A Testament of Character (Rowland Sinclair #10) by Sulari Gentill

This, the 10th in the Rowland Sinclair series of crime novels, is, alas, the final in the series for the time being (the author’s website indicates she wants to continue the series into the WWII era which gives we readers a great deal of hope for the future).

Rowly Sinclair and his three stalwart friends Milton, Clyde and Edna, continue their journey outside Australia, the beginning of which was described in the prior novel All the Tears In China. It is 1935 and Rowly receives a telegram, whilst in Singapore, from Boston USA requesting his immediate presence as executor of his old Oxford friend’s will. Readers of the series will recall the flamboyant Daniel Cartright who lived extravagantly in New York, enjoying the best that life had to offer and was also a self-portrait painter. Rowly and his friends arrive in Boston after a two week aircraft flight (this was 1935 after all) and are immediately caught up in the greater Cartright family squabble over the most dirty of issues, inherited money.

This is an enthralling crime novel, seamlessly introducing real life personages such as F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, Archibald Leach, Errol Flynn and the infamous Irish Gustin Gang into the plot. The hallmarks of the author’s deft touch continue here, with multiple background characters, plot twists and turns and a completely unexpected ending.

This reader earnestly awaits the further adventures of the series in the future (the nearer, the better).

Reviewed by Belinda Coombs
Murder and Crime Reading Group