REVIEWS

THE LAST TO DISAPPEAR . . . Between the covers

No-one will ever accuse Jo Spain of being unadventurous. With a best-selling series of police procedurals under her belt – the superb Tom Reynolds novels – a lesser writer might hunker down and play safety first by sticking to the familiar. But that’s not Jo Spain. Her last standalone thriller, The Perfect Lie (click for review), was set in Newport, Rhode Island, and now she takes us to the ski resort of Koppe in icy Finland, where Brit Alex Evans has travelled to identify the murdered body of his sister, Vicky. She was something of a ‘free spirit’, having wandered half the way round Europe doing a variety of temporary jobs (including pole dancing in a Spanish bar), always broke, but always looking for the next big adventure. Her body has been found by an ice fisherman, and has been in the water for some time.

Handling the investigation is local police chief Agatha Koskinen, but Alex is determined to ask his own questions. He discovers that Vicky had been working at a local hotel and had made friends with an American tourist who is now back in the states, but has an alibi for the time when Vicky disappeared. Agatha has demons of her own to contend with, however, as somewhere out there is the abusive parent of her three children – Luca – and she fears for them should Luca come back into their lives.

As ever, Jo Spain weaves a complex mystery, and gives us a split time narrative. She takes us back to 1998 where we are a fly on the wall in the house of Miika and Kaya Vartinen. Miika is a Sami – one the ethnic people of what used to be known as Lapland. He is a reindeer herder. Kaya is pregnant, but Miika is not the father. She is carefully managing the usual symptoms so that when she tells him, Miika will believe the child is his.

The significance of the book’s title becomes clear when Alex visits Agatha at her home, and she reveals that Vicky is the latest woman to disappear in a ten-year period, and that Kaya Vatinen was the first. She also tells Alex that Miika Vartinen is widely suspected as being involved in the disappearances, but no evidence has ever emerged to connect him to the cases.

With the most delicate of touches, Jo Spain hints at the darker aspects of life in Koppe, where there is an undercurrent of racism towards the Sami people, and she reminds us of the familiar theme of movers and shakers in tourist resorts – think the Mayor of Amity Island in Jaws – not wanting anything to disturb the inward flow of visitors and their cash. There is also the spectre of an international mining company sensing a million dollar windfall from the minerals sitting beneath the pristine and picturesque Finnish landscape.

Jo Spain’s tricksy thrillers are very cleverly written. She relies on us making assumptions. She invites us to make these assumptions rather like a fly fisherman casting the cunningly constructed fly on the water, hoping it will fool the fat trout (aka the reader). When we realise we have been gulled, we might turn back a few ages and react with something like, “hang on – didn’t she tell us that …?“, only to find that what she wrote was perfectly ambiguous, and that we have jumped to the wrong conclusion. Perhaps there’s a few too many mixed metaphors there, but I hope you get my drift.

There are only two predictable things about a Jo Spain thriller. The first? There will be a dramatic plot twist. The second? You won’t see it coming! The Last to Disappear is published by Quercus, and will be out on 12th May. For more of my reviews of Jo’s books, click the image below.

May 8, 2022 0

NO LESS THE DEVIL . . . Between the covers

This is a new police procedural from Stuart MacBride (left) and it introduces Detective Sergeant Lucy McVeigh. Her beat is the fictional town of Oldcastle (not to be confused with the actual city of Oldcastle, which lies between Aberdeen and Dundee). Aberdeen, of course, is where DS Logan McRae operated in the hugely successful earlier series from MacBride. Also, DS McVeigh comes across – to me at any rate – as a younger version of McRae’s boss, the foul-mouthed and acerbic DCI Roberta Steel. McVeigh is equally sharp tempered, and similarly indisposed to suffer fools gladly.

Early on, we are aware that McVeigh has been involved a high profile incident where she killed a man – Neil Black – in the line of duty. This requires her to suffer – by order of her bosses – psychological treatment and counselling. Like the good storyteller that he is, MacBride doesn’t let us know the nature of the incident right away, thus keeping us guessing for a while. When we do learn what happened, over seven terrifying pages, it is horrific stuff.

