During the 1930s, it was possible to imagine several countries allying with Germany. In the United States, many Republicans supported the Nazis. In the United Kingdom, there was active support. It is possible if Edward III had not been forced to abdicate, he would have pushed toward an alliance with Germany and in exile, the Duke and Duchess were Nazi sympathizers. The same threat was rising in Australia and Australian politician Eric Campbell wanted to bring fascism to Australia, arguing that democracy had failed.

Campbell went to Germany seeking support and alliances. This is real history, but in Paving the New Road, the fictional Rowland Sinclair and his friends Edna, Milton, and Clyde fly to Germany to foil his plans, replacing a man who drowned while swimming–though Rowlie comes to suspect that he may have been murdered. Their mission is to foil Campbell’s attempts to meet with high-ranking Nazis. They operate less like spies, though, and more like Merry Pranksters.



I like the series characters in these Rowland Sinclair mysteries by Sulari Gentill. I wish the plot was as fully realized as the characters are. The plot was thin gruel and, despite moments of jeopardy, felt more like a lark than a serious effort. They had altogether too much fun fighting the Nazis.

I don’t want to create the impression that Gentill makes light of or diminishes the evils of Nazism. I just think that their success relied on pranks, not so much espionage or investigation. It is also at the beginning of the Reich, where all its evil is not yet manifest, is just beginning to take form. The anti-semitism is present, there are concentration camps, but the Final Solution is not yet in place.

The mystery of his predecessor’s murder is solved by revelation, though suspicions had formed. Also, as in A Decline in Prophets, a photo served as the crucial clue to the solution. I’ve read two books by Gentill and a photo has revealed critical information twice which would be cool if Rowlie were a photographer. I hope the next Rowlie Sinclair mystery is one where he figures things out without seeing a single photo.

And yes, even though I thought this book needs a strong plot, I am looking forward to the next in the series, because I like Rowlie, Edna, Milton, and Clyde and hope to visit with them soon.

I received an e-galley of Paving the New Road from the publisher through NetGalley.

Paving the New Road at Poisoned Pen Press
Sulari Gentill author site

When you read Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher mysteries, do you wish they were twice as long? Do you like your historical fiction light, reflecting 21st century values, and your protagonist to be surrounded by a core of tight-knit, loyal, diverse friends who bicker like kind siblings? If, yes, Paving the New Road is likely to be a highly satisfying read for you, and her Rowland Sinclair mystery series, of which Paving is the fourth entrant, may be your dream series.
In Paving the New Road, it is 1933. Hitler is consolidating power in Germany. Trade unionists, communists, non-traditional artists were being sent to Dachau and other camps for “re-education”. Australia’s fascist politician, Eric Campbell, is gaining power and on an extended visit to Munich. Competing political interests concerned about the potential spread of Naziism to Australia ask Sinclair, a comfortably wealthy, fluent-in-German, artist and brother of yet another politician, to go to Munich as an amateur spy and impede Campbell’s ability to connect with Hitler and his insiders. Sinclair insists that his cadre of friends, including a Communist artist and Jewish poet, come along on his spy mission. The powers that be agree. I didn’t recover from this early plot point, but many historical fiction fans would accept it and move on and they will enjoy the ride immensely, I predict.
Soon, as in – almost immediately – upon the Aussie team’s arrival in Munich, they encounter Eva Braun. She is a prominent character throughout the novel. I found the team’s routine encounters with Braun to be both unnerving and distracting, and since none of them advanced the plot but seemed to suck the oxygen out of chapters where they occurred, I wondered why the author included them, or why they weren’t ultimately edited out, but other readers might find them fascinating. Also encountered along the way are Albert Goring (brother of Hermann), the good Goring, as it were. I understand that the incorporation of famous real characters is typical of the Rowland Sinclair mysteries. One challenge for me was that I wasn’t certain what was factually correct, who was a real historical figure and whether they acted as they acted in this novel, and what was fiction. I would have loved for Paving to include an author’s note addressing the fact vs. fiction issue. With no indications, I had to assume that all was fiction or required independent verification, and spent a fair amount of time searching Internet sources to determine basic historical details.
There’s a mystery here, who killed X, but where the novel really shines is in the period detail, particularly the quoted newspaper articles and other media that start each chapter. For a reader like me who doesn’t have a deep knowledge of German history between the wars, those details gave rise to enlightening side research projects. For a reader with a solid command of the history, this novel might annoy more than satisfy.
Paving the New Road’s greatest strength is Gentill’s light touch. This novel is a thinking historical-fiction lover’s beach read. I’m not the ideal target, and prefer my historical fiction grittier and more authentic, and had difficulty suspending disbelief for the several hundred pages of amateur-spydom to accept the fact that the protagonist lived to show up in books 5 – 8 of the series. I also wasn’t entirely comfortable with applying such a light touch to the SA and its activities. If Paving were my style, though? It showcases a protagonist with a heart of gold, demonstrates its Phrynne-Fisher humor throughout and Gentill manages to introduce, corral and resolve a large cast of characters and bring the story to its conclusion with the expertise of a seasoned and prolific pro.

