murder

CLASSICS REVISITED . . . Maigret’s Revolver

Perhaps there’s a PhD to be written on the character of Madame Maigret, and none of the TV or film versions have made much of her, but here, at least for a while, she takes centre stage, in rather an unfortunate fashion. A young man, terribly nervous and ill-at-ease, arrives at their apartment, 132 Boulevard Richard Lenoir, asking to speak to the great man. Perhaps because he seems shy and inoffensive, she lets him in to wait while she finishes cooking lunch. A little while later, she breaks with their normal convention and telephones her husband at work. Hesitantly, she explains what has happened and, shamefaced, saying that the young man has now left, but she believes he has taken a revolver – presented to Maigret by the FBI – some years earlier. The revolver may seem to be ceremonial, as it is engraved with Maigret’s name, but it is far from a museum piece. It is a Smith and Wesson .45 and a very powerful agent of death in the wrong hands.

In what appears to be a separate strand of the plot, we learn that the Maigrets have recently dined with a long-standing friend, Dr Pardon, and that another guest – Lagrange – who was apparently very anxious to meet the celebrated policeman, failed to show up. When they visit Lagrange at his home, they find a man who appears to be extremely ill. Pardon confides in Maigret that Lagrange is something of a problem patient. Bedridden though he may appear to be, it transpires that he had enough strength to hire a taxi late the previous evening and, with the driver’s help, convey a heavy trunk to the left luggage office of the Gare du Nord. There is a very satisfying ‘click-clunk’ when it emerges that the young man who took Maigret’s revolver is none other than Alain, the sick man’s son. And in the trunk? A dead body, naturally, and it is that of André Delteil, a prominent – and controversial – politician, shot dead with a small calibre handgun.

Lagrange, when questioned, descends into a state of paranoia and behaves like a feverish child. Maigret cannot decide if this is genuine, or an attempt to defer the inevitable investigation into the corpse in the trunk. Playing safe, he sends the man to hospital. But what links the murdered politician, the babbling Lagrange – and his fugitive son? Simenon comes up with a very elegant – and deadly – connection in the shape of a wealthy socialite called Jeanne Debul who collects rich men like some people collect stamps. He uncovers a deeply unpleasant melange of blackmail, obsession and greed and concludes that Alain Lagrange is convinced that his father’s downfall can be laid at the door of Madame Debul. And he is at large, with Maigret’s revolver and a box of recently bought ammunition.

Maigret is not best pleased to learn that Jeanne Debul has flown to London, followed – on the next flight – by Alain Lagrange. It’s a rotten job, but someone has to do it, and Maigret follows the socialite and her would-be assassin to London, where he books into the same hotel as Madame Debul – The Savoy, no less. Helped – and hindered – by his Scotland Yard counterparts, our man awaits the collision of hunter and hunted, and this section of the story is a delightful flourish by Simenon where, via his great creation, he describes every little irritation and frustration that an urbane Frenchman could possibly encounter in the buttoned-up world of 1950s London.

As ever with Simenon, this story is a masterpiece of brevity – just 150 pages – and where lesser writers might take a page or more to describe a person, an atmosphere or a situation, he does the job in a paragraph. This edition of Maigret’s Revolver (first published in 1952), translated by Siân Reynolds, is one of the new Penguin Modern Classics and will be available on 5^th October

October 3, 2023 0

THE WATER DOESN’T LIE . . . Between the covers

The story begins back in the day, in grisly fashion. A lad, in the so-called ‘care’ of a Roman Catholic children’s home in Scotland has been sexually abused to the extent that his self esteem is shattered and he sees no reason to live. He hangs himself from a beam, using torn up bed-sheets. The police are eventually called, but the patriarchal attitude of the priests (and a handy golf club connection with a top copper) means that the death is just written off for what it was, a suicide, but the cause goes uninvestigated.

Cut to the present day and we are in the cathedral city of Lincoln. The location gave me a huge amount of pleasure, as one half of my ancestry is as Lincolnshire as haslet, Sincil Bank, Mablethorpe, the wonderful Wolds – and Lincoln’s imp itself. When a body is fished out of a local lake and eventually identified as a former Roman Catholic priest (and child abuser), DI Dalton and his oppo, DS Gibb, are drawn into a murder investigation that will take them away from their bailiwick to Glasgow, and the less than salubrious visitors’ rooms of HMP Barlinnie. Someone – maybe with an accomplice – scarred by their brutal days in church care has decided to take revenge, and the body count increases.

Dalton and Gibb follow one or two false trails before they are forced to face the fact that not only is their quarry extremely adept using modern technology, and suspiciously familiar with the way modern police work is done, but they are also something of a weapons expert. As a keen target shooter myself, I can vouch for the fact that a 7.62mm rifle with a decent scope is a formidable weapon in the hands of a sniper. I am not sure if KIm Booth has had the misfortune to fall foul of the deeply secretive and self-protective world of the Roman Catholic church, but the crimes he describes here sound grimly authentic.