McVeigh is involved in the hunt for a serial killer nicknamed The Bloodsmith. He – or she – eviscerates victims and scrawls “Help Me’ on the wall of the murder scene, using the blood of the unfortunate prey. The trail is cold, but when a new victim emerges McVeigh and her ‘gofer’ Detective Constable Fraser (aka The Dunk) have some fresh clues to work with. It turns out that the latest corpse is the remains of a former police officer who did time for petty theft, and then ended up as a vagrant on the streets.

Women are supposed to multi-task better than men, but Lucy McVeigh has two other problems. Firstly, she is being harassed by the family of the man she killed. They are determined to end her career by fair means or foul, and the press are lapping up every minute of the feud. Secondly, a case from the past surfaces. Years earlier, McVeigh was involved in putting behind bars an eleven year-old boy who, along with another boy as yet unidentified, committed a terrible murder. Now a young man, Benedict Strachan is back – literally – on the streets, using an alias, misusing drugs, living rough, and he is convinced that someone is trying to kill him.

As the search for The Bloodsmith continues, and Lucy McVeigh struggles to keep abreast of that investigation, as well as her battle with the Black family and coping with the mental agonies of Benedict Strachan, MacBride treats us to his signature mixture of Noir, visceral horror and bleak humour. Even though his Oldcastle is a fictional place, it is vividly brought to life to the extent that I would not be in the least surprised if the author has a map of the place hanging on the wall of his writing room. The situation becomes ever more complex for Lucy McVeigh when she learns there is a connection between the murdered former policeman and Benedict Strachan. That connection is a prestigious and exclusive independent school, known colloquially as St Nicks’s. When she visits the school, she unearths more questions than answers.

Novels that use the name of the Devil in their title are making a statement that the writer has to live up to. No-one did it better than the great Derek Raymond in his 1984 The Devil’s Home On Leave, but what about this book? I won’t over-egg the pudding and say that it’s an existential treatise on the nature of evil. It’s just a crime novel, albeit a very superior one. Suffice it to say that Stuart MacBride takes us to some very dark places, and convinces us that the Devil is real, if only in the sense that he lives in the hearts and souls of certain human beings.

No Less The Devil will be published by Bantam Press on 28th April. As a postscript, I have to say that I found the last hundred or so pages seriously strange, and it took me all the way back to the 1990s and my weekly (and increasingly puzzled) visits to Twin Peaks. Without any further spoilers, I will simply say that I think I know what happens, but I aIso believe readers will be divided over the plot swerve. I would be interested to hear from other people what they made of it.

April 25, 2022 0

LAST SEEN ALIVE . . . Between the covers

Last Seen Alive is the third book by Jane Bettany (left) featuring the Derbyshire copper DI Isabel Blood. The story begins when Anna Matheson, a single mother who works at a large confectionery firm, fails to pick up her infant son from the child minder after a social event at work. Lauren Talbot, the child minder, raises the alarm late at night, but precious hours elapse before morning comes and the police are able to start making enquiries.

I wonder where crime stories would be without the ever-reliable assistance of dog walkers? Inevitably, it is one such who makes the grim discovery of a body which turns out to be that of Anna Matheson. She has been strangled, but there is no evidence of sexual assault. Isabel Blood’s team begin their investigations at Allwoods – the successful firm where Anna was marketing manager. The firm is jointly owned by Fay Allwood – widow of Barry – and their son, Ross. Suspicion initially falls on a member of the management team, James Derenby, who has been unsuccessfully trying to date Anna for some time, but this is, apparently, a blind alley.

Isabel Blood is convinced that the key to the mystery lies in discovering who was the the father of Benedict – the dead woman’s baby son. Anna Matheson had steadfastly and consistently refused to reveal his identity – even to her own mother. What follows is an intensely complex voyage of discovery for the detectives, as they encounter what becomes almost a criminal version of Who Do You Think You Are? Old secrets are revealed and – like creatures scuttling away from the light when a large flat stone is lifted – many people try to avoid their past indiscretions being made public.

