REVIEW: Lavender House: A Novel by Lev AC Rosen
A delicious story from a new voice in suspense, Lavender House is Knives Out with a queer historical twist
Lavender House, 1952: the family seat of recently deceased matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of the famous Lamontaine soap empire. Irene’s recipes for her signature scents are a well guarded secret – but it’s not the only one behind these gates. This estate offers a unique freedom, where none of the residents or staff hide who they are. But to keep their secret, they’ve needed to keep others out. And now they’re worried they’re keeping a murderer in.
Irene’s widow hires Evander Mills to uncover the truth behind her mysterious death. Andy, recently fired from the San Francisco police after being caught in a raid on a gay bar, is happy to accept – his calendar is wide open. And his secret is the kind of secret the Lamontaines understand.
Andy had never imagined a world like Lavender House. He’s seduced by the safety and freedom found behind its gates, where a queer family lives honestly and openly. But that honesty doesn’t extend to everything, and he quickly finds himself a pawn in a family game of old money, subterfuge, and jealousy—and Irene’s death is only the beginning.
When your existence is a crime, everything you do is criminal, and the gates of Lavender House can’t lock out the real world forever. Running a soap empire can be a dirty business.
CWs: suicidal thoughts, murder, homophobic slurs, (severe) homophobic violence (chapter 10)
Dear Mr. Rosen,
After reading the blurb and realizing the double significance of the title, I thought this seemed like a delicious sounding novel. I actually didn’t particularly pay much attention to the connection with Knives Out which I think was a good idea as the similarity was tenuous – there but maybe not as up front as marketing hoped. The book does well on its own, and I enjoyed the trip back to the early 1950s and the found family that former detective Andy Mills discovers hiding in (almost) plain sight. Oh but one thing that annoyed me was the number of times someone is described as smirking. I smirked, you smirked, he smirked, she smirked. Everybody was doing it. Please come up with a different way to convey this attitude.
It’s 1952 and America is returning to the good old days before the War. The men work, the women are the homemakers, Lamontaine soap is a bestseller due to the effort that Irene Lamontaine puts into perfecting their six signature scents, and perverts know to keep their filthy habits hidden. Evander “Andy” Mills thought he could manage this last one and still keep his job and reputation on the SFPD but one slip up and only his years on the force kept him from being locked up – and probably beaten up – like the other men hauled in during the raid on the Black Cat gay bar. But now he has no job and is drinking in the afternoon to get drunk enough to end it all in the bay.
That’s where Pearl finds him and proposes that he come out to her house and solve what she thinks is a murder. Her wife’s death – and her open use of this word startles Andy – has been ruled an accident but Pearl needs to know the truth. She can’t go to the police and Andy has been carefully chosen because of the very thing that got him into trouble. Almost everyone who lives at the Lamontaine mansion outside of town has the same thing to hide and there, they’ve found peace and sanctuary. Was it murder? And if so, who killed Irene and why?
There are two main parts of this story – solving the mystery and getting a gut wrenching view of how the LGBTQIA+ community tried to hide and survive in 1950s America. I think the second part worked better for me. The mystery is competent but compared to the LGBTQIA+ aspect, it felt a bit flat.
Andy was a detective for five years and is good at his job. He follows the clues and now that he’s been hired by Pearl, he’s not going to stop despite being offered a great deal of money to just let things drop. Almost all the family and staff at the house are united in fearing outside attention. Here at Lavender House they can be who they are, free from worry, able to express themselves and their love. The idea that there may be a murderer among them unsettles them but the idea of losing their sanctuary is almost as bad.
There are red herrings and clues sprinkled about as the book progresses. Of course there are motives for having done the deed for each main character as well as reasons why they wouldn’t. I wasn’t sure about the identity of the killer until fairly late and admit that the ultimate fate of the killer was startling. But Andy reveals some things he’s discovered along the way to the very people among whom might be a killer and is staying at the house – among these same people. That was … odd.
The background of these characters and the ways they struggled to hide among the rest of America is where the book shines – if I can use that positive term to describe such a suffocating life. Andy says something similar – that for him, going to gay bars was like living underwater and finally coming up for air which made me feel how hiding his true self would feel like needing to gasp for breath. Yet Andy has to face the feelings the staff have about his former position and how he only thought of looking out for himself as he never warned any of the gay bars that he knew were going to be targeted in police raids. He also learns that despite the freedom that everyone has at Lavender House, there is still a price that has to be paid and that people can chafe against it.
The story ends with Andy finding a new place and job. As one character reminds him, their kind often has to forgo justice or getting answers for crimes against them. He would need to be careful still living in San Francisco where his former colleagues are often the ones who beat gays (and there is a terrible scene in chapter 10) but I’d be interested to look into future books set in this world. B-
~Jayne
AmazonBNKoboBook DepositoryGoogle
Leave a Reply