Louise Hare in conversation with Clare Empson

Miss Aldridge Regrets

Louise Hare is a London-based writer. Her debut novel, ‘This Lovely City’, was featured on the BBC2 book club show, Between the Covers, and has received multiple accolades from many quarters, securing Louise’s place as an author to watch. Her second novel is a searching examination of race, class and gender in interwar Europe – a brilliantly plotted and compulsively readable whodunit set aboard the Queen Mary.

It’s London, 1936, and Lena Aldridge is wondering if life has passed her by. The dazzling theatre career she’d hoped for hasn’t worked out. Instead, she’s stuck singing in a sticky-floored basement club in Soho and her married lover has just left her. She has nothing to look forward to until a stranger offers her the chance of a lifetime: a starring role on Broadway and a first-class ticket on the Queen Mary bound for New York.

After a murder at the club, the timing couldn’t be better and Lena jumps at the chance to escape England. Until death follows her onto the ship and she realises that her greatest performance has already begun.