TEST
I was really pleased when I learned that Frank Tripp, high-flying lawyer to the rich and famous of Gilded Age New York, would be getting his own story in The Rogue of Fifth Avenue the first book in Joanna Shupe’s new Uptown Girls series. Handsome, charming and urbane, Frank made for an attractive, somewhat enigmatic supporting character in the recent Four Hundred series, and I was more than eager to read his story. Frank is a great character who undergoes significant growth throughout the course of this novel, and once the main plotline gets going – a legal thriller which will pit Frank against the society he’s worked so hard to fit into – I was fairly gripped by it. But I wasn’t as drawn to the romance, mostly because I didn’t care for the heroine all that much. Up until now, I’ve enjoyed Ms. Shupe’s female leads; they’ve been spirited and intelligent women who are determined to do more than be simply ornamental. Marion – Mamie – Greene is very much in that mould, but while she displays an admirable social conscience, she’s also naïve and reckless. It’s hard to root for a couple when you believe one of them – in this case the hero – deserves better.
For the third or fourth time in as many months, Frank Tripp finds himself ‘escorting’ the daughter of one of his biggest clients away from a gambling hall. He tries (unsuccessfully) to extract a promise from her never to go there again, but Mamie, not content with the role life has allotted her as a woman destined merely to marry well and spend her life going to parties, isn’t going to give in, especially given the altruistic motives for which she gambles and picks pockets:
She gave the money either to a charity or directly to a tenement family herself. There were too many needy families in the city, and the charities were oftentimes more concerned with temperance and religious conversion than distributing aid. Mamie would rather not see any restrictions placed on relief, which was why she traveled downtown herself a few times a month.
Which makes stealing perfectly okay, apparently. Yes, I understand why she’s doing it, and yes the idea that charities would make religious conversion a condition of giving aid to someone in need is utterly disgusting. But instead of doing something that would benefit even more people than she can help alone, like establishing an aid society or charity of her own, Mamie gambles and steals.
Okay. So, moving on. Mamie and Frank argue about her illicit activities, but there’s also a strong attraction there that pops and fizzes, even though they both know nothing can come of it. Mamie has been promised to the eldest son of her father’s closest friend since birth and the betrothal is about to be finalised, and Frank has no intention of settling down, ever.
Not long after this, we find Mamie visiting one of the poorest and most dangerous areas of the city in order to dispense her ill-gotten largesse. She’s carrying a large sum of money, and is completely alone, but has done this several times and has somehow never been accosted. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that she might be. Making her way into the dingy room occupied by the Porter family, Mamie is dismayed to find the dead body of Mr. Porter lying on the floor surrounded by policemen, who immediately arrest Mrs. Porter for the murder. The police won’t listen to Mamie when she tells them that Mr. Porter beat his wife and that she must have been defending herself – after all, what does a Fifth Avenue princess know of such things? – and tell her she should go home and not bother her pretty little head about it. But Mamie isn’t about to stand by and allow such a terrible injustice to be done, so she summons Frank and asks him to defend Mrs. Porter. Naturally, he’s not keen on the idea and tries to explain that he’s not a criminal lawyer, and how damaging taking on the case could prove for both of them. But Mamie isn’t interested in any of that; an innocent woman’s life is at stake, and that’s far more important that her reputation.
Frank does eventually agree to do what he can, partly because Mamie has asked, but also because he’s not unsympathetic to Mrs. Porter’s plight, having himself been raised in a household where violence was common. Because Frank Tripp, scion of a wealthy Chicago family and Yale graduate is no such thing; he was born Frank Murphy in the New York tenements and he, his mother and siblings were regularly beaten by his drunken father. Frank escaped when offered the chance to go to school and has never looked back; his law degree is genuine although not from Yale, and he’s worked hard to make a name for himself, rising to be the most respected – and, by some, feared – lawyer in New York. He knows all too well the importance of fitting in, how the highest in society stick together and would turn their backs on him were the truth of his origins to become known. He knows that by agreeing to help Mamie – and Mrs. Porter – he’ll be walking a tightrope. But he also knows it’s the right thing to do.
