With the sad demise of both Christopher Fowler and Phil Rickman, my list of English crime writers whose new books I eagerly await, is diminishing. Thankfully still with us are Sarah Hawksworth, Jim Kelly, David Mark, Chris Nickson and Nick Oldham. I can add another name to that list – Tim Sullivan. His creation, unique in modern CriFi as far as I am aware, is Bristol copper Detective Sergeant George Cross.

Cross is autistic, with all the advantages and pitfalls that condition can bring. He doesn’t understand figures of speech or sarcasm.He interprets what he is told completely literally. Socially, he comes across as inept. However, his attention to detail is astonishing, and his short term memory for figures, names and details has caused the downfall of many a criminal. Most of his colleagues deal with his oddness with tact, recognising that they have in their midst a detective with rare skills.

Here, he is investigated the brutal death – by throat cutting – of an apparently blameless master tailor, slain in the toilet of a GWR train traveling from Bristol to Paddington. Billy Titcombe and his twin sister Gwen were tailors to the very wealthy, renowned for their fine cutting and sewing. Recently, they had marketed a slightly less expensive version of their suits. The reduced price was because the actually assembly of the cut cloth had been contracted out to – no surprise – China.

Billy Titcombe’s widow, Min, is a person of interest to Cross. She is Chinese, has powerful connections to important bureaucrats i her home country, and is also a senior chemist with a firm seeking the triple Holy Grails of EV battery technology – smaller size, quicker charging and greater capacity. Hovering in the background are a strange pair of South Korean tourists, who seem to have key connections to their county’s embassy in London.

The weightier stuff of a murdered tailor, mysterious scientists and the possible involvement of MI6 plays out against a backdrop of something much lighter, although of deep concern for George. Fans of the series must be patient while I update new readers. When he was at primary school, George’s parents Christine and Raymond divorced, and George has always resented Christine’s apparent abandonment. Unbeknown to him (until relatively recently) her departure was due to the fact that Raymond was in a homosexual relationship with a colleague from work. Now, they have decided on a reconciliation, but it is fraught with problems.

This novel is unlike any previous in the series as it has international and political aspects. Tim Sullivan leaves us to draw our own conclusions from the politics, and the events described here reinforced views I have had for some time. The timeless and toxic draw of money has allowed the Chinese State to infiltrate, politely and without fuss, most every aspect of British life – including our public services and education. Just a short walk from where I am writing this, a long established independent school became “partners” with a Chinese education corporation. Given that nothing in China exists outside the State, you can draw your own conclusions from that.

On a different note, The Tailor puts George Cross in severe physical danger for the first time. How he thinks and talks his way out of trouble is utterly delightful, and you must read it for yourself. George Cross is the most original creation in British CriFi for many a year, and Tim Sullivan portrays his working life with its many eccentricities with skill, humour and candour. The Tailor is a perfect gem of a book, many faceted, with each cut surface glinting with surprises and revelations. It will be published by Head of Zeus on 16th July. To read my reviews of earlier books in the series, click this link.

