13 Park Lane - Naomi Clifford - ★★

AUTHOR: Naomi Clifford

GENRE: Historical Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: October 11, 2024

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A historical crime drama based on true events. Great research, but the writing choices didn’t work for me. This is an outlier review.

Plot Preview:

London, 1872. After having fled France during the communal siege, twenty-eight-year-old Marguerite Diblanc, who speaks no English, grabs the opportunity to work as a cook for the mercurial French widow Madame Riel. However, she soon discovers that the promises made to her before joining were nothing but lies. The Riel household is filled with tension that is worsened by the miserly owner, her unpredictable daughter, and an unfriendly English housemaid. Marguerite decides to quit her job, but where can she go? Then a tragedy occurs…

The story comes to us in Marguerite’s first-person perspective.

This novel is based on an actual crime in London in 1872. If you want to retain some suspense over what the crime was, don’t visit the author’s profile page here on Goodreads. It spoils the journey by revealing the details right in the first sentence. The blurb does an excellent job of maintaining suspense, so stick to the blurb.

This author usually pens historical nonfiction works. This is her maiden fiction attempt. Her historical knowledge and her research skills are on excellent display in the book. There is no dearth of facts, and her note at the end of the book displays the extent of her hard work and commitment to authenticity.

However there is one fact that cannot be denied: a historical true crime book is not the same as a historical fiction novel. This book is officially historical fiction, but straddles both the genres without doing justice to either. Those who focus mainly on the plot and aren’t so bothered about the writing approach might not experience the same feelings, but I am very picky about writing, and the writing choices made in this book weren’t to my reading taste.

The book begins with an excerpt of a newspaper article from June 1872, which declares Marguerite pronounced guilty of murder without revealing who was killed. So the prologue itself tells us that she is to be accused of murder at some point. The narrative then shifts to five months prior, detailing the manner of Marguerite’s arrival at the Riel household and her work there. In between, through Marguerite’s umpteen flashbacks, we also get glimpses of her past in Belgium and France. The first half of the book leads to the main event, and then moves into the post-crime narrative.

No problem with the intent and the broad structure. But there are many problems with the execution.

❌ The whole story is in Marguerite’s first-person POV, yet we mostly see only facts. There’s barely any revelation of her fear, regret, guilt, defiance, tears, anger... nothing! I have rarely seen first-person writing be so bland about emotions. Her opinions are written freely, but her feelings are hidden throughout. This lacuna is especially evident during the occurrence of the crime. I'd have expected to know more about why she took certain decisions or why she didn't reveal certain information, but we just don’t get to know her intimately.

❌ As the story is see only through Marguerite’s viewpoint, we don’t get to know any of the other characters, including the victim, in a genuine way. It is easy to see what they are doing, but figuring out a reason for their actions is tough. What little Marguerite knows/assumes about them is all we get. This makes it tougher to connect with anyone else. The character development is just surface-level.

❌ There’s a lot of telling rather than showing, further distancing me from the proceedings.

❌ There's way too much detail about Marguerite’s life before and after the crime. I can understand the importance of the ‘After’ part, but the historical details were needlessly extensive. Moreover, there are too many secrets in the past, which are revealed only at the end. As the main purpose of this book was to focus on a woman accused of murder, the rest of the material and the secret-keeping felt like padding to lengthen the book.

❌ The flashbacks about Marguerite’s earlier life in France are sometimes marked as separate sections, but more often than not, they spring randomly in between a scene, thanks to Marguerite’s ponderings about past events. There is hardly ever a time reference for these events, so we don't know how far back it all goes.

❌ The post-crime half of the book should have been equally important, considering what happened in reality. But the legal procedure hardly takes any chapters (though it should have been the key element) and the post-verdict scenes in prison zoom through years like no one’s business.

❌ What sealed my low rating was the super-duper-lengthy letter at the end, containing an entire infodump from Marguerite’s POV about the whats and the whys of the day that changed her life. Reading this extended “confession” in a letter form when there was no justification for it killed the remaining positive feelings I had.

Of course, not all is lost. The book does handle certain things well.

✔ Such stories usually make us direct our empathy and sympathy towards the suspect. However, Marguerite is kept grey from the start, with her flaws more visible than her strengths. It is tough to decide whether to root for her or not. This could go both ways, but I liked the uncertainty this created in my mind about whether Marguerite was actually guilty or not.

✔ The book also reveals the social and cultural conditions in London in the 1870s, and depicts the survival methods used by the poor and desperate during an era where money spoke more than anything. It also highlights the life for women (whether the wealthy or maids) who didn’t have an independent income and were dependent on males to provide them money, no matter the cost. The dreary condition in France during the siege years are also written well.

✔ My favourite part of the book was the author’s note. Her prowess as a historian is truly revealed in detail here. I admired her research and her dedication in getting the story right and also understood where and how she had to deviate from facts.

All in all, I loved the concept of this story a lot, but I feel a bit let down by the writing. The book would have worked better for me had the focus been directed towards the 1872 crime and its repercussions rather than going into so much detail for Marguerite’s earlier life. If Marguerite indeed had to be given greater priority than the murder, then the title shouldn’t have been “13 Park Lane”, the venue of the crime. The book might work better as a historical drama than as a true crime fictionalisation or a murder mystery.

As Marguerite speaks only French, I was hoping that my reading experience would be on the lines of another true-crime-based fictional novel I had read earlier this year. 'The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou' is also based on a historical crime in London (this one in 1954) where the accused spoke no English and had to rely on a Greek-speaking translator to put her story across. If ’13 Park Lane’ could have handled the writing choices even half as well as Eleni Kyriacou’s book did, my rating would have been far higher.

That said, mine is very much an outlier review and a majority of reviewers seemed to have found this novel worth reading. So please go through other opinions before you take a call.

Recommended to those who enjoy historical stories and prioritise plot over everything else.

My thanks to Bloodhound Books for providing the DRC of “13 Park Lane” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn’t work out better.