REVIEWS

RING OF FIRE . . . Between the covers

In my reading experience, the definitive account of the outbreak of The Great War remains Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August (1962). The author made us flies on the wall in cabinet meeting rooms across Europe, and hidden observers within General Staff offices of the armies of Germany, Britain, France and Russia. This book is very different. Its premise is that this was a truly global conflict, principally due to the vast colonial outreach of the major powers. Men and women, ordinary citizens of places in Africa that were ruled from London, Berlin, Paris and Brussels, remote settlements in the Caucuses who were subject to the rule of the Tsar, shoeless peasants in the outer reaches of the ailing Ottoman empire, and those living in the United States and South America who were part of the colossal diaspora from Europe – all felt the rough hand of destiny on their shoulder.

The celebrated (but not always admired) historian AJP Taylor famously argued that the outbreak of the war was inevitable, due to military planning relying on inflexible railway timetables. Once the trains, packed with tens of thousands of men, headed off to their destination, then conflict was inevitable. This theory is easily challenged but Churchill and Eberholst give this example:
Britain’s rail network comprised some 23,000 miles of track. On 4th August 1914, 130 companies were effectively taken over by the government. At Aldershot, from 5th August officers were being handed dossiers that revealed the plan for their departure. For instance: ‘Train No 463Y will arrive at siding B at 12.35 a.m., 10th August. You will complete loading by 3.40 a.m.’

Britain’s army in 1914 was tiny compared to those of France, Germany and Russia. It was even outnumbered by the army of Belgium, but it was superbly trained and had relatively recent battlefield experience in the Boer Wars. The key difference between Britain and the empires of France and Germany was in the existence of Britain’s white dominions. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were, in theory at least, at one with the mother country’s foreign policy.

One of the many valid points made by the authors is the vexatious question of perceived neutrality. Long before the first shots were fired in the war, developed nations needed vast quantities of imports and, were they fortunate enough to possess natural resources, ships to export material and goods elsewhere. The ownership of cargo vessels was perhaps not as opaque then as it is now but, for example, if a Swedish ship sailed into Hamburg loaded with iron ore, did that compromise Sweden’s notional neutrality? What if an American ship loaded with wheat were headed for the Port of London? Did that make the vessel fair game for German submarines?

The authors remind us that by the time the trenches ran from Switzerland to the Belgian coast, maps were able to be made showing every dip or fold in the land and – literally – every large shell crater. In the dying days of August 1914, particularly in the rural areas of Galicia, East Prussia and Serbia, the landscape was a complete mystery to field commanders. Knowledge of the terrain was almost completely absent, resulting in disastrous tactical blunders by all sides.

Comparing different kinds of horror brought about by war is, perhaps, futile, but as an amateur historian brought up on grim tales of life in the Western Front trenches, I was struck by the descriptions of the relentless carnage of these early weeks of the war. Yes, it was a war of movement but, in particular, it was fought in intense August heat. Men on the march were driven mad by thirst; tinder-dry fields and woods caught fire quickly, cremating the dead and wounded alike. This was a new kind of war; medical services were woefully inadequate to meet carnage on this scale. I was quickly disabused of any notions I had that these early battles between the huge armies were somehow cleaner and less grisly than the trench warfare which followed them.

Another surprise (at least to this woefully ignorant reader) was to learn that Japan and Britain fought together to drive Germany out of Chinese city of Tsingtao (below) between August and November 1914. It is a sobering reflection on the fragile nature of national alliances to think that less than a decade earlier, Japan and Russia locked horns in a savage war. Now, they were, notionally, allies in a war against Germany.

