London

JUST KILL . . . Between the covers.

Leah Hutch is a detective working with London’s Metropolitan Police, and she has two murders to solve. That of Ray King is bizarre. His corpse is found on the downstairs sofa of Gabriel McMahon – who swears he has never met the dead man. Sarah Franks, a teacher with a drug problem is found with her throat cut in her dingy flat.
It is an unwritten rule of crime fiction, at least in Britain, that police detectives have to be emotionally damaged in some way. I could list examples, but most CriFi fans will know what I mean. Leah Hutch ticks most of the boxes. Her father, Eli Carson, murdered her mother and boyfriend when Leah was little, and is now serving a life sentence. Leah was brought up by her paternal grandmother, Margaretta who was loving – but in her own peculiar way.
A friend from Hutch’s schooldays, Sami Mograbi, is found near the scene of Sarah’s murder, but there is no evidence to connect him with the killing.There is also an apparently unconnected parallel plot. A teenager, Zechariah Okoro – known as Zed – is troubled, because his mother has gone missing. The conundrum about what Zed has to do with the story resolves in dramatic fashion. The boy, alone in his mother’s bouse for 24 hours, has noticed a man watching the property. After following the stranger across London, Zed sees the man leave his home, apparently for a run. Zed breaks in. The next thing we know is that Hutch and her sidekick Randle have decided to pay Gabriel McMahon a visit. No reply to their knocks. They phone him and hear his mobile ringing inside the house. After forcing an entry, they find two people. McMahon is dead. Very dead, his blood spattered over the walls. The second person is a terrified Zed, in a foetal crouch, hiding in a wardrobe.
Approaching the half way point of the novel, we have are led to believe that there is a professional killer at work. We know him as Chris. He is currently employed by someone as yet unknown, and we assume he is responsible for the deaths of Sarah Franks, Ray King, Gabriel McMahon and – possibly – the disappearance of Zed’s mother. My initial reaction was that Chris doesn’t ‘disappear’ people – he simply murders them and leaves their corpses to provide puzzles for the police.
Zed’s mother, Ogechi Okoro, is eventually found alive, after being kidnapped and tortured. Hutch finally discovers a link between Okoro, McMahon and Mograbi. They all studied medicine together at university. But what of Sarah Franks, and Ray King? That question is temporarily pushed to one side when Mograbi is found dead, killed by the same clinical slash to the carotid artery that ended the lives of Sarah Franks and Gabriel McMahon.
Hutch discovers something else about the three former medical students – they each took time out to do what was basically work experience in Ghana. Hutch flies to Ghana to investigate – unofficially – and what she discovers not only links the three med students, but also Ray King and Sarah Franks. We also learn that a woman called Bisi, who we know has been followed by the mysterious killer, Chris, was also in the same Accra hospital.
There is yet another turn in the plot road, but this time it is more of a hairpin than a gentle bend. The killer of Sarah, Gabriel and Sami is brought to justice, and the final pages hint at a resolution to one of Hutch’s Great Unknowns – the location of her murdered mother’s grave.
British Nigerian Emmy-nominated producer, Remi Kone has worked on a number of well-known television dramas, such as KILLING EVE, SPOOKS and LEWIS. She lives in London, and Just Kill is her second novel. It is cleverly written, with a veritable vortex of a plot, is published by Quercus and is available now.

May 7, 2026 0

WITCH HUNT . . . Between the covers

Detective Superintendent Grace O’Malley, of London’s Met Police, is not going to feature in a Sunday evening TV prime time cosy crime series any time soon. She rides a Harley, is rude and abrasive and, for good measure, her husband has a penchant for BDSM sex with students looking to supplement their income. In another part of the city (it is Halloween) we have Juliette Boucher, a TV journalist. She receives a bizarre phone call from a man who calls himself the Witchfinder General. He tells her to be on Westminster bridge just before midnight, where she will witness something beyond newsworthy.

And spectacular it is. And gory. A motor launch comes into view, and it is on fire. On it is standing a woman. She burns, too. Then, there is a series of explosions, and the boat sinks. Here’s the thing. It was the so-called Witchfinder General who phoned Grace to tip her off about her husband’s sexual proclivities. When the police try to trace the owner of the boat, they find that it was sold by a retired civil servant to a man called – wait for it – Matthew Hopkins.

