.com For Jonathon Blair, a mining engineer and explorer, the color and rigors of the Dark Continent are far more suitable than the foggy drizzle of his home in Wigan, Lancashire. When he returns from Africa's Gold Coast in 1872, he finds England utterly depressing and turns to drink to ease his melancholy. His patron, a Bishop and mine owner, agrees to send him back if he can clear up the mysterious disappearance of a local curate engaged to marry his daughter. As he sleuths around the cultured homes of Wigan, through ill-cobbled alleys and into the depths of the mines, he meets the alluring Rose Malyneaux. Used to relying on himself, Blair finds that Rose's instincts provide more answers than he could have hoped for.From Publishers WeeklyThough Arkady Renko is absent from Smith's latest novel, the author of Red Square (1992), etc., has created instead a new protagonist, Jonathan Blair, a 19th-century man in the best muscular detective tradition. Until 1872, Blair was an avid explorer of Africa's Gold Coast, but now he has been exiled by his employer, Bishop Hannay, to the Lancashire mining town of Wigan. Blair's ostensible mission is to find John Rowland, the missing curate who was engaged to Hannay's daughter, but he quickly learns that he'll need all his bush survival skills just to stay alive in Wigan, where no one seems to want the curate found. Much of Blair's gritty charm lies in his hatred of all things English, just as he is hated in turn by the aristocratic Hannays, their peer relations, the Rowlands-and the miners. On the first day of his investigation, Blair steps on nearly every toe in a very touchy town, including those of Bill Jaxon, a miner skilled at a blood sport in which naked men fight with brass-studded clogs. Blair ends up on the wrong end of a clog more than once when he intuits that Jaxon's "pit girl" (a woman who sorts coal) may have lured the curate to his doom. Smith molds a spirited, sexy mystery and fires it with his characteristic love of atmosphere. But his real treat for readers is Blair, whose spicy observations imbue even this gray landscape with prismatic color, and whose verbal sparring matches with the Hannays and Rowlands are equal to Waugh in their hilarious, scathing send-up of English upper-class incivility. Smith's extravagant talent runs the spectrum here from sparkling dialogue and tantalizing mystery to grim, graphic depictions of mining life that sear both the conscience and the imagination. Simultaneous Random House Audio and large-print edition; author tour. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.From Library JournalSet in the Lancashire coal country, Smith's tale of undying love and mortal danger features a down-on-his-luck mining engineer who is homesick for his adopted Africa. He must complete an impossible task before his employer will stake him to another expedition there. The task-to unravel the mystery of a missing minister in the coal company's town-exposes the engineer to nightmarish dangers above and below ground but also carries him into the intoxicating orbit of the title's Rose. The portrayals are so convincing and the texture so palpable that readers will anxiously check the resident canary to make sure that lethal gas is not seeping into the room. In his ninth novel, Smith (perhaps best known for Gorky Park) delves into the past, but the heightened excitement and naked emotions will make readers glad they can take refuge in the present when the book is done. Very likely to be needed in all collections of contemporary fiction.--Barbara Conaty, Library of CongressCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. is there an app that reads books out loud Rose
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Outstanding versimilitudeBy Kindle CustomerAs in his novels about the Russian detective Arkady Renko, Smith gives a description of landscape, historical period, and character that made me feel immersed in the 19th century Welsh coal mining town he calls Wigan. His hero is a mining engineer who is conscripted (blackmailed actually) into tracking down an other-wordly curate who has disappeared. He discovers that the curate has secrets and erotic obsessions that may be connected to his disappearance and to a mine explosion on the day he disappeared. An incredible adventure story and a very engaging mystery right up to its end.3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Better than "Gorky Park" or "Havana Bay"By JGP821"Rose" is a departure from Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko novels. Set in Victorian England, the book's characters include Blair, a malarial American mining engineer who wants only to return to the Gold Coast of Africa, an Anglican bishop who rules the coal-mining town of Wigan like a duke, the bishop's daughter, Charlotte, who is a prim virago, the bishop's nephew, who may be insane and is certainly dangerous, and Rose, one of the "pit girls" who sort coal after it is brought up from the mine.The bishop hires Blair to find Charlotte's missing fianc. At first this seems straightforward, but the more Blair digs into the matter the more lies, evasions, and threats he encounters. Witnesses disappear and are found dead. By accident, or by homicide? And then there's Blair's romantic involvement with Rose, which brings him into violent conflict with Rose's sweetheart, a hulking miner who is the local champion at "purring" a form of kicking fight which uses shoes studded with brass nails.The best part of the book is a twist which turns everything upside down and leaves the reader gasping in admiration at the author's skill in sleight of hand. The clues are all obvious and in the open, but nevertheless completely invisible until the twist slaps you in the face.If you enjoy the Renko novels, read "Rose." It's a historical novel, a mystery, and a unique love story, written with all the skill and ability we expect from Smith, set in Victorian England instead of modern Moscow.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. RoseBy CpheQuite a departure from the "Arkady Renko" series by the author. This historical mystery takes place in the mining town of Wigan in England. The main character Jonathon Blair is a disgraced Mining Engineer. Blair is asked by his benefactor Bishop Hannay to investigate the disappearance of his future son in law.The descriptions of mining in the late 1800's and the mining community were vivid and riveting reading. The conditions underground and the men and women whose daily grind was the delivery of coal for the mine owners was a grim and gritty existence. The mystery component of the novel was almost secondary to the mines and the working conditions. That's not to say that it wasn't a solid historical mystery, there were quite a few twists and turns to keep you guessing to the end.Thoroughly enjoyed the novel by a writer whose style and delivery I enjoy.