As autumn turned into winter, the major powers were all unsteady on their feet. The French had suffered astonishing losses in the east, but had engineered a miracle on The Marne. Germany’s relentless advance through Belgium had been thwarted, and they had back-pedalled in disarray to dig in north of The Aisne. Despite the debacle at Tannenberg, Russia had inflicted a monstrous defeat on Austria Hungary in Galicia. This account, from a Hapsburg officer, is horrific :

‘Scenes from Dante’s Inferno were happening on the road. Driven by instinct, both men and horses pressed forward, regardless of the corpses and wounded lying on the ground. Horses hooves were treading over bellies and heads. Intestines, guts, brains mixed with mud covered the road with a bloody mess. The screams of the wounded, men and horses, together with the cracking rifles, grenade and shell explosions drove one to near insanity.’

I am always intrigued by writing partnerships, and ponder the (largely irrelevant) question, “Who did what?” Whatever the respective inputs were here, Churchill and Eberholst have written a book that is historically authoritative but always accessible. UK Great War literature tends, for quite laudable reasons, centred on the Western Front and the great calamities that took place there, but here we have a timely reminder of the days before the trenches were dug “from Switzerland to the sea” and the horrific slaughter that took place in places with names that have long since vanished from the map. Ring of Fire will be published by Apollo on 8th May.

April 26, 2025 0

DEATH ON WOLF FELL . . . Between the covers

This is the next instalment of the career of Lancashire DS Jessica Raker, to whom we were introduced in “Death at Dead Man’s Stake”. Jess resumes her head-to-head battle with gang boss Maggie Horsefield, a ruthless and vindictive woman who is at the apex of the criminal fraternity, but someone who swims in the toxic waste in terms of human decency. It complicates matters that Jess’s daughter Lily and Maggie’s offspring Caitlin are BFFs at school.

It’s fair to say that Jessica Raker has something of a turbulent past. Born and bred in the district she now polices, she gravitated to London, where her career in the Metropolitan Police concluded dramatically with her shooting dead a feckless younger member of a serious crime gang. When a retaliatory contract was taken out on her life, she was relocated to Clitheroe. She has two children, but her relationship with husband Josh is, to say the least, threadbare, although they are still together.

This story starts with Lance Drake, a petty crook somewhere near the bottom of Maggie Horsefield’s barrel of criminal employees, facing his worst nightmare. He is being released on license from HMP Preston, where he has been quite happily spending the last few months, safe from the inevitable retribution which has awaited him since he shot his mouth off to the police, thus losing his boss tens of thousands of pounds in a drug shipment.

Inevitably, given that Horsefield has her employees embedded at every level of the criminal justice system, Drake is soon grabbed, and when the hood is taken from his head, he finds himself cable-tied to a chair sitting, ominously, on a large plastic sheet spread on the floor of a disused mill, with Horsefield sitting nearby, fondling a zombie knife. Jess Raker’s team have had their eyes on this mill for some time, rightly suspecting that is part of Horsefield’s drug distribution business and, happily for Lance Drake, they choose that moment for a raid.

Most of Horsefield’s goons get away, the mill plus an industrial quantity of ‘merchandise’ go up in flames, and the stage is set for a dramatic encounter as Horsefield and her lover, London gangster Tommy Moss, plan a multi-million pound raid on Wolf Fell Hall, an ancestral home which contains scores of priceless old master paintings. Along the way, we learn more about the team of officers around Jessica Raker. There is the intelligent and resourceful PCSO Samira Patel, who yearns to become a ‘proper’ copper. CID officer Dougie Doolan is one of Jessica’s mainstays, but she suspects he is hiding a grim secret. Her boss, Inspector Price, we strongly suspect may be a wrong ‘un, but is he actually feeding information to the dreadful Maggie Horsefield?

One thing you will not find in a Nick Oldham novel, thankfully, is the remotest trace of sympathetic hand-wringing for his villains. Yes they may come from awful families with dreadful parents but, like all of us, they have a choice. If they take the wrong road, then they have no-one to blame but themselves. For Oldham, once a working copper in hives of scum and villainy like Blackpool, they have made their choice and deserve everything they get. He has a direct, no-frills narrative style. The sheer readability of his novels is based on superb storytelling, and an unparalleled knowledge of English policing, woven together with a sense of place, location and topography designed to draw the reader into the narrative. Death on Wolf Fell will be published by Severn House on 6th May.