DI Blood is an interesting character. Lord knows, there are probably as many Detective Inspectors in crime fiction as there are real ones, so what makes her stand out? Thankfully, she is happily married, comfortable in her own skin and, praise be, we don’t have regular updates about her CD collection. Like many of her fictional counterparts, she is constantly being admonished by her boss for becoming too involve with cases and doing more investigating than inspecting. Another reason for the empathetic portrayal of the Derbyshire detective is, I suspect, that she and her creator are in more or less of the same age and, perhaps, family circumstances.

Last Seen Alive is elaborately plotted, totally convincing, and as good an example of a contemporary English police procedural as you are likely to find. It is published by HQ Digital (Harper Collins), is out now in Kindle, and will be available as a paperback on June. If you want to read my review of the previous novel Without A Trace click the link.

April 17, 2022 0

MAILED FIST . . . Between the covers

The superb Wartime Classics series from the Imperial War Museum includes stories from the home front, such as Plenty Under The Counter, To All The Living, and Mr Bunting at War. Eight Hours From England took us to the undercover war in Albania, Patrol was set in the North Africa campaign, and in Trial by Battle, we sweated along with the men fighting in the Malayan jungle. The battle in the air was covered by Pathfinders and Squadron Airborne. Now, in the twelfth of the series, Mailed Fist joins Warriors For The Working Day and Sword of Bone with an account of the fighting in mainland Europe.

Cedric John Foley MBE (7 March 1917 – 8 November 1974) was a British Army officer, author, broadcaster, and public relations specialist. A regular soldier between 1936 and 1954, he was made MBE for his services to the Royal Armoured Corps during WW2. A man of wide interests, he was also known as a broadcaster and scriptwriter, and was military advisor to the popular ITV comedy show, The Army Game.

This is perhaps the least fictionalised of all the books in the series. Foley faithfully records his own experience after being commissioned into the Royal Armoured Corps in 1943. He was to command Five Troop – a trio of Churchill tanks named Avenger, Alert, and Angler. Foley follows the progress of the Allied forces through Normandy, the Ardennes and eventually – after bitter and brutal fighting against German forces – across the Rhine into Germany itself.

Earlier editions of the book had a very gung-ho blurb on the front but it is worth pointing out that although Foley is, as one might expect, intensely loyal to the Churchill tank, it was widely regarded as being something of a lame duck in the tank world. The massed-produced American Shermans, the devastating Panthers and Tigers of the Panzerkorps, and the Russian T34s were all probably superior in overall performance.

The book is markedly different from Warriors For The Working Day, another account which included a description of a tank regiment advancing through Normandy. Peter Elstob’s writing is much more, for want of a better word, poetic, while Foley’s words have more the feel of a diary. He also concentrates more on the mechanics of the war, rather than the emotions of the men fighting it. That isn’t to say that Mailed Fist isn’t well written, and there are some memorable passages, such as this description of a column of German prisoners:

“One cheerful imp-faced man – obviously the platoon jester – gave a Nazi salute grinned broadly as he turned it into a mime of pulling a lavatory chain. At the end of the column came a boy, he looked about thirteen years old and as he stumbled past he used the sleeve of his greatcoat to wipe the tears from his eyes.”

If you hadn’t worked it out from the featured illustration, the book’s title refers to the cap badge of the Royal Armoured Corps. Mailed Fist is a highly readable and authentic account of a crucial stage during WW2. It is published by the Imperial War Museum, and will be available on 21st April.

GLOSSARY OF SOME MILITARY TERMS USED IN THE BOOK

BESA British version of a Czech machine gun, frequently mounted in WW2 British tanks. Fired 7.92 Mauser rounds.
BOCAGE Countryside in Normandy typified by small fields, dense hedgerows and sunken roads. Difficult country for offensive warfare but ideal for defenders.
CHURCHILL British tank, well armoured, but lacking the firepower of its German adversaries. Still in use in the 1950s.
ENSA Entertainments National Service Organisation – dedicated to bringing light entertainment to serving military units.
LST Landing Ship, Tank. American boat used to transport tankson D-Day
PANTHER German tank considered one of the best of the war in terms of fire power, protection and mobility.
SHERMAN The ubiquitous Allied tank of WW2. American designed and built, easy to run and maintain, produced in huge numbers.
SPANDAU German machine gun, firing up to 1200 rounds a minute/Known to the Allies as ‘Hitler’s Buzzsaw’.
TELLERMINE Literally ‘Plate Mine’ – German anti-tank mine.
TIGER Probably the supreme tank of WW2, at least in theory. Fast, manoeuvrable, with a powerful gun and formidable armour, it was, difficult to repair and too highly engineered to be produced in sufficient numbers.

