fullybooked2017

THE BOOKSELLER . . . Between the covers

Detective Sergeant George Cross is unique among fictional British coppers in that he is autistic. This apparent disability gives him singular powers when investigating crimes. While totally unaware of social nuances, his analytical mind stores and organises information in a manner denied to more ‘normal’ colleagues within the Bristol police force. When questioning suspects or witness his completely literal mindset can be disconcerting to both guilty and innocent alike. Regular visitors to the site may remember that I reviewed two earlier novels in the series The Monk (2023) and The Teacher (2024) but, for new readers, this is the background. Cross is in his forties, balding, of medium height and, in appearance no-one’s idea of a policeman, fictional or otherwise. He lives alone in his flat, cycles to work, and likes to play the organ in a nearby Roman Catholic Church, where he is friends with the priest. George’s elderly father lives nearby, but his mother left the family home when George was five. At the time he was unaware that she left because Raymond Cross was homosexual. Now, Christine, has slowly reintroduced herself into the family group and George, reluctantly, has come to accept her presence.

This case begins when an elderly bookseller, Torquil Squire returns to his flat above the shop after a day out at an antiquarian book sale at Sothebys. He is horrified to find his son Ed, who is the day-to-day manager of the shop, dead on the floor, stabbed in the chest. George and his fellow DS Josie Ottey head up the investigation which is nominally led by their ineffectual boss DCI Ben Carson.P.The world of rare and ancient books does not immediately suggest itself to George as one where violent death is a common occurrence, but he soon learns that despite the artefacts being valued in mere millions rather than the billions involved in, say, corporate fraud, there are still jealousies, bitter rivalries and long running feuds. One such is the long running dispute between Ed Squire and a prestigious London firm Carnegies, who Ed believed were instrumental in creating a dealership ring, whereby prominent sellers formed a cartel to buy up all available first editions of important novels, thus being able to control – and inflate – prices to their mutual advantage.

Then there is the mysterious Russian oligarch, an avid collector of books and manuscripts, who paid Ed a sizeable commission to buy a set of fifteenth century letters written by Christopher Columbus, only for the oligarch to discover that the letters had, in fact, been stolen from an American museum. Could Oleg Dimitriev have resorted to Putinesque methods following the debacle?

Running parallel to the murder investigation is a crisis in George’s own life. Raymond discovers that he has lung cancer, but it operable. During the operation, however, he suffers a stroke. When he is well enough to return home he faces a long and difficult period of recuperation and therapy for which George is ready and able to organise. More of a problem for him, however, is the challenge to his limited emotional capacity to deal with the conventionally expected responses. Even before his father’s illness, George has been disconcerted to learn that Josie Ottey has been promoted to Detective Inspector, and he finds it difficult to adjust to what he perceives as a dramatic change in their relationship.

The killer of Ed Squire is, of course, identified and brought to justice, but not before we have been led down many a garden path by Tim Sullivan. The Bookseller is thoughtful and entertaining, with enough darker moments to lift it above the run-of-the-mill procedural. Published by Head of Zeus, it is available now.

September 12, 2025 0

THE WINTER WARRIORS . . . Between the covers

If the short but bloody war between Finland and Russia which took place in the winter of 1939/40 is largely forgotten today, it is simply because of the enormity of events which followed it. This is the story of that war, and of one man in particular – Simo Häyhä, who came to be known by the Russians as the White Death. A farmer and forester by trade, he was already renowned as a gifted marksman when the Russian invasion began, and was a reservist member of the Finnish Civic Guard. The narrative follows Simo and a small group of his childhood friends from the beginning of the war to Simo’s near-fatal wounding, just seven days before the end of hostilities on 13th March 1940.

This is, ostensibly, a novel, but the events depicted are as close to the facts as anything found in a dry history. Author Olivier Norek is a successful crime writer, but here, his descriptions of battle are as real and uncomfortably vivid as anything I have ever read. Most of the characters are from real life, and they include Russian foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and Finnish Commander in Chief Carl Gustav Mannerheim. One individual who stands out is Arne Juutilainen, one of the Finnish combat commanders. Known to his men as ‘The Terror’, he was a seldom-sober veteran of the French Foreign Legion, suicidally courageous with an almost insane lust for killing.