I first came across Sulari Gentill last year, when I read her excellent book, Crossing The Lines, which I loved for its excellent writing and imaginative ideas. I noted at the time that she is also responsible for a series of historical crime fiction novels set in the 1930s about Rowland Sinclair, the gentleman artist-cum-amateur-detective and so I was pleased to be able to review the latest in this series, published in the UK today.

I really liked the tone of this book. I can see small echoes of Dorothy L. Sayers Wimsey, but the key tone for this series is that the character of Rowland Sinclair is much more akin to E. W. Hornung’s Raffles. So think a 1930’s Australian Raffles without the burglary but with inherited wealth and an excellent family name and with a more bohemian set of friends; including a woman artist who provides his unrequited love interest as well as sharing his sense of danger and the dramatic; a Jewish poet; a communist painter and a one eared greyhound named Lenin.

In previous books this quartet has solved mysteries, but in this, the 4th book in the series, the game is infinitely more serious. For this is the time of the rise of National Socialism in Germany and the world is on edge.

Rowland is called upon by the Australian old guard establishment, and virtually blackmailed into accepting, to travel to Germany and investigate the connections between the Australian New Guard politician, Eric Campbell and the fascist movement. Rowland is advised that a previous infiltrator into Campbell’s team, Peter Bothwell, has died in suspicious circumstances and Rowland is also asked to see what he can find out about this death while he is there.

I found the historical data to be very well researched and I learnt quite a lot about Australia and Eric Campbell’s New Guard and his approach to fascism.

Though these are dark times and this book reflects that well, there is also a lightness and humour to Gentill’s writing that carries the reader along and manages to convey a bohemian joy amongst a savage and brutal political time. It is, I think, the humanity and morality of Rowland Sinclair and his companions that truly sets the compass against which everyone else’s actions are judged.

Gentill also has a real poke at some historical figures. Here is the completely absurd Unity Mitford; the unfortunate Eva Braun and the scheming supplier of uniforms to the Third Reich, Hugo Boss.

Although not quite what I was expecting, Gentill has managed to surprise and delight as well as educate this humble reviewer. Highly recommended.

4.5 star.

"Paving the New Road" is an engrossing historical read. Not so much a "mystery" but more an adventurous ride with the main characters. Travelling from Australia to the turbulent pre-WWII Germany, Rowland Sinclair and his gang are on a clandestine mission trying to save Australia from Nazism. Some espionage adventure and amateur sleuth work to find out the reason of death of a spy added extra juices to "Paving the New Road."

This is my first read of the Rowland Sinclair series. Given "Paving the New Road" is the 4th installment yet I have no problems following the backgrounds of the characters, this could be read as a standalone novel. The extensive and accurate research, the credible and well-crafted characters as well as the exciting plot now make me a new Rowland Sinclair fan.

I obtained my copy from Poisoned Pen Press via Netgallery for my honest review. Another winner series published by Poisoned Pen Press.

Thank you NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this review copy! This is my first time reading a Rowland Sinclair book and I certainly was not disappointed. The story is very well written and really interesting, the different scenarios in which the book takes place (Australia, Germany) are great and the plot is extremely compelling. I read mostly murder mystery books, but I found this spy story, that mixes mystery with historical facts, a must-read. Due to the intricate relation between the plot and real life events of the 1930’s, it’s possible to believe that Rowland Sinclair could’ve really existed and lived his adventures. The only reason I didn’t give this book 5 stars it was because I thought the story started out a bit slow and was confusing sometimes, but midway through the book I couldn’t put it down. I would definitely recommend it to mystery fans.

Australian writer Sulari Gentill gave up the law to write award-winning mystery novels starring gentleman-painter Rowland Sinclair and his merry and unorthodox band of artistic friends. Her first “Rowly” mystery-cum-adventure, A FEW RIGHT THINKING MEN, dealt with right-wing Australian politics. It was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for first Best Book. A DECLINE IN PROPHETS, the second in the series, won the Davitt Award for Best Adult Crime Fiction. The fourth, PAVING THE NEW ROAD, which returns to the theme of Fascist politics, was short-listed for the Davitt Award.