April 24, 2025 0

MRS HUDSON AND THE CAPRICORN INCIDENT . . . Between the covers

The canonical 56 short stories and four novellas featuring Sherlock Holmes have left so-called ‘continuation’ authors with plenty of subordinate characters to draw on. Dr Watson, inspector Lestrade, Moriarty and brother Mycroft have each been the central character in novels. I suppose it was only a matter of time before Mrs Hudson took centre stage. Martin Davies took up the challenge in 2002 with Mrs Hudson and the Spirit’s Curse, but here, events are narrated by a girl called Flotsam, who recalls events rather in the way that the good Doctor reminisces about the cases his old friend solved.

Flottie was an orphan girl, saved from a life of degradation by the kindness of Mrs Hudson, but is now a very bright young woman who has seeks education where and whenever she can find it. She is now highly literate and socially adept (but still working downstairs).The story unfolds through her eyes and ears. The substantive plot centres on Rosenau, a tiny Duchy in the Balkans, squeezed between the competing demands of the ailing Ottoman empire, Austria-Hungary and fervent Serbian nationalists. It’s survival depends on an impending marriage between Count Rudolph and Princess Sophie who, hopefully will provide a legitimate heir, ensuring the Duchy’s survival. Rosenau is, of course, fictional, but the Balkan powder keg was, at the turn of the century, frighteningly real. Everything goes awry when, first, the Count goes missing while on a European skiing trip and, second, when the princess is abducted from a London residence.

Reviewers and critics are perfectly entitled to question the validity of the still-vibrant Sherlock Holmes industry. Why, over a century after the last Conan Doyle tale was published, are we still seeing (and here, choose your own description) continuations, homages, pastiches and re-imaginings of crime fiction’s most celebrated character? The answer is simple – because people buy the books or borrow them from the library. Conan Doyle tired of his man, and tried to end it all, in the hope that readers would be drawn towards his other novels, like Micah Clarke or the Brigadier Gerard series. He was forced to relent. As a former prime minister said, “You can’t buck the market.” She was correct, and it must be assumed that two decades after the first novel in the series, people still buy these books and, for publishers, that is it and all about it.

Is this book any good? Yes, of course. Conan Doyle planted a seed which has grown into the mother of all beanstalks, and the Sherlock Holmes phenomenon is as busy as it ever was. Martin Davies reconnects us to a world which is endlessly appealing: chaste bachelors of independent means, a strictly ordered society, a London unsullied by antisemitic mobs, a railway system that ran with clockwork precision, handwritten letters delivered several times daily, a world that challenged the chant of Macbeth’s witches, ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’. This moral ambiguity has no place in the world of Mrs Hudson or Flottie. The tone of the book? Light of heart in some ways, with a certain amount of comedy. Here, a caricature aristocratic old gent opines on marriage:

“Wedding, for goodness sake? Weddings are ten a penny. When I was a lad, a man got married in the morning, introduced his wife to his mistress at lunchtime, and was at the races in the afternoon. And so long as he honored his debts, no one thought the worse of him.”

The humour reminded me very much the very underrated series of Inspector Lestrade novels by MJ Trow. As in those novels. this author provides some good jokes: A famous actress confides in Flottie.

“The important thing is to remember that your skirts are your enemy and speed is your friend. Which is quite the opposite of how we usually think about things, isn’t it?”

She is talking about the new enthusiasm among young women for cycling.

I have made this point before, but it is worth repeating. The canonical Holmes short stories were just that – short. Conan Doyle could take one problem, and allow his man to solve it in just a few pages. Even the four novels were brief. Short stories don’t sell these days and the concept of novels serialised in print and paper magazines is dead and buried, therefore modern Holmes emulators have to spin out the narrative to the regulation 300-400 pages. So, there has to be subplots and other investigations going on, and this almost always means that the narrative tends to drift. So it is here, with the Rosenau crisis sharing the pages with the search for someone called Maltravers, a serial swindler. Martin Davies handles this dilemma as well as anyone else, and presents us with an entertaining tale that is well worth a few hours of anyone’s time. There were occasional longeurs, but the last few pages were rather wonderful. Mrs Hudson and the Capricorn Incident is published by Allison & Busby and is available now.