April 13, 2022 1

MR BUNTING AT WAR . . . Between the covers

This is another in the superb series of republished novels set in the Second World War. As author Wiliiam Boyd remarked:

“If poetry was the supreme literary form of the First World War the, as if in riposte, in the Second World War, the English novel comes of age. This wonderful series is an exemplary reminder of that fact.”

Robert Greenwood introduced Mr Bunting to the world in the book of the same title, published in 1940. He is something of a ‘stuffed shirt’, but entirely without malice, and he lives with his family in Essex, but within commuting distance of his work at an ironmongers in London. This is set in 1941, with London under siege from the skies, but by the end of the book the strategically unimportant district where the Buntings live is feeling the full wrath of the Luftwaffe.

George Bunting and his wife Mary have three grown up children, Chris, Ernest and Julie. Chris is, it could be said, George’s favourite son. He is practical, endlessly optimistic and cheerful, while Ernest is more introspective – and a gifted pianist. Both young men are trying hard to make a go of their respective careers, while Julie is something of a dreamer, and looking for suitable work.

The day to day world that Robert Greenwood describes would have been completely familiar to thousands of readers in 1941. So many elements of life then, however, are almost unimaginable to us now: the sheer terror of being under regular attack from the skies, the dread of receiving a telegram from the armed forces, the privations and shortages of food and the heavy hand of a wartime government laid on every aspect of normal life.

I was initially tempted to compare Mr Bunting with another gentleman from an earlier generation, Charles Pooter. Mr Pooter (the creation of George and Weedon Grossmith in Diary of A Nobody) lived closer to ‘town’, in Holloway. His house was called The Laurels, while Mr Bunting lives at Laburnum Villa. While the Grossmiths wanted us to laugh at Mr Pooter, Robert Greenwood takes a very different approach. He invites us, perhaps, to smile and raise an eyebrow at Mr Bunting’s rigid view of the world and his own place in it, but he never mocks. Bunting is a man of simple pleasures:

“There was nothing Mr Bunting liked better than to escape from the war and listen to his wife and daughter-in-law discuss the technicality of ‘turning the heel’ or report on experiments with recipes recommended by the Ministry of Food. To sit placidly smoking and listening to these discussions was to realise one had a home and a wife who was a jewel. If there was anything better in life, Mr Bunting wanted to know what it was.”

Through Mr Bunting, as he travels into London each day on his morning train, we see the carnage being wrought on the city. As he walks from the station to Brockleys, things almost become too much for him:

“Through the devastation he walked, stepping over hoses, skirting the edge of craters, threading his way past grimed and bloodshot firemen, single-mindedly pursuing his own particular business. There were gruesome sights, too, sensed rather than seen, tarpaulins stretched over what he knew were human forms. Once, a lock of a girl’s hair fluttered brightly as the wind ruffled her crude shroud. He bit his lip, and looked away.”

In George Bunting, Robert Greenwood created a character who is ordinary in the extreme, socially gauche, but from a generation of people who simply ‘got on with things’ when the darker side of life – in this case, a world war – threatened to overwhelm them. When tragedy strikes the family, he is devastated, but breaking down is simply something that was ‘not on’ in those days. To the fraudulent modern day gurus of self-love and ’emotional intelligence’, George Bunting would seem like someone from another planet, but Greenwood gives him courage, dignity and – above all – common decency. Mr Bunting at War is an Imperial War Museum Classic, and will be out on 21st April.

For reviews of other IWM Classics, click the link below.

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM CLASSICS

April 6, 2022 0

BLIND JUSTICE . . . Between the covers

In the thirteenth episode of what is a genuinely impressive series, David Mark’s Hull copper Aector McAvoy returns, along with the established cast – his wife Roisin and their two children, and his boss, Detective Superintendent Trish Pharoah. McAvoy is, as the name suggests, a Scottish exile, and he is built like the proverbial brick you-know-what. Despite his forbidding appearance, McAvoy is a peaceable and studious man, shy with other people, but perceptive and with an attention to detail that matches his formidable appearance.

