Spreading Wings

Mary Jane Staples spent two-plus decades writing about the Adams family of South London, and by book twenty-three she knows these people and their streets down to the bone — the cockney warmth, the wartime echoes, the gentle humor feel completely earned. The mystery subplot involving a Polish woman and a German visitor gives this installment a bit more intrigue than a pure domestic saga. New readers should start elsewhere in the series, but for anyone already invested in the Adams family, this delivers exactly what they came for.