April 11, 2025 0

MARBLE HALL MURDERS . . . Between the covers

Anthony Horowitz is – deservedly – celebrated as an author and screenwriter. In the Daniel Hawthorne novels he plays himself, and there are frequent allusions to the world of publishing and TV production. In this novel the central character is Susan Ryeland, a freelance literary editor. She has just returned from a spell living in Crete with her hotelier boyfriend, but the charms of the sun, blue sea, olives and tsikoudia lifestyle have worn thin and she is back in London.

Her first commission on returning to England is to read through a manuscript of what is politely known as a continuation novel. Atticus Pünd was the central character in a highly successful series written by Alan Conway, and Susan had edited the books, despite having a fractious relationship with the author. Conway died in dramatic circumstances, but now a writer called Eliot Crace – himself the grandson of widely venerated author of children’s fiction – has resurrected Pünd. Susan is no fan of continuation novels, but this is Mr H having a little joke at his own expense, as among his own novels are ‘continuations’ of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond.

Make no mistake, the structure of this book is more complex than any of Horowitz’s books that I have read previously, but perhaps it is similar in the two books – Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders – which preceded this title. I do not watch much mainstream television, and I was unaware that these novels had also been filmed for the small screen.

Not long after Susan has offered to read through the first part of Eliot Crace’s reimagining of Atticus Pünd, we get to read it with her, and it tells of Pūnd, aware that he is terminally ill, investigating the death by poison of an English aristocrat in her villa in the south of France. We have, then, a novel within a novel. it must be one of the greatest challenges for a writer to make readers of a sequential novel aware of what has happened in previous books without labouring the point. Horowitz doers it well here, so I won’t waste paragraphs explaining what happened to Susan in the previous two books. Here, she learns from Eliot Crace that his grandmother, far from being the sainted creator of million-selling children’s books, adored by countless fans, was actually a vindictive, intolerant and spiteful old woman. Anthony Horowitz has set up a delightful conceit – and I use the term in its positive sense.

There is added piquancy in the fact that Susan Ryeland, the narrator of the ‘outer’ novel, is being paid to edit/criticise the content of the ‘inner’ novel, penned by Eliot Crace who, at first glance, appears to be mad, bad and dangerous to know. Anthony Horowitz is, like it or not, deeply embedded in the world of TV drama. There are many of us who think that Foyle’s War was the best show we ever watched. AH retains a keen eye for the best and worst of prime time TV drama and, using the voice of Susan Ryeland, he sneaks in a mention of ‘one that got away’, a thoughtful and intelligent series called Boon, starring Michael Elphick.

This is a complex novel containing layers within layers, but the nub is that Eliot Crace, although just a child, witnessed (or believed he had) his grandmother’s murder. Having lived with this secret for decades, he now decides to reveal the identity of the killer in his Atticus Pünd pastiche. When he himself dies in suspicious circumstances, we must assume that his killer is not someone from a novel, but a real person, still living, and someone who cannot afford the truth behind the death of Miriam Crace to become public knowledge. I hope this is not a spoiler, but astute readers will be alerted by the beautiful cover image of Alcedo Atthis.

A long read, this, not far short of 600 pages, and Anthony Horowitz has cooked up an intriguing blend of elements. We have Golden Age Crime, complete with incriminating anagrams, arcane use of poison, the glittering world of wealthy people and, naturally, the ‘in the library’ denouement where the killer’s identity is revealed. Throw into the mix a candid view of the rather bitchy world of publishing, a rather engaging police officer, and we have something for everyone. The television version of this novel, with Lesley Manville playing Susan. will be on your screens soon. Meanwhile, the book comes out in hardback, published by Century, on 10th April.