With skill and compassion, Norek describes Simo’s descent into a kind of moral numbness that enables him to do his job:

“For Simo, the first kill of the day was always painful. The second anaesthetised whatever feelings f pity he still had, and by the third he he was nothing more than a machine, mechanically adjusting each movement to increase his speed and precision. So as not to go mad, he forget they were men, forgot how many fathers and brothers he was sending six feet under the snow, even if they were Russian invaders.”

We are reminded of the paucity of Finnish resources: the uniforms of the dead, provided they are not too badly damaged, are laundered, patched and sent to clothe new recruits; lines of solemn faced women, many of them already widows, queue to hand in their gold wedding rings to be sold for currency on the international market.

While the book centres on the bravery and almost supernatural skills of Simo Hayha, one other character looms over the narrative like a spectre. In my opinion, Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili – Stalin – was unequalled in the twentieth century for his grotesque cruelty, inhuman lack of compassion, overwhelming ambition and demonic ability to embrace evil. His paranoia in the 1930s had led to thousands of senior military commanders to be shot, thus leaving the Russian army bereft of experienced generals, with those that survived policed at every turn by political commissars who reported back to Stalin only what they thought he wanted to hear. Thus the Russian tactics for most of the war were chaotic and myopic, and it was only better organisation and more intelligent – if brutal – use of firepower in the closing weeks of the war that forced the Finns to surrender.

If the grim carnage of war can be poetry, then Norek has written it:

“The dead from previous weeks were half-hidden in the earth. Only vestiges remained: their still visible helmets, occasionally part of their backs. Their arms were like aerial roots, as if growing out of the ground itself, ready to rise, get to their feet and haunt all those who had decided on this war, entirely forgotten by the world almost a century later.

Their blood would saturate the ground, their flesh would nourish the trees, mingle with the sap. They would be in every new leaf, every new bud.

There were more than a million of them, and when, tomorrow and beyond tomorrow, the wind blew through the forests of Finland, it would also carry their voices.”

A cover blurb for this book says, simply, “a masterpiece”. For once, this is not hyperbole. The book takes its place in the pantheon of novels of war, alongside such as Alexander Baron’s From the City, From the Plough, John Harris’s Covenant With Death, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Norman Mailer’s The Naked and The Dead. Translated from the French by Nick Caistor, it is published by Open Borders Press and is available now.

September 11, 2025 1

APPOINTMENT IN PARIS . . . Between the covers

London, spring 1940. The ailing Neville Chamberlain is still Prime Minister, Hitler has rampaged through Poland and Czechoslovakia, and Winston Churchill is First Lord of The Admiralty, licking his wounds after his attempt to thwart the Nazi occupation of Norway.

Former intelligence agent Stella Fry is working in a quiet backwater of the war effort, a documentary film unit. She is headhunted by MI5 after a German prisoner of war named Fassbinder is murdered in a high security interrogation unit. Why Stella? The main suspect in the killing is Robert Handel, Stella’s erstwhile colleague at Oxford. Also working “off the books” for MI5 is a rumpled but effective former colleague of Stella’s, Harry Fox, now scratching a living as a private investigator. He and Stella’s earlier encounter can be found in Midnight in Vienna (2024).

The powers that be believe that Handel has fled to Paris, where his sister runs a bookshop. Stella is despatched to find him, and this allows Jane Thynne to pen a few evocative pages describing the French capital on the brink of a national disaster, but still behaving with its customary panache and insouciance. After a brief meeting with a certain Noel Coward, secretly working for British Intelligence, Stella, rather than finding Handel, is found by him, as he is now deeply embedded with the fledgling French resistance movement, already organising itself for the inevitable arrival of the Nazis. He denies any responsibility for Fassbinder’s murder and, after a passionate evening in Handel’s room, the couple awake to the news that Hitler has invaded Belgium, Luxemburg and Holland. Handel bundles Stella onto a crowded train bound for the Channel, and amid crowds of terrified refugees, she eventually arrives in Dover.