Maigret’s method? It is both complex and simple. Its complexity is deeply rooted in his own humble upbringing in the country, and his understanding of the ways of villagers still in an almost feudal relationship with the Comte in his Chateau. This is tempered with his more recently acquired world-weary awareness of the men and – mostly – the women who live in the demi monde of the Paris streets. The street girls who;
“… were young and retained a certain freshness; in some respects they seemed barely more than children …. and there were too many disgusting images in their no longer sparkling eyes.”
He also has the uncanny ability to put himself inside the minds and metaphorical shoes of witnesses and suspects. He is also deeply empathetic, particularly with criminals who are the victims of circumstances and their own human weakness.
The simplicity lies in one abiding principle. Maigret is slow to judge and never, ever jumps to premature conclusions. Someone asks him,
“Do you still think he killed Lulu?”
His answer occurs frequently both on the page and on the screen;
“I don’t think anything”
Here I quote the preface to the Penguin editions of the Simenon novels.
“Simenon always resisted identifying himself with his famous literary character, but acknowledged that they shared an important characteristic.
“”My motto, to the extent that I have one, has been noted often enough, and I’ve always conformed to it. It’s the one I’ve given to old Maigret, who resembles me in certain points…..”Understand and judge not.””
Rather less cerebral, but pivotal to many of the stories and their adaptations, is Simenon’s love of boating. His aunt kept a shop on the banks of the Meuse and, as a child, he would help out there. He loved pleasure boating, but the massive and ponderous progress of the huge barges patiently hauling their cargoes along the Seine, or the wide canals, left a lasting impression, and it is no coincidence that so many of the novels (and their adaptations) feature barge captains, lock keepers, waterside cafes and their patrons.
One of the many joys of the Maigret novels is Simenon’s love of superimposing bizarre or incongruous details onto the squalid business of murdered citizens. In Maigret and the Man on the Bench, the body of Louis Thouret is found in a dingy alley with a knife in his back. When his widow is taken to the mortuary she is flabbergasted to see that he is wearing greenish-yellow shoes and a bright red tie. She avers that she would never have allowed him out of the house ‘looking like that’.
As in all other long running crime series, time stands still in the Maigret novels. In The Late Monsieur Gallet (1931) we learn that Maigret is already 45 years old, heavily built and – according to the translation I read – wears a bowler hat. He was born, then, in 1886. This probably explains why he didn’t fight in WW1, because at the age of 28, he was already a policeman, and probably exempt from conscription. This early novel does not feature The Faithful Four. Neither does Madame Maigret appear, except for the briefest of mentions right at the end. Incidentally the solution to Monsieur Gallet’s demise is one of the most bizarre and unlikely all the novels, but that is another story.
The final full length Maigret novel was written in 1972, so in terms of society, ambience, manners and procedure the earlier books in particular must fall into the genre of historical crime fiction. Everything is so different; Maigret and his officers drink all the time; they take regular breaks for meals, despite occasionally pulling ‘all-nighters’ with difficult interrogations. There is, occasionally, violence meted out to prisoners; Maigret answers an accusation of such treatment by a defence barrister by admitting,
“I boxed his ears, as I might have done to my own son.”
When the barrister asks him if he actually has children of his own, the Chief Inspector has to dig deep into personal regret by replying that he had a daughter, but she didn’t survive. We are left to assume that Madame Maigret, years ago, miscarried, or that the baby died soon after birth. Maigret always treats children fondly, and Simenon often puts him into schools, or introduces children as witnesses.Think Maigret and the Seven Little Crosses or Maigret Goes to School
Simenon continued to publish Maigret novels during WW2, but wisely steered clear of what the actual Paris Police Prefecture were doing at the time, which was providing a very efficient helping hand to the Gestapo in their quest to round up and deport Jews. The author had his own brush with the system when he was accused of being Jewish. He was able to refute the accusation with appropriate certificates of birth and baptism.

Where, then, does Simenon stand in the pantheon of great 20th century crime writers? In part one, I suggested that he would share the podium with Conan Doyle and Chandler. “No Christie?”, comes the  cry, followed by equally impassioned advocacies for Sayers, Mitchell and, in the espionage field, “Le Carre, Deighton and Ambler. I’ll stick with my three. We must not forget that Simenon was certainly the most prolific of the three. As well as the Maigret stories, he wrote longer, more literary novels which he classed as ‘Romans durs’ (literally ‘hard novels’) which we might classify ask ‘Noir’. These have not had the enduring appeal, at least for English readers, as the Maigret stories. Apart from the four longer books, all the Sherlock Holmes adventures were short stories, as were the Brigadier Gerard tales, The full novels such as The White Compan, Sir Nigel, and Micah Clark are little read today.
For me, the decider is that here in the UK most of us read Maigret in translation. We can never be entirely sure that what we read is entirely what Simenon intended. In contrast, when Chandler wrote –  “There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.” – we know precisely what he meant, even if we have been no further west than Llandudno. Philip Marlowe was far too complex and conflicted ever to attract TV producers, so we must be grateful that the relative brevity of the Holmes and Maigret tales have made them them attractive to producers and popular with viewers.

