The Masquerades of Spring

September 13, 2024 9:09 AM

Meet Augustus Berrycloth-Young--fop, flaneur, and Englishman abroad--as he chronicles the Jazz Age from his perch atop the city that never sleeps. That is, until his old friend Thomas Nightingale arrives, pursuing a rather mysterious affair concerning an old saxophone--which will take Gussie from his warm bed, to the cold shores of Long Island, and down to the jazz clubs where music, magic, and madness haunt the shadows...
posted by soelo (5 comments total)

Another book without Peter, but another winner. An American setting with a very fashionable narrator. I enjoyed this one.
posted by soelo at 9:27 AM on September 13

Any chance it's a standalone? I've dropped off reading the series because in between releases I kept losing track of what was going on, so I decided to wait until the series is done (if that ever happens? Has it already happened? Not sure what the current status is.) If it's a standalone though maybe I'll go for it.
posted by trig at 11:43 AM on September 13

Yes, it is a standalone flashback story and you can enjoy it. I won't be surprised if some of the characters show up in later books, though.

I hardly ever consider series finished these days. A new Flavia de Luce book just came out after a 5 year break, when the first books came out at about one per year.
posted by soelo at 12:33 PM on September 13

Yay, thank you!

I hardly ever consider series finished these days.

I wouldn't mind if there were less to remember in terms of plot and characters, but at least at the point where I stopped (after Foxglove Summer?) there was a lot...
posted by trig at 1:00 PM on September 13 [1 favorite]

I found it a delight, even if too much fop-slang starts to get under my skin after a while. (You'd think that being a Lord Peter Wimsey addict would inoculate me, but the Jeeves and Wooster stories need to be taken in small doses for me to stick with them.) Still, I liked Gussie quite a lot, and on the perspective he gave us on Nightingale and Casterbrook, plus Nightingale encountering NYC.

Anyway, I enjoyed it a great deal, and it's definitely a standalone story.
posted by PussKillian at 1:50 PM on September 13 [1 favorite]