Meanwhile, Harry Fox has become entangled with a classic femme fatale who calls herself Lisselotte Edelman. It could be said that Harry is not a perfect gentleman for, while Lisselotte is gently snoring in his bed after a passionate encounter, he investigates her handbag, where, beneath the usual feminine fripperies, he finds a handgun, an Enfield No.3 MK1 .38 calibre, the same gun that shot Harry is also a veteran of The Great War, and sometimes his dreams are shot through with the horrors that his eighteen-year-old self endured at Mametz Wood.

I must declare an interest here. I am a sucker for novels set during WW2 and, all the more so if they are grounded in London. I ‘missed’ the war by a considerable distance, being born in 1947, but my childhood was shot through with reminders. I recall playing with old ration books and remember my father being laid low with occasional bouts of the malaria he had contracted in North Africa. In my teens I admired the old soldiers who had survived the Great War. They are all long since gone, as are all but a few of the men of my father’s generation. Jane Thynne captures the uncertain times of the early 1940s with uncanny accuracy, and she can stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow contemporary writers like John Lawton who have brought those troubled times so vividly to life.

Jane Thynne weaves a complex web of assumed identities, the dark arts of espionage and complex international politics, in particular the ambiguous relationship between Britain and the United States. She still finds space for some Brief Encounter-style romance, and some delightful cultural references, my favourite being the reference to a quiet Cotswold railway station (think a poet who died at Arras in 1917) Appointment in Paris is a delightful and complex journey into a fascinating period of our history. It was published by Quercus on 4th September.

September 8, 2025 0

THE WHITE COMPANY . . . Classics revisited

It is well known that Arthur Conan Doyle came to resent the immense commercial success of his greatest creation, Sherlock Holmes. Despite the wealth and fame he enjoyed as a result of those short stories and novellas, Conan Doyle was dissatisfied. Other full length novels were written. Micah Clarke (1889) was set in the Monmouth rebellion, while the Brigadier Gerard stories, boastful tales of a veteran of Napoleon’s army, began in 1894. The White Company (1891) was something quite different.The historical background to this novel is the 1367 campaign led by Edward (The Black Prince) to restore Peter (Pedro) as King of Spain.

The political allegiances are complex, and beyond the scope of this review. Suffice to say, the Prince’s forces in France are boosted by a body of men at arms and archers, led by Sir Nigel Loring, a Hampshire Knight, and his trusted retainers.Chief amongst these is Alleyn, a minor Saxon noble who has been educated by the monks of Beaulieu Abbey, and Samkin Aylward, a veteran archer. We follow these men across The Channel, and down through the battle scarred wastelands of South West France. I have no knowledge that Doyle ever visited the area for research purposes, but this is one of many magnificent descriptions of the terrain:

“The whole vast plane of Gascony and of Languedoc is an arid and profitless expanse in winter, save where the swift flowing Adour and her snow-fed tributaries, the Louts, the Oloron and the Pau run down to the sea of Biscay. South of the Adour, the jagged line of mountains which fringe the skyline send out long granite claws running down into the lowlands and dividing them into gavs or stretches of valley. Hillocks grow into hills and hills into mountains, each range overlying its neighbor until they soar up in a giant chain which raises its spotless and untrodden peaks, white and dazzling against the pale blue wintry sky.”

The biggest challenge facing writers of novels set in medieval times is dialogue and language. The earliest writer to come to terms with this was Sir Walter Scott. Many years later, Doyle gave us his version. In the 1960s Edith Pargetter (Ellis Peters) and Umberto Eco had their four penn’orth and, more recently, Sarah Hawkswood and Diane Calton Smith have given us their versions. The bottom line is that none of these writers have the faintest idea how people spoke to each other back then. All they can do is create a style and stick to it. The dialogue in this novel is grandiose and florid, full of improbable imprecations such as, “By the Holy Rood,” and “By my ten finger bones,”

After a cataclysmic battle between the outnumbered White Company and thousands of Spanish knights, the book ends improbably, but with a sense of glory and noble sacrifice. Doyle went on to work with distinction as a Medic in The Boer War and his son, Kingsley, served throughout The Great War, only to die of influenza in 1918. The final words of this novel confirm that Doyle had a deep sense of connection with the idea of English heroism and sense of duty. Perhaps the final words of this novel have a sense of prophecy about them:

“So they lived these men in their own lusty, cheery fashion, rude and rough, but honest, kindly and true. Let us thank God if we have outgrown their vices. Let us pray to God that we may ever hold their virtues. The sky may darken and the clouds may gather. And again, the day may come when Britain may have sore need of her children on whatever shore of the sea they be found. Shall they not muster at her call?”