The book begins with a flashback to an attempt by young men to carry out what seems to be a robbery in an isolated rural property. It ends in horrific violence, matched only by the destructive storm that rages over the heads of the ill-advised and ill-prepared group. Cut to the present day, and another storm has lashed Humberside, bringing down power lines, flooding homes, and uprooting trees. One such tree, an ancient ash, reveals something truly awful – a human body, mostly decayed, entwined within its roots in a macabre embrace.

McAvoy is called to the scene, and it doesn’t take too much evidence – in this case a pair of fashionable trainers – for McAvoy to deduce that this body has been put into the ground in living memory. What is astonishing, however, is that two Roman coins have been nailed into the victim’s eyes. The gentle policeman can only hope and pray that this act was not done while the victim was still alive. To make matters more disturbing, the fragile bones of two babies are also found.

The body is soon identified as that of a university student who went missing in the 1990s, but what on earth was he doing in this remote spot, and who had cause to kill and maim him in such a fashion? The owners of the adjacent property are interviewed, but add nothing to the investigation. Pharoah and McAvoy discover that the case may be linked to the trade in ancient artifacts discovered by illegal metal detectorists – nighthawks – and there is disturbing evidence that a notorious Manchester gangster – convicted of horrific torture just a few years earlier – may be involved on the fringes of the case.

David Mark (right) writes with a sometimes frightening intensity as dark events swirl around Aector McAvoy. The big man, gentle and hesitant though he may seem, is, however, like a rock. He is one of the most original creations in a very crowded field of fictional British coppers, and his capacity to bear pain for others – particularly in this episode his son Fin and Trish Pharoah – is movingly described. Mark’s work may – at first glance – seem miles away from the Factory novels of that Noir genius Derek Raymond, but McAvoy shares the same compassion, the same sworn vow to find justice for the slain, and the same awareness of suffering shown by the nameless sergeant in masterpieces like I Was Dora Suarez.

The terrifying climax to Blind Justice is also straight out of the Derek Raymond playbook and is not for the squeamish, but vivid and visceral. Where David Mark does differ from his illustrious predecessor is that he allows McAvoy the redemption and respite denied to Raymond’s sergeant with his dead child and mad wife, and it comes in the shape of his intriguing part-gypsy wife and their children.

If I read a better book all year, be sure that I will let you know. Blind Justice is published by Severn House and will be out on 31st March.

March 20, 2022 0

MURDER AT CLARIDGES . . . Between the covers

Jim Eldridge (left) and his aristocratic Detective Chief Inspector Edgar Saxe-Coburg are working their way around the best hotels in 1940s London, investigating murder We have had The Ritz (click for my review), The Savoy, and now Claridges. Setting a murder against a grand backdrop is a simple but agreeable formula which Eldridge has employed in his ‘museum series’, which are set in late Victorian England. The action takes place in October 1940, with Londoners under the hammer from Hitler’s bombers each and every night.

The concept which underpins the plot is similar to the one used in Murder at The Ritz. In the late 1930s, there were still countries in Europe ruled by what we might dismiss as ‘minor monarchies’. Albania, Yugoslavia and Romania all had ruling families, and some of them decamped to London, along with their coffers of gold. Also in London, which adds spice to the plot, were less fortunate people, some of them with a political agenda. One such, a Romanian kitchen hand at Claridges, is found garotted outside on the pavement. Saxe-Coburg’s boss calls hands him the murder investigation. The reason he wants Edgar on the case is touchingly naive. He thinks that when peace returns, and the ruling families of the Balkans resume their thrones, they will remember fondly the discretion and tact used by an English detective. The garotter then finds another victim, but what possible connection does a young woman working for the Free French headquarters in London have the unfortunate Romanian?