April 6, 2025 0

NO PRECIOUS TRUTH . . . Between the covers

In my reading experience, there is no living writer so closely associated with one place than Chris Nickson. Phil Rickson had his Welsh Marches, Robert B Parker had his Boston, Colin Dexter had his Oxford and Christopher Fowler had his (peculiar) London. Sadly, Time has borne those four sons away, but Nickson’s Leeds is now rediscovered in the first of a new series.

It is February 1941. Cathy Marsden is a Sergeant in the Leeds police, but has been seconded to the Special Investigations Bureau, a unit recently set up to investigate black marketeers and other criminals looking to make money out of the war. She is astonished when her older brother, Daniel, turns up at the office. As far as she was aware he was humdrum civil servant in London, pushing pens and folders of documents from one desk to another. Like her, however, he has been seconded, but to another top secret intelligence service, and he is in Leeds to track down a dangerous Dutch double agent called Jan Minuit.

Although I have read and enjoyed them all, Nickson’s Leeds novels tend to have a similar plot, which is basically a manhunt. This enables the author’s creations from Simon Westow to Tom Harper (who gets a brief mention here) to pound the streets of the city in search of a villain. The technical aspect of this is not complicated, as it enables Nickson to put his unparalleled knowledge of the topography to good use. He is clearly in tune with a kind of of geopsychology, which enables readers to follow the footsteps of his characters across the decades, so that thoroughfares like Briggate, The Headrow and Kirkgate become as familiar as our own back yards.

If Minuit is bent on sabotage, Leeds has two prime targets for an agent of The Third Reich. One is pretty much in the open. The Kirkstall iron foundry has been producing components for military vehicles since WW1 and is hard to disguise. The Avro factory at Yeadon, however has been covered in camouflage and disguised – from the air – as open country. This ‘shadow factory’ is working day and night to produce Lancaster bombers, as well as the less celebrated (but equally vital) Anson.

Nickson has a well-established style. It is propulsive. Short sentences. A sense of urgency. Genuine narrative drive.

“Cathy turned off the ring road and started up Wheatwood Lane.The daylight was lasting longer, barely a stretch of dusk on the horizon. Ahead of her, the hill rose steeply, fields on either side, farmland.No chance to go more than a few yards.The road was filled with police cars, a pair of ambulances and the black coroner’s van.,”

“Monday dawned sour with threatening clouds, the colour of old bruises. The air was thick and damp. Yesterday’s promise of spring had vanished like a magician’s illusion. Instead, the rain felt that it like might begin at any time. At least it would deter the Luftwaffe.”

There is a thrilling conclusion to the team’s pursuit of Jan Minuit, and it is Cathy’s resilience and strength which eventually brings the spy/saboteur to his knees. Chris Nickson’s skill lies in his ability to convince us that we are standing beside his characters and sharing their world. In this case, it is Cathy Marsden’s wartime Leeds, with its rationing and privation, its fear that clear nighttime skies will be a gift to the Luftwaffe, and the ever present fear in the hearts of local women that their father, husband, brother, son or boyfriend will be the next name on the mounting list of casualties.

Nickson also reminds us that the horrors of WW1 cast a long shadow. Cathy’s father, once a strapping Yorkshire lad, was gassed in the trenches, and over thirty years later is a wreckage of a man, struggling with the essentials of existence – such as breathing. No Precious Truth will be published by Severn House on 1st April.

March 30, 2025 0

NOBODY’S FOOL . . . Between the covers

In the last Harlan Coben book I read, Think Twice, the DNA of a man who died decades ago turns up at a recent murder scene. Coben loves these ‘impossible’ scenarios, and here, he sets us another one. When he was on a gap year trip to Europe twenty-two years earlier, Sami Kierce had a passionate fling in a Spanish resort with a young fellow American called Anna. It all ended grimly when, after yet another evening fueled by booze, drugs and sex, Sami wakes, as usual, in Anna’s arms. Problem. He is covered in Anna’s blood and clutching a knife.