Some modern readers will certainly find the book overly romantic, and wonder at the seeming implausibility of the chivalric code of honour. Historically, the narrative owes much to the chronicles and poems of Jean Froissart, whose account of the times continued to inspire creative artists. Indeed, Elgar’s Froissart Overture was composed just a year before The White Company was published. For me, rereading the book after many, many years was a sheer joy, and serves as a reminder of just how good a writer Doyle was.

August 27, 2025 0

THE DEVIL’S SMILE . . . Between the covers

This is the sequel to The Lollipop Man (read my review from earlier this year) and we are reunited with reluctant student investigator Adrian Brown, and his friend Sheila Hargreaves, a TV journalist and co-presenter of Yorkshire Crimetime, a regional TV show featuring local criminal activity.. Adrian’s social life is not exactly glittering, and consists largely of optimistic – but largely disappointing – trips to gay pubs and clubs in mid 1990s Leeds. A recent Yorkshire Crimetime featured the murder of a young gay man, a waiter at a local Italian bistro.

Thanks to a timely intervention by his housemate, Adrian has survived the consequences of one drunken pick-up too many, in the shape of an encounter with a predator called Edmund. Meanwhile, Sheila’s co-presenter Tony Tranter has gone missing. He is a narcissistic drunk, and has a reputation for unreliability, but this time his absence seems more serious. Then, Tranter’s car is found abandoned under Leeds railway station, bearing signs of a violent struggle. Not long after, his body is found nearby, concealed beside one of the vast Dark Arches above which is the station, and below which the captive River Aire roars and foams. Sheila, fed information by her journalist friend Jeanette Dinsdale, know knows that a scandal was about to break. Tranter was a member of an exclusive and secretive club, where underage girls and boys were provided to provide ‘entertainment’.

The initial, and benevolent, reaction of the TV people is that Tony Tranter was killed in revenge for some criminal who had been brought down as a result of Yorkshire Crimetime’s actions. Sheila suspects differently, but goes along with the initial impetus to record a TV special which will enlist the help of tens of thousands of viewers to bring Tranter’s killer to justice. Adrian, meanwhile, has finally reported his assault to the largely uninterested West Yorkshire Police, concerned

I have tagged this novel as #historicalcrimefiction, but it just doesn’t seem that long ago. I was never an addicted viewer, but Crimewatch was, for a few years a major BBC show. Main presenter, the earnest and clean-cut Nick Ross, with his ‘glamorous assistant’ Sue Cook, purported to solve crimes by presenting re-enactions of crime scenes, and inviting viewers to telephone in with information. It seems bizarre that it lasted as long as it did, and is haunted by the supreme irony that the murder of one of its later presenters, Suzanne Dando, remains one of the great unsolved crimes in British history. Sheila Hargreaves’s show is something similar, and has a huge audience.

It is worth taking a moment to look at Leeds as a crime novel setting. In terms of output, the stories of Chris Nickson take some beating, and he has set his novels in different historical periods, my favourites being the Tom Harper books which follow the Leeds copper from the late Victorian era through to the end of The Great War. In terms of grim and grimy readabiity, the GrandDaddy has to be David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet, set from 1974 to 1983, which pretty much encompassed the era of ‘The Yorkshire Ripper’. My review of two of those books is here.

Back to this novel. Daniel Sellers has Sheila, Adrian, the police (and us) following a series of imaginatively crafted red herrings, until a thrilling finale reveals the truth. This enterprising and addictive thriller will be published by Allison & Busby on 21st August.

August 17, 2025 0

THE PRINCIPAL DAY . . . Between the covers

Fenland is, today, an area of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk that was once a primeval swamp, where people survived on tiny islands just high enough above the brackish water to provide shelter and sustenance. Now, the name survives as a District Council, but the waters have long since been drained and tamed. Three novelists have found the flatlands suitable for detective stories. The greatest remains Dorothy L Sayers, albeit through one book only. The Nine Tailors (1934) is a fiendishly complex murder mystery set after The Great War, although the thunderous power of barely restrained rivers is never far away. Jim Kelly’s Philip Dryden books tap in to a more sinister side of the landscape, typified by endless skies, church towers and unbroken horizons. He tells us of isolated communities, ancient jealousies and the heavy hand of history. I nominate Diane Calton Smith to complete the triumvirate. Her novels, set in Wisbech from the time of King John up to the 15th century, portray a landscape that changes little, but a social structure that has evolved.