For younger readers, the real Matthew Hopkins was a Protestant zealot who, around the time of the English Civil War, toured the eastern counties of the country – Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire – in search of those he called witches. It is estimated that he had over two hundred women – mostly guilty of nothing more than being herbalists or natural healers – violently put to death.
The man who has named himself after this monster is clearly very clever, has sources inside the police force, and is hell-bent on recreating a reign of terror. His first victim, the woman in the boat? Veronica Crosse, a TV medium and celebrity speaker.

The authors have added another (potentially corrosive) spice to their recipe, and one that is not directly connected to the man who has modeled himself on a 17th century serial killer. Grace’s husband Dominic is himself a copper, but not just any old plod. He is Assistant Commissioner Dominic Boswell, of New Scotland Yard.

We are introduced to a bizarre clergyman named Moses Blackmore, who is the incumbent of a tiny parish near Yeovil. He wears a long black coat, a string tie and has a long silver beard. His human flock (he is also a farmer) are less of a congregation than a cult, and are in thrall to Blackmore’s fire and brimstone brand of protestant fundamentalism. While the police procedural aspect of the book had, this far, been impeccably convincing, I realised that there would be a horror-fantasy element to the narrative, too. That is not a problem. I am a huge fan of John Connolly’s Charlie Parker novels, in which he effortlessly blends the PI genre with the supernatural. It’s just that these days, the Church of England simply does not allow an old fashioned vicar to run a single parish. In real life, Moses Blackmore would be in charge of at least four or five other nearby parishes. And, most likely, he would be a woman.

A little over a third of the way through, there is a dramatic raid and arrest in an upmarket London hotel but, of course, it’s the wrong man, and yet another example of the WFG playing the police like a Stradivarius. There is a second murder, this time of another elderly woman spiritualist, hanged from a church tower and then burned. The WFG (and his associates) cause the filmed scene to be played out on a big screen at a huge public gathering in London on Bonfire Night.

Grace eventually cracks the case (or so she thinks) and finds that the perpetrators are connected to some of the most powerful and influential people in government and public service. There is the mother of all twists in the final pages, but I don’t do spoilers, so you will have to find out for yourself. Witch Hunt is an imaginative and energetic canter through the fields of corruption, revenge, and madness, and it will be published by Severn House on 5th May.

May 3, 2026 0

DEADLY FORCE . . . Between the covers

Being ‘late to the party’ in terms of long running crime fiction series is an occupational hazard for amateur reviewers. Yes, we try to cover the ‘big ones’ by such authors as Val McDermid (Tony Hill/Karen Pirie) Peter James (Roy Grace), Mark Billingham (Tom Thorne), John Connolly (Charlie Parker) or David Mark (Aector McAvoy) but there are only so many hours in the day, and sometimes we miss things. The Bill Slider books by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles are, judging by this book, one such, and a series that I regret not discovering years ago.
If I may, I will write briefly about the economics of publishing, as it is relevant here. Some crime writers are, relatively speaking, household names, and their books are found on the shelves of TESCO and ASDA. This will be a little while after launch date, and the price will be less than the Amazon tab. In another universe altogether, let us look at libraries. Usually run by County Councils outside of the big cities, these amazing institutions loan books, free of charge to members. Although we are talking pennies, authors receive royalties when their books are borrowed. Severn House is a publisher that specialises in crime books to be sold to libraries. Their Amazon prices reflect this. After all, who would pay £21.98 for Deadly Force, as good as it is? The answer is – buyers for libraries. I am not sure if that is what they actually pay, but that is what Amazon tells us. Of course your ‘free’ library book has already been paid for – by you – through your council tax. Nowadays, local libraries have had to become more ‘inclusive’ by providing computer and internet access to increase footfall, which is all the bean counters at County Hall understand. Incidentally, Severn House has now been taken over by Joffe Books, a very different kind of publisher.
Digression over, so back to the book. DI Bill Slider is an astute and amenable Met Police copper working out of Shepherd’s Bush. For out of towners , this is an area of west London, seedy but expensive in terms of housing, well served by London Transport. A body is found in a silted up canal. The corpse is quickly identified as that of Peter Bentley, an unremarkable policeman, working out of Notting Hill. He has been battered to death by someone who was probably, wielding a tire iron.
Slider’s enquiries are painstaking, but some facts emerge. Bentley is estranged from his wife, has a zero social media presence and, in his private life, wore an expensive diamond ear stud – which is missing from his corpse.Just about half way through the book, the story takes a delicious twist. The diamond earring is found and, long story short, it was a gift to Bentley from his lover, a wealthy 50-something former actress. Unfortunately for Slider and his team, this new information solves nothing, and only sends a middle-aged Polish couple into the court system for petty theft.
Then, from what seems like a complete dead-end, Slider’s persistence finds a thread of evidence and, when he tugs it, the fabric protecting the killer of Peter Bentley rapidly unravels and the killer – uncomfortably close to home – is brought to justice. This is a beautifully written and literate thriller that occasionally sparkles with sharp comedy. Deadly Force will be published by Severn House on 5th May.

