to the website where you can get a copy:
Also check out Lisa Lieberman’s blog at:
everythingnoir 