Lurking in the background of this tale is a man who is less than noble, but with more power than all the kings and queens sheltering in London’s best hotel suites. Henry ‘Hooky’ Morton is a London gangster who is building his empire on black market scams, the most profitable of which is his manipulation of the petrol market. We think of fuel supply – or lack of it – as a very modern problem, but in 1940, having fuel to put in your car was crucial to many organisations. Hooky Morton has a problem, though. Someone has infiltrated his gang, and is making him look stupid. Then, Hooky does something really, really stupid and, no nearer identifying the garotte killer or their motives, Saxe-Coburg becomes involved in investigating what is, for any copper, the worst crime of all.

Saxe-Coburg’s wife Rosa, a popular pianist and singer does her bit for morale in concert halls and hotels in the evening, but her day job is more exacting and brings her face to face with the havoc raining down on London from the sky – she drives an ambulance. Her assistant is killed when a bombed building collapses on him, and a little while later, when Rosa goes to visit his widow. she is horrified to find the woman dead on the kitchen floor, killed with the same method used to despatch the Romanian kitchen hand and the young Frenchwoman.

I suppose Murder at Claridges is, if genres mean anything, on the fringe of cosy crime, but is a genuine page-turner. Despite the grimly authentic background of London being battered by the Luftwaffe, it gives us larger-than-life characters and, of course, it allows us to peep into a world which only the truly rich inhabit. The suave Saxe-Coburg is a timely antidote to the damaged, troubled and – frankly – disturbing world of so many fictional Detective Inspectors who inhabit our contemporary world. Eldridge is a fine writer and never has escapism been so elegantly penned. This book is published by Allison & Busby, and will be out in Kindle and hardback on 21st April, with a paperback edition due in the autumn. To read my reviews of two of Jim Eldridge’s ‘museum series’, click the links below.

Murder at Madame Tussaud’s

Murder at the British Museum

March 15, 2022 1

SHAKING HANDS WITH THE DEVIL . . . Between the covers

There is an interesting debate which raises its head periodically, and it involves the tricky subject of what can – or should not – become the subject of comedy. Jimmy Carr was in the news only the other day, because he made a joke about the deaths of Roma people in The Holocaust. There are numerous TV sitcoms from back in the day which are fondly remembered by us older folks, but would not survive the heightened sensibilities of modern publicists and producers. This preamble is by way of a warning that Bryan J Mason’s novel, Shaking Hands With The Devil, will not be for everyone. There are jokes and themes in here which, as they say, push boundaries, so if you are someone who takes offence at words on a page, then I think it’s probably ‘Goodnight Vienna‘. For those made of sterner stuff, here’s the story.

We are in late 1980s London – the autumnal years of Thatcher’s Britain – beset by strikes and endless assaults by the IRA. A predatory killer called Clifton Gentle – think Denis Nilsen – is enticing young homosexuals to come back to his home, where they have sex, but the post coital routine is that he kills them and chops them up into pieces. Sometimes the pieces stay in his flat, but when they become too noxious, he leaves them spread about the capital, in skips, under bushes or in Biffa bins.

On his trail is a grotesque cartoon of a copper – DCI Dave Hicks. He lives at home with his dear old mum, has a prodigious appetite for her home-cooked food, is something of a media whore (he does love his press conferences) and has a shaky grasp of English usage, mangling idioms like a 1980s version of Mrs Malaprop.

The other gags come thick and fast. We have three new police cadets – Oldfield, Abberline and Slipper – working on the case (Google if you’re not sure}, while the editor of The Herald Review (one of the newspapers covering the case) is a certain Mr Charles Manson.

Mason’s final audacious name-check is when he reveals that there is a second killer on the loose, a young man who has won all the glittering prizes, but has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Peter Kurten is determined to make the most of his final six months by a bit of casual ‘triple D’ – Date, Death, Dismember. A confession. Suspecting that this was another joke, I Googled the name (so you don’t have to) and found that Peter Kurten a.k.a The Vampire of Düsseldorf was a notorious German serial killer who went to the guillotine on 2nd July 1931.

When he learns that he has a rival, Clifton Gentle is most aggrieved. That is not his only problem, however, because a young rent boy called Jimmy is Clifton’s only failure. Not only did Jimmy escape before fulfilling his date with the cleaver and hacksaw, he has now located his would-be assassin and is blackmailing him.