Now, Sami, thrown off the police force for various indiscretions, scratches a living as a PI in New York, also turning a more-or-less honest buck giving evening classes in criminology to a bunch of weirdos. When one of his classes is joined by a woman who, if not Anna is, surely, a clone, Sami does a classic double-take. So many questions, already. First up is how Sami managed to get back Stateside after the Costa del Sol incident with Anna. We do find out, eventually. Second is how ‘Anna’ appears to be living in a Connecticut mansion, deep in a forest and protected by armed heavies and belligerent dogs.

As if having one dramatic backstory weren’t enough, Sami has two. Before he had to throw in his badge, Sami was engaged to a fellow officer, Nicole Brett. Then she was murdered by a nasty piece of work called Tad Grayson, who was arrested, tried, and given a life term. But now, thanks to nifty footwork by his legal team, Grayson is out, and determined to prove that he did not kill Nicole. All of which, naturally enough, does not improve Sami’s sunny demeanour. ‘Anna’ is actually Victoria Belmond who, back in the day featured in the mother-and-father of all ‘missing heiress’ stories. Victoria disappeared on New Years Eve after a party, and what happened in the next eleven years – until she turned up sitting in a corner booth of a Maine diner – remains a mystery. Victoria was – literally – mute for many months thereafter and even, when speech returned, remembered nothing of where she had been and with whom.

After his abortive attempt to follow ‘Anna‘ on the night she came to his class, Sami has become a person of interest to the Belmond family and, much to his surprise, he is offered a small fortune to do what the police and FBI failed to do – discover the truth about Victoria’s disappearance. He even uses the Belmond’s largesse to take a quick trip to Spain along with wife Molly and their baby son, and here he finds the police officer who dealt with the case back in the day. He learns that he was the victim of a very clever scam involving ‘Anna’ and her drug hustling boyfriend.

Just when this particular reader was reflecting that this was just one more engaging – but slick and formulaic – American thriller, something truly awful happens and, 308 pages out of 414, everything I thought I understood about the plot is turned on its head. Reviewers are forever trying to think up new metaphors and catchy phrases to explain astonishing plot twists, so all I can say is that this one is up there with the best. I can also say that in the hands of a lesser writer that Harlan Coben, it would probably be a disaster, but he pulls it off with his customary flair. Nobody’s Fool was published by Penguin on 27th March.

March 26, 2025 0

A FATAL ASSUMPTION . . . Between the covers

These Bristol based Meredith & Hodge cold-case-crime novels are rather special. Their latest case seems unsolvable. For starters it’s over a decade old. Christine Hawker was making breakfast for the children with husband Mike was upstairs getting them ready for school. The smoke alarm goes off. Mike discovered it has been triggered by a pan of burned porridge. But where was Christine? Puzzled, he took the kids to school, but then he disappears, too. The case baffled everyone, and gradually slid further and further back down the “To Do” list.

Now, the case has been reopened, because Mike Hawker’s remains have been inadvertently exposed by the bucket of a digger preparing the ground for a new supermarket. Meredith & Hodge? DCI Meredith and his wife, fellow officer Patsy Hodge are the ideal husband and wife team. Except – at the moment – they’re not. Patsy is on extended sick leave after a case went horrifically awry and has fled to relatives in New Zealand. Meredith? He’s getting over jetlag in a budget Auckland hotel having flown in to try to save his marriage.

By any standard, this is a terrific police procedural novel. Yes, all the operational details are convincing and the plotting is cleverly done. For me, however, it is the dialogue that sparkles. Marcia Turner enlivens her characters by what they say, and the idioms they use. For example, an elderly man says that he is a bit ‘mutton’. Younger readers might be baffled, but Turner knows that people of this character’s generation would recognise the rhyming slang. Mutt ‘n’ Jeff were comic book characters back in the day. Mutt ‘n’ Jeff became rhyming slang for ‘deaf’ and this later evolved into ‘mutton’ – a double play on words.