Loren D Estleman’s Detroit PI Amos Walker is reassuringly traditional. It is close to a century since Dashiell Hammett introduced us to Sam Spade, and his legacy includes such gentlemen as Messrs Marlowe, Archer, Hammer, McGee and Spencer. I must add Janet Roger’s little known Newman (Shamus Dust 2019) into the mix, as that was the best non-Chandler PI novel I have ever read (and re-read).

Walker’s latest prospective client is Sage Holland, a woman dubbed by the tabloid press as The Black Widow. She has been tried and convicted of poisoning her husband, but on appeal, the conviction, for ‘Man One” ( first degree manslaughter) has been overturned on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct. Now, she is being pursued and harassed by her late husband’s brother Greg, and she wants Walker’s help. He is partly convinced, despite this gem of an exchange:

“Why did Dave’s brother suspect you poisoned him?”
“He hates me. He always did.”
“He needed more than that to go on to arrive at poison. Ricin is only detectable during autopsy. Until then, it looks like a stroke or a heart attack.”
“Well, there were my first two husbands. They were about the same age as Dave when they died.”

Estleman never wastes an opportunity to remind us that Walker is a low budget operator:

“I tipped a hand toward the customer’s chair. She went to it, slinging a glance around the luxury accoutrements, the obsolete file cases, the Sunday school desk, a piece of reclaimed carpet from a five-year-old auto show. The much older and even more obsolete party, making himself uncomfortable behind the desk.”

Walker’s eye for detail is downbeat buy brutally accurate. He describes a neighbourhood loan shark:

“You had to look beyond the green plaid jacket and pre-tied bow tie, the baggy grin and the barber school haircut to see the dead eyes of an eel. And behind them, the brain that worked on a system of gears and pulleys like the machine on his desk.”

Walker enlists the help of his occasional assistant, Rafael Mesquino, an illegal immigrant who made it to America ‘with the bananas and tarantulas’. Mesquino fails to make a meeting. Worried, Walker finds the little man shot dead in his meagre lodgings, and  begins to to comprehend just how much trouble Sage Holland is bringing into his life.We briefly meet Greg Holland when, fed up with being stalked, Walker invites him inside for a chat. The next time we see him, he is still in his car, but slumped over the steering wheel, dead from a small calibre gunshot to the head.

Following the furrow ploughed by writers such as Chandler and Robert B Parker should, in theory, be easy, but it has its pitfalls. Readers are well versed in the tropes, the seasoned dialogue and the cynical observations. Write something slightly out of tune, and you will be found out. Estleman sticks to the script, and even manages to bring his own nuances to this well established genre. The plot is every bit as complex and circuitous as that of The Big Sleep, but Estleman doesn’t leave us wondering who killed the chauffeur. Man One will be published by Severn House on 3rd February.

I must declare an interest. There are few books that have given me as.much pleasure as those in the Bradecote and Catchpole series by Sarah Hawkwood. I began the latest, Feast for the Ravens, with a great sense of anticipation. For newcomers, we are in 12th century Worcestershire, at the turbulent time of the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda. Bradecote is the Undersheriff of the county, the gnarled and cynical Catchpole is his Serjeant, while young Walkelin is the Underserjeant..

Near the manor of Ribbesford, up in the woods searching for hazelnuts, two youngsters find a corpse. It is that of a knight, still clutching his sword. There is a local legend that in the woods lives a shapeshfting spirit who can switch between her human persona and that of a raven. Certainly, the real life corvids have dined royally on the dead man’s eyes. Eventually, Bradecote and his men arrive on the scene, and before too long they identify the body as that of Ivo de Mitton, a local man long since estranged from his family due to his alleged fatal arson attack on the decades earlier. It is important to bear in mind that the Norman invasion is less than a century old; the inhabitants of hamlets like Ribbesford are almost entirely of Saxon stock, while those in power-like Bradecote- are Normans. The main anxiety among the villagers is that the powers that be will invoke murdrum fine.