This is the part of the book I enjoyed the most, watching Frank build his case with the help of Pinkerton Detective Otto Rosen (who is Jewish and therefore not allowed to join the police force) while his colleagues express their displeasure and whiffs of police corruption swirl around the case he’s building. I liked the way Frank takes a long look at himself and realises that he doesn’t much like the man he’s become, one as heartless and money-focused as the men he associates with, and how he decides it’s time to change that and put something other than money first.
At the same time, he and Mamie are becoming closer, and finally act on the mutual attraction neither of them can ignore or deny any longer. By this point, I was starting to come around to Mamie a bit; if Frank had finally woken up to the need to make personal changes, so was she benefitting by her association with him – until near the end, she draws a conclusion (about Frank) that made no sense and then proceeds to act in a way that made me want to tell her not to be so stupid. Fortunately for my sanity, a number of other characters pointed out that she was being unfair; it’s just a shame Mamie wasn’t mature enough to work that out for herself.
While I liked the way things ended up for Frank and Mamie, I wasn’t completely convinced by her father’s sudden volte-face towards the end of the book. I can’t deny that it was nice, for once, for a heroine to have a supportive father than a ruthless, dictatorial one, but given his intractability early on, I found it a little hard to swallow.
Ultimately, The Rogue of Fifth Avenue was a bit of a mixed bag. I liked the plot and I loved Frank – I just wish he’d been paired with a heroine with intelligence, wit and an actual personality. The book would have been a DIK had that been the case; as it stands, the B grade was earned by Frank and the legal plot alone.
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Grade: B
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 31/05/19
Publication Date: 05/2019
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Related Reviews
I’ve the audio versions of The Rogue and also Kelly Bowen’s latest. I have to agree with everything Caz said (including comment). In fact, I’m in no rush to finish. Joanna is one of my favorite HR authors out there so I to was a bit disappointed despite the excellent narration.
I admit I don’t like Justine Eyre as a narrator – although given the characters in the Shupe are American, she won’t have to employ her excruciating English accent!
But yes, even my favourite authors just aren’t delivering when it comes to HR. We’ve been having a discussion over on the review for Kennedy Ryan’s Grip about how so many authors right now are focusing on “issues” in their stories rather than on the actual romance – and both the books you mention are guilty of that.
What’s interesting about the Bowen is that a VILLAIN is the most interesting man in the book. We all want heroes/heroines that we can cheer for but, for me, there’s something about a flawless person that just doesn’t call to me. I’m also growing tired of plots where it looks like a lead is doing something unethical but in reality he/she is doing something that makes the world a better place. Again, I’m all for making the world a better place. But shoehorning that into a story just so we can telegraph your characters’ virtue rarely works for me as a reader.
King has been the most interesting man – character – in something like the last four or five of Kelly Bowen’s books! Right from the time he first stepped onto the page in her previous series, I immediately thought “oooh – I need his story!” There were some interesting snippets dropped in A Duke to Remember which haven’t been followed up on yet – and as one of the ladies said in their review, it’s never a great thing when a secondary character (and a villainous one at that!) is more interesting than the hero.
Eh, he’s pretty standard HR Dictatorial Father; nothing better or worse that what you’ll have seen in most HR when the heroine is pressured to marry. My problem was with the total personality transplant he has near the end.
Oof, I had no idea he ends up doing a Magical Turnaround on top of it all.
I’ve read spoilers about the heroine’s father and how he treats her and oof and yikes. I’m still going to give this a try but eesh.
The two leads in this book are written to be such social justice warriors–not a bad thing, mind you–that the story and society they’re placed in doesn’t make sense. I’ve loved many of Shupe’s works but this one felt forced.
Same here. I liked the plot more than the romance (which was the case with the new Kelly Bowen book as well) – I’d totally read a Gilded Age legal thriller starring Frank Tripp!! But this isn’t a legal thriller, it’s supposed to be a romance – and it’s happening more and more that romances are being squeezed out in favour of convoluted plots. And these types of heroines are becoming as prevalent (and as boring) as the continual parade of dukes and earls.
I didn’t have room in the review to say this, but if the heroines of the next books in the series are Mamie’s sisters, I don’t think I’ll be bothering to read them, because – ugh. Didn’t think much of them at all.