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Not Our Crowd, Darling
346 pages, Hardcover
Published November 1, 2025
1 person want to read
About the author
Michael Craft
44 books56 followersMichael Craft is the author of 20 published novels, four of which have been honored as finalists for Lambda Literary Awards. The first installment of his Dante & Jazz series, "Desert Getaway," was a 2023 MWA Edgars nominee for the Lilian Jackson Braun Award. The second installment, "Desert Deadline," was a Gold Winner of the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award, as was his 2019 mystery, "ChoirMaster." In addition, his prize-winning short fiction has appeared in British as well as American literary journals. Craft grew up in Illinois and spent his middle years in Wisconsin, which inspired the fictitious small-town setting of Dumont, used in many of his earlier books. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles, and now lives in Rancho Mirage, California, near Palm Springs, the setting of his current Dante & Jazz mystery series. In 2017, Michael Craft's professional archives were acquired by the Special Collections Department of the Rivera Library at the University of California, Riverside. Visit the author's website at www.michaelcraft.com.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 5, 2025
Not Our Crowd, Darling
BY Michael Craft
Questover Press, 2025
Five stars
I am always interested in the covers of the books I read; but in this one more than usual. A lone woman stands, her back to us. Tall, her auburn hair cut well above her shoulders, she is clearly not old but somehow not quite young, either. She holds a glass of white wine in her right hand, and wears a chic dark green cocktail dress with stiletto heels. Standing at a classical balustrade high above the surrounding landscape, she looks out across vast plains of wheat. A few gray clouds sit low in the sapphire-blue sky. The sun is behind her, but I’m not sure if it’s rising or setting.
As I read through Michael Craft’s latest novel, I kept flipping back to this striking cover. It feels somehow not entirely real, but like an allegory. It doesn’t exactly reflect any one moment in the book, but evokes so much of what happens in the story, including its central character, Meghan Daley Auric.
Craft’s distinctive writing style—elegant and precise, distinctly old school in a way I find comforting—adds to the atmosphere in many ways. As the book opens, Meghan Auric finds out that her octogenarian husband, Eugene, has died in the hospital where he has lain unconscious for some days. We learn a lot about her in this opening scenario, as her stepson drives her back to what is simply referred to as “the building.” The new widow lives on the top two floors of this building, which was built some forty years earlier by her husband of a quarter-century as a paean to his financial power and entrepreneurial vision.
It's a cracking good story, kept emotionally on point through Meghan’s voice as a (for once) reliable narrator. Suddenly free, she finds herself trapped by circumstances and by her own fears on the highest terrace of the tallest building in the state.
In fact, most of Megan Auric’s life is in this building—her home, the corporate offices of the real-estate empire she’s just inherited, the office of her psychiatrist, and the elite women’s club to which she belongs. It is a whole world in thirty stories, rising like a capitalist citadel above the vast plains of a fictional midwestern state. Meghan is agoraphobic, a condition probably caused by a number of factors, including her husband’s controlling personality and her own guilty secrets.
The narrative lays out a kind of political whodunnit populated by a varied crew of secondary characters—each one interesting and significant, but none as strong as Meghan herself. Oddly enough, the recently-deceased Eugene Auric is also a continuing character, eerily portrayed by his vast collection of custom-made clothing. As Meghan works through her dilemma, she and her assistant Ashley clear out Eugene’s enormous dressing room and closets. The dead man’s presence is always there, embodied in the costly clothing that covered up the man inside.
“Not Our Crowd, Darling” is a departure for the author, as its main character is a straight woman. There are gay and bisexual folk among the players in the drama—as well as a cast of appealing characters whose diversity reflects Meghan’s real view of the world and what matters to her. But it is Meghan (and maybe the sartorial ghost of her husband) who hold center stage. Everybody else is background to Meghan’s personal struggle, and in the end it is her fate that keeps us on the edge of our seats.
BY Michael Craft
Questover Press, 2025
Five stars
I am always interested in the covers of the books I read; but in this one more than usual. A lone woman stands, her back to us. Tall, her auburn hair cut well above her shoulders, she is clearly not old but somehow not quite young, either. She holds a glass of white wine in her right hand, and wears a chic dark green cocktail dress with stiletto heels. Standing at a classical balustrade high above the surrounding landscape, she looks out across vast plains of wheat. A few gray clouds sit low in the sapphire-blue sky. The sun is behind her, but I’m not sure if it’s rising or setting.
As I read through Michael Craft’s latest novel, I kept flipping back to this striking cover. It feels somehow not entirely real, but like an allegory. It doesn’t exactly reflect any one moment in the book, but evokes so much of what happens in the story, including its central character, Meghan Daley Auric.
Craft’s distinctive writing style—elegant and precise, distinctly old school in a way I find comforting—adds to the atmosphere in many ways. As the book opens, Meghan Auric finds out that her octogenarian husband, Eugene, has died in the hospital where he has lain unconscious for some days. We learn a lot about her in this opening scenario, as her stepson drives her back to what is simply referred to as “the building.” The new widow lives on the top two floors of this building, which was built some forty years earlier by her husband of a quarter-century as a paean to his financial power and entrepreneurial vision.
It's a cracking good story, kept emotionally on point through Meghan’s voice as a (for once) reliable narrator. Suddenly free, she finds herself trapped by circumstances and by her own fears on the highest terrace of the tallest building in the state.
In fact, most of Megan Auric’s life is in this building—her home, the corporate offices of the real-estate empire she’s just inherited, the office of her psychiatrist, and the elite women’s club to which she belongs. It is a whole world in thirty stories, rising like a capitalist citadel above the vast plains of a fictional midwestern state. Meghan is agoraphobic, a condition probably caused by a number of factors, including her husband’s controlling personality and her own guilty secrets.
The narrative lays out a kind of political whodunnit populated by a varied crew of secondary characters—each one interesting and significant, but none as strong as Meghan herself. Oddly enough, the recently-deceased Eugene Auric is also a continuing character, eerily portrayed by his vast collection of custom-made clothing. As Meghan works through her dilemma, she and her assistant Ashley clear out Eugene’s enormous dressing room and closets. The dead man’s presence is always there, embodied in the costly clothing that covered up the man inside.
“Not Our Crowd, Darling” is a departure for the author, as its main character is a straight woman. There are gay and bisexual folk among the players in the drama—as well as a cast of appealing characters whose diversity reflects Meghan’s real view of the world and what matters to her. But it is Meghan (and maybe the sartorial ghost of her husband) who hold center stage. Everybody else is background to Meghan’s personal struggle, and in the end it is her fate that keeps us on the edge of our seats.
Displaying 1 of 1 review