Hackney’s finest, Dave Hicks or, as he prefers to be known, ‘The Dick from The Sticks’ is also up against it. As clueless as ever, he unwisely announces in a news conference that he had set himself just fourteen days to bring the killer to justice. The days and hours tick by, without Hicks having any genuine leads. Then, on the eve of the expiry of his deadline, he decides to save his reputation. In a a bizarre attempt to blend in with the crowds in London’s gay clubs, Hicks sets out to attract the killer (he is unaware that there are two) and is dressed to kill, decked out in:

“A fuchsia -pink shirt with outsize wing collar, over-tight lime green denim jeans, a brand new squeaky-clean leather jacket and, just for good measure, a black beret with white trim.”

The finale of Dave Hicks’s quest to catch his man is set in an old fashioned Soho of seedy clubs, touts and pimps that would be unrecognisable to the trendsetters who frequent it today. Bryan Mason (right) has written a dystopian novel which is, in turn, ghastly, eyebrow-raising and hilarious, but is also a must for those who like their satire as black as night.

Shaking Hands With The Devil is published by Vanguard Press/Pegasus Publishing, and is available now.

March 8, 2022 1

MURDER MOST VILE . . . Between the covers

Having not come across author Eric Brown before, I did a quick search, and Wiki told me that he was a prolific science fiction writer, and I immediately thought I must have got the wrong chap, but he is one and the same. His versatility in writing Golden Age-ish mysteries set in the 1950s as well as futuristic fantasies is to be commended, but after all, he was born and raised in Haworth which, if you are looking for literary connections, is as good a place as any, and better than most.

What is happening then, in Murder Most Vile? All too often these days, I am a late arrival at the ball and this is the ninth in a series centred on a pair of investigators in 1950s England. Donald Langham is a London novelist, who runs an investigation agency with business partner Ralph Ryland. Langham’s wife, Maria Dupré, is a literary agent. Here, Langham is engaged by a rather unpleasant and misanthropic – but very rich – old man named Vernon Lombard. Lombard has a daughter and two sons, and the favourite one of the two boys, a feckless artist called Christopher, is missing.

Old Lombard has history, and not a particularly salubrious one in terms of British politics in the 1930s. He was a fervent supporter of Oswald Mosley and his fascists, and while this years ago, it is to rake up uncomfortable memories for Ralph Ryland when it emerges that the boss of a London brewery is also a pervert, a gangster – and, like Vernon Lombard – someone who longs for the glory days of the British Union of Fascists.

Langham and Ryland are an interesting team, with Langham the more urbane and middle class of the two, while Ryland’s father was a London docker who was on what we now consider to be the wrong side of things during the infamous Battle of Cable Street in 1936, when Mosley’s fascists went head to head with an opposing force of trade unionists, Jewish groups and communists, with the police trying to keep the sides apart. Out of loyalty to and, perhaps, fear of his father, Ryland was there that day, and what he saw – and did – has continued to haunt him, especially since he was among the Allied troops who liberated Belsen in April 1945 – a month that has special significance for some of the characters in this novel.

What the pair uncover is that most poisonous of situations – bitter family jealousy. It transpires that Christopher Lombard’s apparent success as an artist is due to his father buying up most of his canvases, and the other two siblings are not happy. There are abductions, murders and mysteries – and Eric Brown provides a clever plot twist which I never saw coming.

It’s not always helpful to shepherd crime novels into genres, but I know that many readers are not comfortably retired like me, and the time they have for settling down with a good book is limited, and that is why they sometimes welcome a ‘heads-up’ as to what kind of book to pick up next. I would say that Murder Most Vile is cosy crime, but with a hard edge. It is also, I suppose, historical crime fiction, because, for some, 1957 is as far away as 1757 in terms of social attitudes and the trappings of technology. It might also be doffing its trilby to the world of bygone investigators – Paul Temple, certainly, with maybe just a hint of Bulldog Drummond. We have dead bodies, escapes from dungeons, powerful embittered and influential old men and – essential to all private investigators – friends in the police force. The bottom line, however, is that this is cleverly written by Eric Brown, and is well worth a few hours of anyone’s time. Murder Most Vile is published by Severn House and is out now.

ERIC BROWN’S WEBSITE IS HERE

March 2, 2022 0