The Principal Day, her latest,finds us in the town in 1423, with a rather splendid late medieval church (little changed today) but in a world that has changed much since the earlier novels. Local farm workers are no longer serfs and villeins, but – in the case of more skilled men – free agents who can seek employment with whoever is prepared to offer the best pay.

There is a school. Situated in a tiny room above the porch of the parish church, it is presided over by Dominus Peter Wysman, a decent enough man, but not greatly respected by one or two of his older pupils. One of the pupils, Rupert of Tilneye is a reluctant scholar, and is just days away from leaving school to go and help run his family manor at nearby Marshmeade. After several humiliations by by the teacher, he resolves to pay the man back by slipping a tiny quantity of ground up yew leaves into his drink. Yew is, of course, a deadly poison when consumed in quantity, but Rupert administers just enough to produce a violent laxative effect, much to the amusement of the scholars.

Much of the story centres on Wisbech’s Guild of The Holy Trinity, of which Peter Wysman is a member The Guilds have no modern equivalent save perhaps Freemasonry. To belong to the Guild, you had to be rich and influential, and its chief, the Alderman, was someone of great influence. They regularly dined on rich roasted meats washed down with wines imported from Europe. When, on The Principal Day (a significant day of celebration and ceremony, often centered around the feast day of the guild’s patron saint or a major religious holiday, in this case the Feast of The Holy Trinity) the Guild members gather for a lavish feast. Wysman is taken unwell, rushes outside into the Market Place, where he collapses and dies.

Rupert’s cruel prank on Wysman was widely known to the scholars. When they are questioned, Rupert is arrested for murder and thrown into the dungeons of Wisbech Castle. His mother, Lady Evelyn, is convinced that he is innocent, and travels to Ely, where she enlsists the help of Sir Henry Pelerin, the Bishop’s Seneschal. He agrees to investigate the case.

In one way, Diane Calton Smith has crafted an excellent medieval police procedural. Sir Henry Pelerin is, I suppose, the long suffering Detective Inspector, while the Constable’s Sergeant-at-arms is a bent copper worthy of modern novels. We even have a version of the stalwart of many a thriller, the brusque and abrupt police pathologist. In the end, we even have that Golden Age prerequisite, the denouement in the library. In this case, however, the principal suspects are assembled at a feast to celebrate St Thomas’s Day. If you will pardon the obvious comment, it is here that all doubt is removed from Pelerin’s mind as to who poisoned Magister Wysman.

Diane Calton Smith weaves her magic once again, and entrances us with a tale shot through with dark deeds, heartache, love and perseverance but – above all – an astonishing ability to roll away the centuries and bring the past to life. The Principal Day is published by New Generation Publishing and is available now. For more on Diane’s Wisbech books follow this link.

August 13, 2025 0

KISS HER GOODBYE . . . Between the covers

I reviewed a previous Frankie Elkins book, Before She Disappeared, (click the link to read) in 2021, and I made the point there that Frankie is one of the more implausible heroines in modern CriFi. Rather like Jack Reacher she travels with pretty much just the clothes she is standing up in, and a bag containing a few toiletries and ID documents. Her ‘job’? I use the quote marks advisedly, because she hunts for missing people. She doesn’t charge a fee, but usually finds temporary employment in the town of city where her investigations begin. She has taken all kinds of jobs from barkeep to cleaner. but here she appears to land on her feet. Or does she?.

Here, she gets a job as pet-sitter for Bart, a ridiculously rich gamer in Tucson Arizona. The house is huge and futuristic, and the pets? Here comes Frankie first little problem. The main pet is a huge Green Iguana called Petunia, and Frankie has a roomful of exotic snakes to feed with frozen rats and live crickets. And Frankie just hates snakes.

It’s safe to say that Frankie has a disturbing history. Here, she gazes into the eyes of a little Afghan girl.