(Since 2001, the Davitt awards have been given by Sisters in Crime Australia for the best mystery fiction by Australian women. They are named for Ellen Davitt, who penned Australia’s first mystery novel in 1865.)

There are four other Sinclair novels, the latest one just published in Australia by Pantera Press. In the United States, Poisoned Pen Press has so far released the first four. One hopes it will publish all of them and continue to use the glorious covers commissioned by Pantera.

The cover for PAVING THE NEW ROAD is bold, but shadowed, in its design and colors. In the foreground, an SS officer’s back is turned to the viewer. Who is this ominous person? The faceless woman standing bright against a darkening background, could be Germany as Adolph Hitler’s Nazi reich takes over and begins to implement its murderous rule. Or is it Australia? Eric Campbell, leader of the Australian New Guard, went to Germany in 1933 to observe, to learn, and, above all, to receive Hitler’s blessing.

The Old Guard, however, has no interest in allowing Campbell to receive that imprimatur. Although hard right themselves and as equally opposed to the now out-of-power Prime Minister Jack Lang as the New Guard, the Old Guard still has their raison d’être—King and Country—and men actually in government. Eric Campbell and the New Guard are seen as a threat to that cause. The Old Guard has placed a man, Peter Bothwell, in Germany to thwart Campbell’s desires for recognition. When Bothwell dies under mysterious circumstances, the Old Guard turns to Rowland Sinclair, a man not at all reliable in their prim, proper, conservative eyes. Although a gentleman and brother to one of their own, Rowland Sinclair is damned eccentric, at best—a painter and a Leftist with a wild bunch of friends (Clyde, another painter; Milton, a poet and a Jew; and Edna, a liberated woman and sculptor) and a ragged-eared dog named Lenin. Sinclair offends the Old Guard’s sensibilities at every level; however, he is capable—and expendable.

When Senator Charles Hardy presents the situation and the mission to go to Germany to prevent Campbell meeting Hitler, Sinclair agrees. He accepts that he’s less valuable than his older brother. What follows from that acceptance has all the air of a lark, a madcap adventure. Rowly’s friends insist on going with him. Under the cover of art collectors on a a purchasing tour in Europe, they are off on their adventures which takes them by aeroplane to Singapore. (They stick it to the Old Guard by buying Surrealists and Dadaist art, to the increasing fury of their paymasters.) They meet W. Somerset Maugham, the British author and spy, who knew Bothwell. His seriousness is one of the first pinpricks that let the air out of the lark balloon. Once they reach Munich, Sinclair has a British control who is as unhelpful as he is disagreeable.

Although taken in by a protective old tailor smitten with Edna, It becomes increasingly clear they had no true idea what they were getting into—union offices demolished, Communists driven underground and hunted, Jews publicly humiliated, the SA (the Brownshirts) everywhere bullying everyone, and the SA’s eventual replacements, the SS, making an ominous appearance. (The Night of Long Knives is about a year in the future.) There is also some genuine wackiness and improvisation to add to the sense of the surreal for Sinclair and his friends—Albert Goering, anything but a Nazi despite his brother; Unity Mitford, a British aristocrat, thorough-going Nazi, and Hitler groupie waiting for her man, and Eva Braun, a shop assistant engaged in an illicit affair with an apparently married man. These cameo appearances of real, historical persons, are usually necessary to advance the plot, but there is a certain, forced quality to the sheer number of them that will grate on some readers.

Although the cameos suggest too much going on in this novel, it is an easy and engaging read full of likable characters and a very strong sense of time and place. The collective naïveté of Sinclair and his friends—thinking the Nazis are clowns—is gradually replaced by a more realistic understanding that the Nazi are dangerous and destructive. (A salutary warning in these modern times.) If the improvisations and play-acting and failure to the live the legends completely strike a reader as amateurish, one needs to remember that espionage was not the sophisticated, technological, and professionalized undertaking it is today. It is the British agents who have the most experience and who undertake the training of the innocent, straight-forward Australians. (The British likewise had to teach the Americans, for good and ill, as well.) Furthermore, World War II and the following Cold War had much more to do with that transition.

That said, the reader will be forgiven for thinking this more a spy yarn than a murder mystery. There is a murder investigation here, but it feels distinctly like an afterthought. Stopping Campbell comes first, and, once that is accomplished, then Sinclair and his friends need to get out of Germany. The reader will suspect the murderer long before Sinclair and friends do though it is an unpleasant revelation. The reasons for the murder are as sordid as ever, even if the clues supporting the deductions are sparse. Worse, the confrontation with the murderer, though a tight spot for Rowly, has a rather anti-climactic, unsatisfying feel to it.