May 1, 2026 0

ONE MAN DOWN . . . Between the covers

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

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

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

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

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

July 30, 2025 0

THE BETRAYAL OF THOMAS TRUE . . . Between the covers

Thomas True is the son of the Rector of Highgate. Now a sought after London suburb, in the early 18th century, at the time in which this novel is set, it was a country village. The young man has, for some years, been aware of his homosexuality and, unfortunately, so has his fire and brimstone father, who has done his best to beat out of his son what he sees as ‘the Devil’. Thomas has saved up his allowance and is determined to escape the misery.

Unknown to his parents, Thomas has been writing to his cousin Amelia in London, with a view to living with her and her parents. Within minutes of jumping down from the mail coach into the mire of a London street, he has been drawn into a world that is both breathlessly exciting and profoundly dangerous. The world of the molly houses in London was already well established, and would continue as a forbidden attraction well beyond the scandal of the Cleveland Street raid in 1889 in which Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor was implicated, although there has never been any conclusive evidence that he was a customer of this male brothel. A molly? There is a lengthy explanation here.

Thomas meets a young man called Jack Huffins who is quick to recognise the lad as a kindred spirit, and he introduces him to Mother Clap’s which is, I suppose, the eighteenth century equivalent of a gay nightclub. We also meet a significant figure in the story, a burly stonemason called Gabriel Griffin. Working on the recently completed St Paul’s cathedral is his day job, but by night he is the bouncer at Mother Clap”s. He is also a man in perpetual mourning, haunted by his wife and child who died together three years earlier.

Hovering in the background to the revelry at Mother Clap’s is The Society for the Reformation of Manners. They actually existed, as did Mother Clap’s. The Society was, collectively, a kind of Mary Whitehouse (remember her?) of the day, and they existed to root out what they saw as moral decay, particularly of a sexual nature. They were far more sinister than the Warwickshire-born Christian campaigner however, as back then, men convicted of sodomy, buggery and ‘unnatural behaviour’ could be – and often were – hanged. The Society has inserted ‘ a rat’ into Mother Clap’s community. Quite simply, he is paid by his masters to identify participants, and give their names to two particularly repugnant officers of The Society, Justice Grimp and Justice Myre (Grimpen Mire, anyone?) The main plot centres on the search for the identity of ‘the rat’.

At times, the picture that AJ West (his website is here) paints of London is as foetid, grotesque and full of nightmarish creatures as that seen when zooming in to a detail in one of Hieronymus Bosch’s apocalyptic paintings. West’s London is largely based on history, but there are moments, such as when Thomas and Gabriel are captured by a tribe of street urchins in their dazzlingly strange lair, that the reader slips off the real world and drifts somewhere else altogether.

What the author does well is to show up the anguish and insecurity of the men who feel compelled to posture and pose as mollies, in an attempt to nullify the boredom of their respectable family lives. The bond of love that develops between Thomas and Gabriel is genuine, and certainly more powerful than the silly nicknames and grotesque flouncing at Mother Clap’s. The book ends with heartbreak. Or does it? Given that Gabriel is susceptible to ghosts, he is perhaps not a reliable narrator, and AJ West’s last few paragraphs suggest that the Society has, like the President of the Immortals at the end of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, ended its sport with Thomas and Gabriel. This paperback edition is out today, 3rd July, from Orenda Books.

July 2, 2025 0

KING DIDO . . . Past times, old crimes

Alexander Baron (1917 – 1999) is a writer who has returned to the consciousness of the reading public in recent times because the Imperial War Museum have republished his two classic WW2 novels From The City, From The Plough, There’s No Home, and the third in the trilogy, the collection of short stories The Human KInd. His compassion and his acute awareness of the highs and lows of men and women at war have embedded the trilogy into the culture of WW2, just as the poems of Owen, Sassoon and Gurney are inescapably linked with The Great War. King Dido (1969) is a book of a very different kind.