Meredith’s peacemaking overture in New Zealand is favourably received, and the pair return to the UK and face the mysteries of the Hawker case. The extended family dynamic is complex, and throws up a number of grievances. In no particular order. Christine’s father died of cancer when she was in her early teens, and she had become embittered that her mother remarried so quickly, suspecting that the relationship may have been blossoming while her father was on his bed of death. Mike’s father is cantankerous and an awkward customer, and his peace of mind was not improved a few months before his son’s disappearance when a young man met him and introduced himself as his long-lost son, conceived in a youthful fling decades earlier.

Meredith’s team clutch at what seem to be increasingly flimsy straws of evidence and imperfect recollections. What about the mysterious white van seen near the Hawker’s house on the day of the abduction? It is of no help at all that several of the potential suspects worked in trades where the proverbial ‘white van’ was ubiquitous. As is probably the case in real life criminal investigations, forensic questioning unearths all manner of ill-concealed grievances and grudges within the extended family of Mike and Christine Hawker.

Despite the proverbial quote suggesting the opposite, it is inspiration rather than perspiration which finally lifts the veil for Meredith, and it comes by way of a pleasant couple of hours the detective spends with his baby grandchildren. The next day, he calls the investigative team together, and on the whiteboard writes one simple word. The culprit returns to the interview suite, confesses, and the cold case team can chalk up another success. What Marcia Turner does so well, in addition to the captivating dialogue, is to shine a light on the petty jealousies, perceived slights and debilitating grievances that plague so many families. She is spot on. We all know what she is writing about. Thankfully, it doesn’t make us all murderers, but – as they say – we have all been there. From 127 Publishing, this excellent police thriller is available now.

March 22, 2025 0

MISS BURNHAM AND THE LOOSE THREAD . . . Between the covers

It is the spring of 1925 and we are in suburban London. Rose Burnham is a talented designer-dressmaker, and has set herself up in business with her sisters. She isn’t making a fortune, but she hopes that the improving weather will bring in new orders. One of her regular customers is Phyllis Holmes, whose late father has left her relatively well off, even though she is basically a handmaiden to her demanding mother. In an attempt to broaden her social life, the shy and sheltered Phyllis has fallen into the clutches of a man – recommended by Cupid’s Arrows, a matrimonial agency – who is, to use the epithets of the time, both a bounder and a cad. Lynn Knight may have had these wonderful lines by Sir John Betjeman in mind:

“Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another—
Let us hold hands and look.”
She such a very ordinary little woman;
He such a thumping crook;
But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels
In the teashop’s ingle-nook.”

The so-called War To End All Wars has been over, at least in Europe, for seven years, but it casts a long shadow:

“Here was Mrs. Carlton, an optimistic bride when Rose first saw her at Webb and Maskry in the spring of 1914. But now a desperate wife seeking refuge in clothes. If she could fill her days with dress fittings and like distractions, she would be able to spend less time looking at her husband’s disfigured face.”

When Miss Holmes visits Rose’s workshop and tearfully confesses that she can neither pay her existing bills nor commission any new dresses because she has been swindled, Rose must act. Yes, she is sympathetic to her client’s dilemma, but if she cannot track down the man who has appropriated Phyllis’s fortune – around £40,000 in today’s money – she knows that she and her sisters will be unemployed, and probably be forced to return to their previous lives as shop assistants. Rose decides to present herself at Cupid’s Arrows as an anxious spinster, in the hope that she will be pointed in the direction of the man who stole the heart of Phyllis Holmes – not to mention her money. Lynn Knight has a wonderful eye – and ear – for the 1920s. Invited to a soirée, Rose observes her fellow guests: “

“Three men in their own larger circle, feet spread firmly apart, like a Gilbert and Sullivan chorus, were broadcasting their views to the room. Single emphatic words; coal – taxes – prices – punctuated their talk. Except for a side parting, a watch chain and a Ramsay McDonald mustache, there was little to distinguish one man from the next.”