These sizable quibbles aside, PAVING THE NEW ROAD (the very title of Eric Campbell’s real, Fascist manifesto), is worth the reader’s time, providing an enjoyable interlude while gently suggesting real danger. One does not need to read the previous Rowland Sinclair novels; one can jump right in and enjoy this one on its own merits, as I did. Chances are excellent that one will wish to read the others. The real attraction is Rowland Sinclair, a gentleman one wishes to meet and go adventuring with again and again.

http://www.kgwhitehurst.com/reviews_historical_mysterie/paving-the-new-road-by.html

3.5 stars

This latest installment in the Rowland Sinclair mystery series takes place mostly in Nazi Germany. Rowly and his Bohemian artist friends are on a secret mission having to do with actual Australian historical figure Eric Campbell, an avowed Fascist.

I still enjoy the adventures of this troupe, but this one felt a bit more superficial in character development and a little more over the top in plot as the author worked in Eva Braun, Unity Mitford and some of Hitler's closest henchmen.

Rowly's undisguised hopeless romantic yearning for his housemate Edna and her softly unfocused floating through life fending off male attention is becoming slightly annoying. Sinclair is an interesting character, particularly his interactions with his brother who is his polar opposite in every way.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in return for my honest review.

"Paving the New Road" is a historical suspense novel set in the spring of 1933 in Australia and Germany. This is the fourth book in the series. You don't need to read the previous books to understand this one, but this story did spoil some suspenseful events in the previous stories.

As Hitler rises in power in Germany, Australia has its own threat in Eric Campbell. He's in Germany trying to get support and ideas from the Nazis, and one of the Australian spies sent to disrupt Campbell's plans turns up dead. Rowly agrees to take the spy's place, and his quirky friends insist on going with him. But first they have to survive the airplane trip to get there! Once there, they work together to disrupt Campbell's plans, look into the suspicious death, pretend to be art dealers buying modern art, and run into famous people. The suspense came from the danger of torture and death from the Nazis (and others), but there was also a "we might as well have fun while we do it" humor to it all.

There was some bad language (if you're American) to a fair amount of bad language (if you count British/Australia bad words). There were no sex scenes. Overall, I'd recommend this interesting and exciting novel.

Four Australians go to 1933 Germany to prevent a Fascist from Australia from getting assistance from Hitler. They find out what it is like in early Nazi Germany. The anti-semitism and bully tactics of the SA and SS take them by surprise. Their anti-fascist leanings are reinforced and they are more than ever convinced that Australia should not take the Fascist route.

I must admit to knowing little or nothing about Australian politics, but I know a good thriller when I read one. Rowland Sinclair and his group of friends have been sent into the very heart of Nazi Germany to put a stop to an Australian politician's nascent friendship with Adolf Hitler. While there, Rowland want to discover who murdered the last guy sent on the same errand. Along the way he meets lots of historical figures caught up in the same pre-war frenzy. Famous names aside, the real thrill was in seeing whether they would all escape Germany alive. A real page-turner.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. My opinions, however, remain my own.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2152432730

I would like to thank Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for an advance copy of Paving the New Road, the fourth novel in the Rowland Sinclair series of historical novels.

1933 Melbourne, Rowlie is approached by Senator Charles Hardy and asked to do his country a favour. Eric Campbell, fascist and leader of the New Guard, is touring Europe in an effort to drum up support for his Australian movement and anxious to stop him in his tracks the Old Guard had sent a man to foil his intentions but he has died in mysterious circumstances so they want Rowlie to replace him. Rowlie and his friends accept the challenge and fly to Germany to do what they can.

I thoroughly enjoyed Paving the New Road. It is filled with historical detail and real people from the time as well as having an exciting, well thought out plot. It is never pleasant reading about the Nazis and their thuggery, never mind their ideology, but placing the novel in 1933 Ms Gentill is able to avoid many of the later excesses and concentrate mostly on the SA and their casual violence, of whom the friends fall victim and the growing anti-semitism. She manages to evoke the fear they instil in ordinary citizens and the stupidity of the average recruit well but it is difficult reading it not to think of what happened to them later. In this case I'm not sure if knowing about Nazism helps or hinders the read.

Given the serious background to the novel the plot seems slightly frivolous with Rowlie and his cohorts outwitting the might of National Socialism on several occasions through clever thinking. It is, however, a fun read and I loved every minute of their escapades. They might be amateurs but they can run a good caper.

Paving the New Road is a good read which I have no hesitation in recommending.

Obviously the plot itself is slightly