We are in the East End of London, and it is the summer of 1911, not long after the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary. Dido is, by trade, a dock worker but, after a violent encounter with the district’s 1911 version of the Krays, he takes over the streets and becomes a kind of Reg. Not Ron, because Dido is not a psychopath, but the ‘tributes’ he collects make him a decent living. After a turbulent back alley encounter with a young waitress called Grace, Dido does ‘right thing’ and marries her. They live in redecorated rooms above the rag recovery business Dido’s mother runs. There has been a trend in crime fiction in recent years, which I call ‘anxiety porn’, but it is nothing new. More politely, these are known as ‘domestic thrillers.’ Mostly, they describe perfectly ordinary people whose lives gradually disintegrate, not through epic events, but because normal social tensions, misunderstandings, misplaced ambitions and tricks of fate turn their lives upside down. So it is here. Grace, blissfully unaware of how Dido earns his money, tries to put her feet on the next series of rungs in the ladder that leads to gentrification. However, the family’s journey on the board game of life becomes, via the snakes, a downward one, and it is a painful descent.

Baron grew up as Joseph Alexander Bernstein in Hackney, but he was actually born In Maidenhead, his mother having been evacuated there as a result of Zeppelin raids on London. His father was a master furrier, so it is clear that there is nothing autobiographical about his characterisation of Dido Peach. What is evident in the book is that Baron was aware of the existence of subtle strata within the East End poor. By 1911 the Huguenots had long since moved away, leaving such places as Christ Church Spitalfields and the elegant houses in Fournier Street as their memorials. There remained what could be called the ‘dirt’ poor, and then the ‘genteel’ poor – such as Mrs Peach and her family. What doesn’t feature in the novel, but was exactly contemporaneous, was the upsurge in activity by Eastern European activists, mostly exiles from Russia. The Houndsditch Murders and the resultant Siege of Sidney Street was that same year, while The Tottenham Outrage had been two years earlier. Both events remain writ large in East End history.

In the end, Dido’s downfall is a Hardy-esque orchestration of poor decisions, coincidence and the malice of others. He is denied the dramatic end given to Michael Henchard, Jude Fawley and – of course – Tess. Instead he is doomed – like Clym Yeobright – to still live in the world in which he once stood tall, but bowed and crippled now, alone except for the memories of the people and times he has lost. Baron’s prose here, just as in his better known books, is vivid, clear and full of insights.

June 16, 2025 0

DEATH OF AN OFFICER . . . Between the covers

Detective Chief Inspector Frank (christened Francisco) Merlin is a thoroughly likeable and convincing central character in this murder mystery, set in 1943 London. As in all good police novels, there is more than one murder. The first we are privy to is that of a seemingly inoffensive consultant surgeon, Mr Dev Sinha, found dead in his bedroom, apparently bludgeoned with a hefty statue of Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god. Sinha’s wife has been diagnosed with a serious mental illness, and has been packed off to an institution near Coventry ( no jokes please) but when she is interviewed she is more lucid than those around her have been led to believe.

Added to Merlin’s list of corpses is that of south London scrap dealer called Reg Mayhew, apparently victim of the delayed detonation of a German bomb. Unfortunately for the investigators, the word ‘corpse’, suggesting an intact body, is misleading. Mayhew’s proximity to the blast has given the lie to the old adage about someone’s inability to be in two places at once.

Clumsily concealed beneath bomb site rubble in the East End is the well-dressed (evening attire and dress shirt) remains of Andrew Corrigan, a Major in the US army. It seems he was a ‘friend’ of a rich and influential MP, Malcolm Trenton.

Merlin’s investigations take him towards the contentious issue of Indian independence, and it seems that the murdered consultant was a member of a committee comprising prominent British Indians who support Subhas Chandra Bose, a firebrand nationalist who is seeking support from Nazi Germany and Japan, in the belief that they would win the war, and then look favourably on an independent India.

Like all good historical novelists, Mark Ellis has done his homework to make sure we feel we are in the London of spring 1943. We are aware of the recent Bethnal Green Tube disaster, that Mr Attlee is a key member of Churchill’s coalition government, and that a Dulwich College alumni has just had his latest novel, The Lady in the Lake, published. We also know that the Americans are in town. As Caruso sang in 1917, the boys are definitely ‘Over There!‘Among the 1943 intake is Bernie Goldberg, a grizzled American cop, now attached to Eisenhower’s London staff.