‘My name is Frankie,” I murmur. She stares at me. Stares, stares, stares, until I can feel each of my sins. All of my secrets slowly being stripped bare. I let her take my full measure. The losses I have felt, the pain I’ve inflicted, the sad little girl who still lives deep inside me, longing for her father to sober up, wishing for her mother to come home. The damaged woman I’ve become, unable to stay too long or connect too deeply because the sheer anxiety of such intimacy makes me want to drink.’

Her latest crusade? To find Sabera Ahmadi, an Afghan woman who has disappeared from her temporary refugee accommodation in Tucson, leaving her husband and young daughter behind. In her own words, Sabera describes the horrific events of the previous few years. It is a particularly grisly episode in modern history, but just the latest chapter in a sorry tale of foreign powers believing they could impose some kind of external rule on Afghanistan. From the disastrous military adventures of the British in the 19th century, to the futile 1980s attempts by Russia to prevent the rise of Islamic extremism, and concluding with the equally ineffective attempts by the Americans and British to democratise the country, the inexorable resilience of the vile Taliban covers Sabera’s life like a funeral shroud.

Sabera’s husband Isaad also goes missing, but when he is found dead, with evidence that he has been tortured, Frankie feels she is no closer to the core or the case, despite help from a diverse collection of allies, including Daryl (Bart’s chauffeur and minder), Roberta (Daryl’s ballroom dance partner) and Marc, a police detective, and brother to Roberta . Oh, yes, we mustn’t forget Genni, Bart’s six-feet-four transvestite housekeeper.

However, Sabera is far from being a hapless victim of international war games, or an archetypal submissive Muslim woman. It transpires that before the Taliban retook Kabul, Sabera – like her mother before her – was already involved with international intelligence agencies, and she was valued for her mastery of several languages, and a skill with numbers and code that made her a valuable asset.

Frankie (as ever) has bitten off more than she can chew, and finds that the truth behind Sabera’s disappearance is more disturbing – and potentially deadly for all concerned – that she could have ever imagined. Lisa Gardner gives us a book that is impeccably researched and has full-on relentless pace. Kiss Her Goodbye is published by Century and will be available on 14th August.

August 10, 2025 0

POWDER SMOKE . . . Between the covers

I absolutely adored Andrew Martin’s Jim Stringer novels from the word go. The Necropolis Railway was set around the actual railway line near Waterloo that took hearse carriages containing the coffins that would be buried in the relatively new Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, and introduced Jim Stringer, a young railwayman who would join the Railway police, and solve many mysteries, including novels set during Jim’s wartime experience on The Somme, Mesopotamia, and post-war India.

Now, we are in 1925, and Jim is a Detective Inspector based in York. The story is based on a strange encounter Jim had at the York Summer Gala in the summer of that year. He meets his boss, who insists they go and watch one of the attractions – a Wild West Show. They see the usual antics – a fake Red Indian, a ‘gunslinger’ who throws knives at his provocatively dressed female partner, then shoots clay pipes out of her mouth. Both the woman, the Red Indian and the cowboy are about as American as Yorkshire Pudding, but in the audience is a genuine American (who acts as a stooge for the performers, and a celebrated couple in the entertainment business, celebrated film star Cynthia Lorne and her producer husband, Tom Brooks.

The gunslinger, Jack ‘ Kid’ Durrant, is not only good with guns, but has ambitions to writer cowboy novels, rather after the celebrated author of Riders of The Purple Sage, Zane Grey (1872 – 1939) Not only that, the relationship between Lorne, Brooks and himself is, as they say, interesting. When Lorne is found dead, with Brooks and Durrant both missing, it is assumed that Durrant is the killer. Although it is not strictly a matter for the Railway Police, Jim feels personally involved, and visits the place where the three were last seen – the grounds of Bolton Abbey in Wharfedale. This allows Andrew Martin (left) to introduce us to what is known as one of the most dangerous rivers in Europe, The Strid. This natural phenomenon sees the River Wharfe forced through a narrow ravine, just a few feet wide. It has been described as the river ‘running sideways’, rather like a twisted ribbon and is believed to be prodigiously deep. No-one goes into it and ever comes out alive.