The murdrum fine was  a financial penalty imposed by Norman rulers in England after the Norman Conquest, specifically targeting Anglo-Saxon communities . If a Norman was murdered and the killer wasn’t quickly identified and brought to justice, the local area (often a hundred, encompassing several villages) would be required to pay a substantial fine to the crown. This fine was intended to deter Anglo-Saxons from killing Normans and to generate revenue for the Norman rulers.

The plot revolves around family rivalry, a murderous assault on a manor and its inhabitants, and a brutal attack on a young woman. The violence occurred decades ago and both its perpetrators and victims are all thought to be dead. But one person survived, horrifically mutilated, and now she lives a secret existence in a limestone cave, her only friends being the ravens who inhabit the forests and rugged cliffs that tower above the Severn. The architect of this ancient misery has passed from pubic memory. Perhaps he was killed in knightly battle, or perished in the unforgiving desert on a crusade? Bradecote and his Serjeants slowly pull together the threads of the mystery and, in a terrifying climax, the ravens intervene to ensure that justice, of a kind, is served.

Common sense says that there cannot be much left of the 12th century landscape around Pibbesford. The hills haven’t changed shape, and the majestic Severn still flows where it always did, but nearly nine centuries of enclosures, housing development and transport links have changed the topography for ever. Sarah Hawkswood, however, seems to have walked every track, forded every stream, and supped her pottage in every long since lost manorial hall. It is this astonishing evocation of landscape which makes her books so distinctive. Feast for the Ravens will be published by Allison & Busby on 18th September. If you click on the author image below, it will take you to my reviews of earlier Bradecote and Catchpoll novels.

This is one of those books, and I use the italics advisedly. The basic story  that we are led to believe is that a married couple called Hope and Drew have entered into surrogacy arrangement with a woman called Lauren. Presumably, this involved Lauren’s ova and Drew’s sperm, and thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, the two combined in Hope’s womb, and she gave birth to a boy called Sam. Again I use ‘presumably’, because the bulk of the book comprises first person narratives from the three main characters, and we have no way of knowing if they are reliable accounts or not.

The book begins in the present day, and Lauren, having taken Sam from Hope and Drew, is living in a remote fishing village in Spain. Meanwhile, an Interpol warrant has been served on her and she is visited by the Spanish police. Sam is packed off with Lauren’s new boyfriend to stay with his relatives, and Lauren returns to Britain to face the music. So far, so straightforward.

Then the narrative goes into recall/split time frame mode, full of ‘two years earlier’ and ‘six weeks later’ chapter headings. Personally, from an enjoyment point of view, I hate this device, but so many authors seem to use it, so it was a case of ‘grimace and bear it’. It’s almost certainly just a personal thing. Different first person narratives are one thing, and I can think of no better example in literature than William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, but there, the time frame didn’t confuse things. It was simply different people observing events in their own way, and the narrators were witnessing the same events  at the same time.

What follows next is a master class in deception from Ruth Mancini. She lures us into one false assumption after another, until we have Lauren, Hope and Drew in a virtual suspects’ line-up, leaving us to look into their eyes trying to decide who is lying and who is telling us the truth. The answer, when it finally comes, is a devilishly clever solution to what seems an impossible conundrum. The Day I Lost You is a very apt title, as it could be argued that it applies equally to the three main adult characters. Each has lost someone and so, in a way, this is three different tragedies woven into one powerful story. I suppose that there is a happy ending, of sorts, but Ruth Mancini shines a bright and revealing light into the lives of women who long to have children, and how they suffer when fate – and biology- seem to conspire against them. This book will be published by Century on 31st July.

I have a mint copy up for grabs in a prize draw, and entry is simple. Follow me on X at @MaliceAfore (I will reciprocate), then DM me the code printed below. You will then be in the digital hat, and I will draw a winner at 10.00pm on Monday 4th August. UK addresses only.

46329

This is the fourth in Jim Kelly’s excellent series set in Cambridge during WW2, featuring senior police detective Eden Brooke. If you click the images below, you will be able to read my reviews of the previous three novels in the sequence.

