Continental Breakfast For One

If this author wrote it, I'll read it: Christine Mangan

It’s the pinnacle of a bookworms experience, when you come across a writer who is able to capture an ambience with such distinct clarity that you feel you have somehow slipped into another dimension. This is especially challenging when attempting to breath to life an atmosphere that is formed by its historical period in time; the power and skill to capture this, in such a way that you can the world building around you, is the reason we book lovers feverishly read so much. And Christine Mangan is just such a talent who is able to do this.

With three fiction books under her belt (the latest released 2023), you can definitely identify in each read her distinct style and that Mangan’s passion is in setting her stories within, and capturing the exact mood of, a post-WW2/mid 20th century world. The tangled, heady, dangerous mess that was a fractured world piecing itself back together, where lives did not stand still but continued to churn, despite the destruction and unsettled nature of each war torn nations’ future. Tiptoeing through the rubble of society, each book’s protagonists are caught not only by the spider’s web of each hectic shellshocked land but they each must overcome their own internal dilemma (which are seemingly tied to the plighted foreign lands they find themselves wrapped within, like Alice down the rabbit hole).

Tangerine is my favourite of the three: it centres around a young woman, Alice Shipley, whose dark long-buried secret follows her from her life in America, all the way to her new life, with her new (if a little shady) husband, John, in 1950’s Morocco. Lucy Mason was Alice’s best friend but a horrific event at their school breaks the two bosom buddies apart, so to find Lucy appearing out of the blue on her doorstep in Tangier, wanting to reconcile, it is not only a shock but the beginning of Alice’s troubles. The two women couldn’t be more different, yet Alice falls quickly back into Lucy’s enthrall as she helps her explore and fall in love with this foreign hot land she’s found so difficult to connect with before Lucy’s mysterious arrival. But all is not what it seems and when John goes missing Alice starts to question everything around her, including her own state of mind.

Whereas, Palace Of The Drowned haunts me still: set in a wintery and gothic-like 1960’s Venice, published novelist Frances Croy has taken up residency in an attempt to escape her previous year and somewhat failure of a book launch. But of course there is more motivating Frances’ self imposed exile than just a tough review… Isolated, her hermit life is rocked by the imposition of Gilly, a young woman who bursts into Frances’ lonely existence and forces her friendship upon Frances. However, there’s something untrustworthy about Gilly and Frances begins to question Gilly’s true motive. With an eerie abandoned palazzo, a mysterious unknown landlord, an obsessive new friend, terrifying floods and folk lore legends swirling in the mix, this book will leave you spooked and questioning your own reality just like Frances.

What I’ve loved about these first two books is that the stories have centred predominately women protagonists, and female relationships. I’ve found Mangan’s take on this psychological thriller genre (set in a very male dominated media era) with female leads, utterly refreshing and unique (no love interests, no cliched ‘girly’ chat, incredibly real and raw with flawed and robust characters)!

And finally, rounding up the three, The Continental Affair is the perfect third tale which treads through the most countries (from Granada to Paris, Belgrade to Istanbul) in the 1960’s and is a thrilling cat and mouse chase between Henri and Louise. Both running from seedy pasts of their own but inexplicably bound by their present and uncertain future. With train rides across the continent and secrets running as entrenched as the tracks crossing the lands, this book, much like the previous ones, doesn't hold back on its climatic end.

All three books have a criminality, murder mystery and psychological thriller aspect and I would guess at Mangan having been enthralled and inspired by the likes of Agatha Christie and Daphne Du Maurier - for me Christine Mangan can easily sit amongst these greats as a modern contemporary. Capturing the time period in a way that is authentic yet feels accessible and easy to read for a modern and younger audience. Plus, a storyline that’ll keep you guessing until the very end.

If I’ve convinced you to give Christine Mangan a read then be sure to sit back in a floppy sunhat and cat-eyed sunglasses, whilst sapphire blue waves crash against your cliff top hotel balcony, as the sunrise gently begins to bake your skin. Take a sip of sweet mint tea in delicate laced crockery and rip open a crisp yet buttery croissant with a selection of creamy and nutty cheese slices, and try not to peek behind your shoulder to the mysterious stranger, face covered by an unusually coloured broadsheet paper, as you pass through each thrilling page of any one of these sizzling period drama reads.