fullybooked2017

We are in the Essex marshes in the chilly spring of 1916. In the early autumn of the previous year, a British army assault on German lines near the coal mining village of Loos had gone disastrously wrong. Over 20,000 men dead and twice as many again wounded. One such is Frank Champion. Badly wounded in the leg, and with a savagely scarred face, he is no longer considered an asset to the army, and now he ekes out a living on the banks of the River Colne where, based on his boat Nancy, he scavenges duck, oysters and  fish to sell to local pubs.

Before the war, Champion had been in the colonial service in Africa and he is astonished when a former colleague, Irishman Nathanial Kennedy, now with three Captain’s pips on his shoulders, seeks him out in Wivenhoe. It seems that back in Nairobi Champion had successfully investigated a serious criminal matter, and earned the reputation of being a shrewd investigator.

Kennedy is stationed in Béthune, a historic town that is a key railway junction and, just as crucially, sufficiently far away from German artillery positions to have escaped, thus far, with minimal damage. A young prostitute called Marie-Louise Toulon has been found in a town park, her throat cut. There are two brothels in the town, nicknamed The Blue Light and The Red Light. The former is the sole preserve of officers, while the latter is frequented by privates and NCOs (Non Commissioned Officers such as corporals and sergeants).

Kennedy’s problem is that that Marie-Louise was one of the star turns at The Blue Light, and he urgently needs Champion to do two things; first, identify the killer but second – and even more importantly – act with total discretion. Should a senior officer be unmasked as the culprit, the effect on army morale could be disastrous. The High Command is in a very fragile state, as 1915 had proved to be an annus horribilis for British military planning and leadership. In short order, a promising attack at Neuve Chapelle in March had ended in failure. The second Battle of Ypres in April saw British, Commonwealth and French troops routed by the first use of poison gas, the Battle of Aubers Ridge in May had been a costly defeat,  Loos had been an unmitigated disaster, while the final indignity in December was that British, French and Commonwealth forces had been  driven off the Gallipoli peninsula by its Turkish defenders. The last thing Field Marshall Douglas Haig (appointed Commander in Chief in December 1915} needs is a scandal involving one his senior officers.

I have a passionate interest in all things to do with The Great War. We WWI buffs are a pedantic and nerdy bunch, full of arcane knowledge about those five dreadful years and the events that preceded them, and the Europe that lay shattered for many years after. Back in the day, I walked miles in the tracks of the soldiers who fought on the Western Front, and also those who fought in the French areas on the Aisne, Champagne region, and the infernal carnage of Verdun. I have to say that as well as writing a gripping crime thriller, Alec Marsh has done his military homework superbly. Does this matter? Yes, I rather think it does. Here’s an example from the silver screen. Much of the setting of Sam Mendes’ film 1917 was reasonably authentic, except the part where the William Schofield character was battling for his life in the raging torrent of a river, running between towering cliffs. The story was set in the Arras area, and anyone who has ever been there knows that the closest you will come to such turbulent rivers are slow and turbid canals, and the very placid River Scarpe. And rugged cliffs are conspicuous by their absence.

Captain Kennedy lives to regret his decision to take Champion’s discretion as a given. In no time at all, another girl from The Blue Light is killed, a girl from the rival establishment goes missing, the wife of a local butcher is also found hacked to death and, in a nearby room, a certain Captain Bradbury is found, having, apparently, blown his brains out with his own Mark VI Webley service revolver. His hastily penned suicide note seems to suggest, to Kennedy at least, that Champion has flushed out the killer.

One of many clever things Alec Marsh does is to make Champion a free agent. He can, therefore, go anywhere and question anyone, including Béthune’s distinctly shifty Mayor, the boss of the Town’s police, and a very senior French General who seems to have a sinister link to the killings. In this last thread, Alec Marsh takes us (courtesy of Champion, his aide Private Greenlaw and a magnificent Crossley staff car) on a long journey to Verdun where, since February, the ‘mincing machine’ has been working overtime with both France and Germany fighting what many believe to be the most brutal encounter of WWI.

Of course, Champion gets his men and, yes, there is more than one villain in this particular piece. Alec Marsh’s novel fascinated me, for reasons I have already stated. But will Cut and Run work for people who don’t know a Lee Enfield from a Gewehr 98? In my honest opinion it will. It ticks all the CriFi boxes, including sense of time and place, a tight plot, credible dialogue and authentic main characters. Cut and Run is published by Sharpe Books and is available now.