The best series are enlivened by recurring subsidiary characters, and one has been ever present in the Jim Stringer novels, in the shape of his wife Lydia. We met her when she was young Jim’s landlady in the first novel. Although understandably distant when Jim was on military duties in France, Mesopotamia and India, she has remained by his side. I am not sure how Martin does it but, without being in the least explicit, he makes her quite the most alluring copper’s wife in detective fiction, and their courtship in The Necropolis Railway was – and you’ll have to read the book to understand the contradiction – chastely erotic.

Central to the appeal is, of course, the heartbreaking descriptions of a railway that we once had, but threw away in various acts of criminal negligence and wrong-headedness. The magnificent smoke and almost animal fury of the engines, the cathedrals that were the stations, the legions of uniformed officials, and the fact that in 1925 you could take a train from almost anywhere to somewhere else with minimal discomfort. All now gone and, in the words of the hymn;

“They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.”

Jim, of course, tries to get to the bottom of of the mystery, party because – in spite of his devotion to Lydia – he was slightly smitten by the deceased movie star. The melancholy denouement involves a London and North Eastern Railway locomotive,and a definite sense of closure – if not satisfaction – for our man. In one sense, none of this matters, as our total engagement with the pubs, hotels, railway world, social quirks of the 1920s, and the lingering legacy of The Great War has given us that comfortable sensation we feel after feeling sated after a delicious meal. Powder Smoke is published by Corsair and is available now.

July 31, 2025 0

ONE MAN DOWN . . . Between the covers

Crime fiction and comedy can sometimes make strange bedfellows, but in the right hands it can be beguiling. Back in time, The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill shared the same kind of subtle social comedy employed by George and Weedon Grossmith, while the Bryant and May novels by the late Christopher Fowler were full of excellent gags. So, how does One Man Down by Alex Pearl measure up?

For starters, this has to be tagged as historical crime fiction, as it is set in a 1984 London, in the strange (to me) world of advertising copywriters and their attempts to secure contracts to sell various products. It may only be forty years ago, but we are in the world of Filofaxes, Psion personal organisers and IBM golfball typewriters. The main thread of the plot involves two lads who are connoisseurs of the catch phrase and sorcerers of the strap-line. Brian and Angus become involved in a complex affair which includes a depressive photographer who is arrested for exposing himself to an elderly former GP on the seafront at Margate, and the attempt to blackmail a gay vicar. Incidentally, the Margate reference is interesting because in recent times the seaside town has been somewhat rehabilitated thanks to the patronage of Tracey Emin, but at the time when the book is set, it was certainly a very seedy place. Along with other decaying resorts like Deal, this part of the Kent coast was prominently featured in David Seabrook’s All The Devils Are Here.

When Brian and Angus find the photographer – Ben Bartlett – involved in blackmailing the vicar, dead in his studio, things take a macabre turn. This thread runs parallel to events that have a distinctly Evelyn Waugh flavour. The two ad-men are speculating about just how dire some of the industry’s efforts are, and Angus takes just four and a half minutes to dash off a spoof commercial for a chocolate bar campaign they know the agency has been booked to handle. Angus makes it as dreadful as he can. The pair go out for a drink, leaving the parody on the desk, forgetting they were due to meet one of the firm’s top men to talk about the real campaign. Annoyed to find them absent, the manager finds the sheet of A4, thinks it wonderful, and promptly takes it to the Cadbury top brass, who share his enthusiasm.

Alex Pearl (left) isn’t a reluctant name-dropper, and walk on parts for Julian Clary and Kenneth Clarke (in Ronnie Scott’s, naturally) set the period tone nicely. 1984 was certainly a memorable year. I remember driving through the August night to be at my dying dad’s bedside, and hearing on the radio that Richard Burton had died. Just a few weeks earlier we had been blown away by Farrokh Bulsara at Wembley, while Clive Lloyd and his men were doing something rather similar to the English cricket team.

Back to One Man Down. All’s well that ends well, and we have another murder, but one that saves the career and reputation of the blackmailed vicar. This is not a long book – just 183 pages – but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am a sucker for anything that mentions cricket, and here the story more or less begins and ends on the cricket pitch. The solution to the murder(s) is elegant and subtle. The book is published by Roundfire Books and is available now.