Saturday, October 31, 2015

The Emerald Brooch (Celtic Brooch series Bk#4)

By Katherine Lowry Logan




Kenzie Wallis-Manning (U.S. Army-Intelligence retired) returns to her London flat, where she is doing her thesis on Winston Churchill, to be greeted by the postman with a package for her and a call/lecture from her alcoholic father, who continues to live in the regimented world of an Army officer and expects her to do the same. All she wants from him his love or, at the very least, acknowledgment of pride in her accomplishments. She leads a solitary life with only PTSD as her companion. Eventually she opens the box to find an emerald brooch. A touch of the clasp and it opens to reveal a Gaelic incantation which, like her predecessors takes her into the fog and leaves her in war torn London a fortnight before D-day. With her military training she gets along with the help of Molly whom she met while looking for some light and information (like what is the date). 
In Scotland, her brother is fed up with the police and calls friend and mystery novelist David McBain for help. He and fellow time traveler (The Sapphire Brooch) JacK Mallory soon learn of the existence of yet another jeweled brooch and they research and use one of the other brooch's to go to WW-I London. The crafting of how this came about is genius. Meanwhile, Kenzie uses her intelligence expertise to go work at the top secret Bletchley Park, home of Turling's code breaking center.
The personal relationships of the well developed characters contains some internal demons that are dealt with through love from friends and relations, especially Kenzie who uses her internal strength and pain to overcome being in a different kind of battle, and how coming to love will assure her independence. Like Sapphire, this is full of action and some steamy romance (no explicit sex).
In this flawlessly crafted novel, I was immersed in the story. She achieves a high level of sophistication that does not insult the reader. She has created endearing characters (that we now know well) and physical descriptions with intelligent literary language.