Brooke served in The Great War, but had the misfortune to fall prisoner to the Turks. The Ottomans, rather like their Japanese brethren twenty years later, were brutal – not to say sadistic – captors, and Brooke’s eyes were permanently damaged. He and his wife Claire are certainly ‘a family at war’, however. Their daughter Joy’s husband is a submariner, while son Luke is away training in Scotland for some ‘hush hush’ activity.

Brooke has plenty on his hands. A dead man is discovered in a city air raid shelter. Cause of death? Wrists neatly slit. Too neatly, according the medical officer; suicides rarely if ever manage to slit the second wrist properly after self-inflicting the first wound. And why does the unidentified man have Brooke’s telephone number inked on his hand? Hundreds of miles away, on board his submarine, Lieutenant Ben Ridding has to examine a faulty periscope, which recently caused two torpedoes to miss their target by a considerable margin. He finds that one of the lenses has been purposely set askew. It was manufactured at the Vulcan works in Cambridge. A coded message to the Admiralty is passed on to Brooke, who begins an investigation.

Kelly has a magnificent eye (and ear) for period detail. Here, Brooke takes a witness to the morgue to investigate a corpse.

“Brooke led Mrs. Brodie to the table: twenty strides, the metal Blakey’s* on his shoes striking the quarry tiles. It was a ceremony with all the subtle horror and indecent haste of an execution.”

*Blakey’s were little metal plates nailed onto the leather soles and  of shoes to preserve them

Another two dead men are discovered, each in the vicinity of a shelter. The dead men found in the shelters have two things in common. Each has minor disability, thus eliminating them from service in the forces, and each had stayed at The Laurels, a rather strange guest house outside the city. Despite posting a police ‘spy’ inside the Vulcan works, the latest batch of periscopes reaches its destination in Barrow-in-Furness. From a shipment of twelve, two have been sabotaged.

Jim Kelly’s other two crime fiction series – The Philip Dryden Ely novels and the Peter Shaw books, set a little to the north in Kings Lynn, are dominated by the pull of the the landscape. Eden Brooke’s world is more intimate, centred on the college gateways and narrow city byways of Cambridge, but he is ever aware that just beyond the city lights (now dimmed by wartime regulations) is the primeval vastness of The Fens, now largely drained, but still desolate and sparsely populated.

“The Fens, as Brooke had been taught by his father in a lecture illustrated by a map which still hung in his old bedroom at Newnham Croft, lay in three levels: North, Middle and South. The north stretched to Lincoln across the silty fields south-west of the Wash.”

Despite the apparent failure to  solve the mystery of the periscopes, Brooke turns his attention to The Mystery of The Laurels. If that sounds like a story from a Sherlock Homes collection, it is appropriate because, using an attention to detail worthy of the great man, Brooke discovers a complex and lucrative conspiracy whereby wealthy young men can pay to avoid being called up into the armed forces. In WW1, it took Britain over two years to resort to conscription, but it was re-introduced  in 1939, almost immediately after war was declared. In solving the murders, however, Brooke has inadvertently trodden on some very important toes. Involved, although rather at a tangent to the call-up conspiracy, is a notable British scientist connected to a major defence project. As in aside, it is worth noting that while Hitler was obsessed with what have been called ‘wonder weapons’ (at the expense of solid and reliable military kit) Churchill was fascinated by rather weird developments. One such features in this novel. If you Google Project Habbakuk you will discover more.

Once again using a potent blend of observation and intuition, Brooke solves the periscope problem, and the book ends with a joyful family reunion, but one tinged with uncertainty. Brooke is an endearing character, a deeply thoughtful and ascetic man in some ways, but with unlimited courage and a steely sense of duty. The Cambridge Siren is published by Allison & Busby, and available now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were exciting times in the dungeon of Newcastle’s castle last night at the launch of AD Bergin’s new novel The Wicked of the Earth. The audience listened to suitably bloodthirsty excerpts read by the audio book narrator, Cliff Chapman.

Bergin’s novel is set in Newcastle in 1650 and tells of a former Parliament army officer, James Archer and his investigation into the notorious Witchcraft trials, and his search for his sister, who was caught up in the turmoil.

To read my review of this excellent historical mystery, click the image below.