This elegantly written novel, with its acute observations of character and social mannerisms is a reminder that a good crime novel need not be peppered with profanities or brutally murdered corpses. Finally, a word to readers whose interests tend to lie in the dark streets and lurid neon of Noir, or those who like their crime novels red in tooth and claw, with a high corpse count. Yes, this story may seem soufflé light and lacking in high drama, but it is a beautifully observed study of social mores and expectations in a society that was still trying to find its feet after an international cataclysm. The focus is almost entirely on the female characters, and the underlying theme is that of women – tens of thousands of whom took on men’s roles during the war – who are determined not to return to pre-1914 status quo.

Parallel to this world of emerging female emancipation, Lynn Knight also highlights a society where men over the age of 25 are shaped by – and judged on – what they did and where they were between 1914 and 1919. Some (literally) limped back into their pre-war world. Some struggled to survive in a land Lloyd George egregiously promised would be “fit for heroes to live in.” Others, like the tricksters of Cupid’s Arrow, turned to more reprehensible methods to make a living. This novel is published by Bantam, and is available now.

March 16, 2025 0

HER SISTER’S KILLER . . . Between the covers

All too often, opening pages of crime novels headed ‘Prologue’ are enigmatic flashbacks, and they leave the reader wondering what their relevance is to the emerging narrative. Not so here. It is short, brutal and and painfully obvious. A Tyneside detective has been called to a murder scene. The body is that of his teenage daughter. That was then.

Now. For some arcane reason, when police Sergeants are promoted to Inspector, they have to serve a term in uniform, away from their home station. So it is that Frances ‘Frankie’ Oliver – the younger sister of the girl whose murder is revealed in the prologue – is sent away from the city hub of Newcastle to the relative backwater of Berwick – England’s last outpost before the Scottish border. Her first major call-out is a serious RTA – with fatalities. In the back of a wrecked van, Frankie finds a seriously injured child, his wrist secured to a stanchion with cable ties.

Meanwhile, DCI David Stone – Frankie’s on-off romantic interest, acting on loose talk overheard at a police social function, has reopened the investigation into the unsolved murder of Joanna Oliver. Frankie’s secondment to Berwick takes on a life of its own as, amid the wreckage beside the A1, evidence emerges that an organised crime gang has been hard at work trafficking children.

Mari Hannah has penned a classic ‘two plot’, novel, in that DI Frankie Oliver is heading up a multi-agency investigation into a Bulgarian people smuggling gang, while DCI David Stone is in charge of a covert cold-case operation into the murder of Frankie’s sister. Why covert? Stone believes that a serving policeman was her killer and, the law being what it is, any involvement by Frankie Oliver would mean the case would be thrown out of court.

I have meta-tagged this book as a police procedural which, on one level, it is. There is so much more, however. Mari Hannah’s ability to create vividly authentic characters is here for all to see. In no particular order, we have retired copper Frank Oliver, father of Frances, the murdered Joanna and older sister Rae; his torment at being called to a murder scene, only to find that the victim is his own daughter is lifelong; Frankie herself is a brilliant police officer, fearless but vulnerable, intuitive but analytical; David Stone is a ruthless career policeman but, like Frank Stone, the scar on his heart from when his former lover, Jane, was shot dead by an insane gunman, has never healed; I was also particularly taken with rookie PC Indira Sharma who, apart from his boss (Detective Superintendent Bright) is Stone’s only confidante. She is new to the job, but incisive, courageous and has a gimlet eye for detail.

The best crime novels have an authentic sense of place and location and, as with her Kate Daniels novels, Mari Hannah’s heart is never far from England’s north east and the contrast between the bright lights of ‘big city’ Newcastle, and the windswept horizons of rural Northumbria. There is so much to admire about this novel but I suspect, like me, you will be left breathless by David Stone’s ruthless and remorseless interview room demolition of Joanna Oliver’s killer at the end of the book. I don’t do checklists, but if I did, I would be ticking the boxes for brilliant thriller, credible characters, narrative verve, great sense of place and bloody good read. Her Sister’s Killer is published by Orion and is available now.