I am old, but not so ancient that I can remember WW2 London. Many fine writers, including Evelyn Waugh in his Sword of Honour trilogy, and John Lawton with his Fred Troy novels, have set the scene and established the atmosphere of those times, and Mark Ellis treads in very worthy footsteps. There is the dismal food, the ever present danger of air raids, the sheer density of the evening darkness and the constant reminder of sons, brothers and husbands risking their lives hundreds of miles away. Ellis also reminds us that for most decent people, the war was a time to pull together, tighten the belt, shrug the shoulders and get on with things. Others, the petty and not so petty criminals, saw the chance to exploit the situation, and get rich quickly.

Central to the plot is ‘the love that dare not speak its name‘ in the shape of an exclusive club organised by Maltese gangsters. Mark Ellis reminds us that there were no rainbow pedestrian crossings or Pride flags flying over public buildings in 1943, and that there was an ever-present danger that men in public life were susceptible to blackmail on account of their sexual preferences. With a mixture of good detective work and a bit of Lady Luck, Merlin and his team solve the murders. The book’s title is ambiguous, in that Major Andrew Corrigan certainly fits the bill, but there is one other officer casualty – I will leave you to find out for yourself his identity by reading this impeccably atmospheric and thoroughly entertaining period police thriller. It will be published by Headline Accent on 29th May.

May 26, 2025 0

INNOCENT GUILT . . . Between the covers

The book begins with one of those ‘impossible’ events beloved of crime writers since the 19th century. It is a mystery involving not a locked room but a locked mind. A woman, later identified as Fiona Garvey, presents herself at a London police station covered in blood. Carrying a baseball bat. She is catatonic. Silent. Somewhere else altogether. Then, a body is found, battered to death in a London Park. It appears to be the mortal remains of Alistair Cowan, Fiona Garvey’s employer.

Investigating detective Leah Hutch has problems of her own. The woman who brought her up, Margaretta, has just died. Margaretta solicitor reveals to Leah that her actual father, who she neither knew nor ever met, was Eli Carson, Margaretta’s son and a former police officer. And Eli is serving two life terms for murdering his wife and the man he suspected was cuckolding him. The author then deepens the mystery with two further revelations. First, the blood on the baseball bat isn’t that of Alistair Cowan, but that on Garvey’s hands and body is. Just to set our minds spinning yet more feverishly, DNA tests on the body in the park do not match that of Alistair Cowan. But hang on … Chapter Four is a description of Alistair Cowan, lying somewhere, grievously injured, fighting for life so, as some people say, “what the actual ….?”

As if things were not complicated enough for DI Hutch, we have Odie Reid muddying the waters. She is – or was – an top investigative journalist for a tabloid newspaper. As print newspaper sales plummet, Odie’s career takes a parallel course. She knows Leah Hutch, as they were once both aspiring news hounds. Now, Leah bats for the opposition, and Odie needs to create the story that will save her career. The man police assumed was Alistair Cowan is identified, Cowan is found – just about – alive and after the forensic evidence leads the police to accuse Fiona Garvey of his murder she is remanded in custody.

Then, a third man, Jake Munro is attacked, this time fatally. He was a successful businessman who had bought up several firms, with consequent redundancies, so was he killed by a vengeful former employee? One such man, Eddie Adeola, had committed suicide after failing to get another job, and his wife – a strange and violent woman called Temi, after attacking police sent to interview her, has gone into hiding. Leah Hutch discovers a strange link between Temi and Fiona Garvey, and it is their attendance at events put on by a man called Brendan Klee. When Hutch and her sergeant Ben Randle interview him they are unsure if he is a fraud, a mentalist, a lifestyle guru, a shaman – or a blend of all four.

The denouement reflects a phenomenon which runs through the book like a spine, albeit one warped by scoliosis; this phenomenon is the endless – and almost unsolvable – mystery of what causes apparently decent people to commit acts of terrible evil, and whether or not those acts can be excused (or at least explained) by horrors inflicted on the perpetrators when they were much younger. Leah Hutch is a flawed – but credible heroine – with a past as steeped in horror as the worst of the crimes she has to investigate. Remi Kone is a British Nigerian Emmy-nominated producer; she has worked on a number of well-known television dramas, such as Killing Eve, Spooks and Lewis. She lives in London, and this is her first novel. Innocent Guilt is published by Quercus and will be on the shelves on 15th May.

May 13, 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.