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When Winter Returns, by Kathryn Miller Haines
Rosie Winter Mysteries #4
Harper Collins,
May 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0061579578
ISBN-10: 0061579572
Reviewed by Mary Gramlich, May 2010
Wonderful read with an amazing character driven storyline
Rosie Winter is a woman living through the difficulties of WWII trying to find her place and to survive living through war times. She is an aspiring actress just returned from a USO tour with her friend Jayne to find her room at the boarding house had been rented. So now they are staying there but with new roommates who may be holding some secrets that are either life altering to the country or as simple as a women with a working knowledge of how to encrypt letters written in invisible ink.
Rosie was chasing a dream when she went overseas with the USO following her love Jack who it turns out was in love with someone else. But while Rosie’s heart was broken her friend Jayne found love but all too soon lost her Billy when his plane was shot down. Rosie is trying to help her recover from this loss and as they go to say the proper respect to Jayne’s late fiancé’s parents it turns out he is not who he said he was and the life he was living was not his own. So the hunt begins to uncover who Billy really was, why was he was living under the name of another soldier and why does he have money hidden in a coat pocket he deserted. Rosie and Jayne are also dealing with Jayne’s ex mob boyfriend who has gotten them blackballed from getting stage work waiting for Jayne to come back to him. Rosie is all about solving mysteries but this time are there too many to resolve, probably not for her. It also seems to be Rosie’s responsibility to help her ex fiancé Jack as he recovers from the wounds he received overseas. Geez she is broken up with him isn’t that enough pain and suffering, apparently not because he needs her strength to get better.
But things take a scary turn of events when the aunt of Jayne’s deceased fiancée turns up murdered and the plot thickens to molasses with a lack of clues and too many suspects. Was her being German the problem, maybe a traitor or just an innocent victim of circumstance and prejudice? Rosie is an actress by career choice an amateur sleuth by natural instinct who when given all these clues can solve the crime and not just because she is nosy but just good at uncovering mysteries and fitting pieces of the puzzle together. If not for Rosie’s ability to knock those walls down and barreling through the issues nothing would get done right but this time the dark shadows are following her so the bigger question becomes can she keep her herself as safe as she should so that nothing happens to her?
What wonderful characters, a well written book about a time in our history that has been well documented but not as much from the female point of view. Rosie provides us with the difficulties of trying to make enough money to survive, absorb the complexities of a country surviving the war and hopefully find the love of your life. None of these objectives would have been met if the writer did not articulate this as clearly and wonderfully as she does and write a mystery that keeps your turning the pages to solve. It was an honor to read this book and feel the emotions that come from the characters that lived through this very bleak time. This book is a great reflection of the best of times created out of the worst of times. Rosie is a good person trying to do what every woman in the 1940’s was, have a career until she finds a husband and in the mean time solve a crime or two and Rosie is up for all of these challenges.
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