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Title: Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Miranda Emmerson

Narrator: Luci Christian Bell

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-28-17

Publisher: HarperAudio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

In this sparkling debut novel imbued with the rich intrigue of Kate Atkinson's literary mysteries and the spirited heart of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, a disparate group of Londoners plunge into a search for a missing American actress.

In the dreary days of November 1965, American actress Iolanthe Green has become the toast of the West End. Charismatic, mysterious, and beautiful, she brings color and a sprinkling of glamour to the scuffed boards of Soho's Galaxy Theatre. But one evening, after another rapturously received performance, Iolanthe walks through the stage door, out into the cold London night, and vanishes.

All of London is riveted as Fleet Street speculates about the missing actress' fate. But as time passes and the case grows colder, the public's interest turns to the unfolding Moors Murders and erupting political scandals. Only Anna Treadway, Iolanthe's dresser at the Galaxy, still cares. A young woman of dogged determination with a few dark secrets of her own, she is determined to solve the mystery of the missing actress.

A disparate band of London émigrés - an Irish policeman, a Turkish coffee-house owner and his rebellious daughter, and a literature-loving Jamaican accountant - joins Anna in her quest, an odyssey that leads them into a netherworld of jazz clubs, backstreet doctors, police brutality, and seaside ghost towns. Each of these unusual sleuths has come to London to escape the past and forge a new future. Yet as they draw closer to uncovering the truth of Iolanthe's disappearance, they may have to face the truth about themselves.

Members Reviews:

Disappointing

I expected to like this book a lot, but I'm afraid I found it rather dull. It tries to make important points about race and diversity in general, but it didn't engage me enough to make them with any force.

The story, set in late 1965 is ostensibly about the disappearance of an actress and the attempts of her dresser (the eponymous Anna Treadway) and the police to locate her. In fact, it is largely about the characters of the story and lengthy back-stories are rather ploddingly revealed of Anna herself, a West Indian man whom she meets, a Cypriot café-owner, a Northern Irish police sergeant and so on and so on. It was all reasonably competently done, but I never became involved enough in the characters to care sufficiently so it just got rather boring, I'm afraid.

Part of the problem is the period setting. I am, sadly, old enough to remember the mid-60s, and this just didn't feel like that time to me. Again, it wasn't badly done as such; there were only a few anachronisms in speech and nothing stood out as being out of place, but I never got any real sense of period either. There are some slightly clunky topical references to try to establish the period, but I just never felt that I was there somehow.

This is not an actively bad book by any means. Miranda Emerson writes decent prose and it's all perfectly competent, but I just couldn't find any real period atmosphere or interest in the characters.