The procedural aspects of the story are totally convincing as one might expect from a former police officer – after several jobs and a brush with the law Booth decided to join the Lincolnshire Police, where he served 35 years mainly in investigative roles. The attention to crime-scene detail, the awareness of sharp-eyed defence lawyers for any slight slip-up in the chain of evidence and the debilitating effect form-filling and box-ticking can have on investigators is described in detail. Perhaps the author (in my view) has taken something of a risk in the way he chooses to end the search for the children’s home avenger, but Dalton and Gibb have the potential to become an established CriFi partnership, and I hope that future books will let us know a little more about the men and what makes them tick as people.

Kim Booth was born in Lincolnshire. After leaving the police he worked as a Corporate Security Manager for a well know international holiday company for a number of years. Currently he has started to fulfill a long standing intention to write true crime and crime fiction books. He lives in the city of Lincoln. The Water Doesn’t Lie is available now.

September 18, 2023 1

‘A PALE FACE AMONG THE RUSHES’ . . . The death of Alfie Wright (part two)

SO FAR: August 1895. Hannah Elizabeth Wright, 23, gave birth to a little boy, Alfred Edward, in November 1893. The boy’s father has disappeared, leaving Hannah to deal with the situation. Alfie has been in the care of a Miss Flear, who lives near Newark, but Hannah can no longer afford to give Miss Flear the money she requires, and has collected the little boy, and returned to Lincoln on the evening of 26th August. The following day, having not returned to their home in Alexandra Terrace the previous evening, she tells her brother and his wife that the boy is still in Newark, and is being put up for adoption.

Foss Dyke is a canal that links Lincoln with the River Trent at Torksey. Some historians insist that it was built by the Romans, while others believe that it dates back to the 12th century. It was along the bank of this ancient waterway, between Jekyll’s Chemical chemical works and the back of the racecourse grandstand, that on the evening of Monday 26th August our story continues. A young man called James Fenton was sitting on a bench with a lady friend, when a woman passed them, walking in the direction of Pyewipe. She was carrying a bundle, but they heard a whimpering sound, and they realised that she was holding a child. It was, by this time almost dark, but when the woman passed them again, this time heading back towards the city, she was empty handed. Thinking this strange, Fenton followed the woman at a distance, but lost her somewhere in the vicinity of Alexandra Terrace. The following morning, Tuesday, a man on his way to work had an unpleasant surprise. He was later to tell the court:

James Fenton had contacted the police with his suspicions, and the discovery of the body confirmed the police’s worst fears. It is not entirely clear how the police knew exactly where to find the mystery woman, but on the Tuesday, they paid several visits to the house at 25 Alexandra Terrace. Hannah Wright, however, was nowhere to be found. She had left that morning, telling her sister-in-law that she was going to visit friends. She did not return until the Wednesday morning, by which time the police had instituted a full scale murder investigation. Hannah confessed to Jane Wright, and a neighbour, Mrs Sarah Close. It was Mrs Close who accompanied Hannah to the police station, but the girl seemed to be under the bizarre misapprehension that if she told the truth she would get away with a ‘telling off’ or, at worst, a fine. She was not to be so fortunate:

The law took its inevitable course. There was a coroner’s inquest, then a magistrate’s hearing, both of which judged that Hannah Wright had murdered her little boy. As was customary, the magistrate passed the case on to be heard at next Assizes. Meanwhile Alfie’s body was laid to rest in a lonely ceremony at Canwick Road cemetery. It is pointless speculating about Hannah’s state of mind, but it is worth reminding ourselves that Alfie had known no father and had seen very little of his mother during his brief sojourn – fewer than 300 days – on earth. If ever there were a case of ‘Suffer the little children’ this must be it.

Whatever the state of Hannah Wright’s mind when she drowned her son, and during her long months before she came to trial, when she finally appeared before Mr Justice Day at the end of November she must have had a cold awakening as to what possibly lay ahead of her. Since September, there had been various intimations in the press that Hannah was, to use the vernacular, “not quite all there” but there was no medical evidence that she was weak minded or mentally deficient. Her defence barrister made a rather odd case, as was reported in The Lincolnshire Echo on Tuesday 26th November 1895:

“The Judge pointed out that the defence was rather an unusual one, namely of a two-fold character, one contention being that the prisoner never committed the crime all, and it she did do so that her mind was unhinged at the time. As to the plea of insanity he did not see that there was the slightest evidence to show that her mind was diseased. The jury retired to consider their verdict at 5.20, and returned into Court after an absence of twenty-seven minutes. They found the prisoner guilty, with a strong recommendation mercy. Prisoner made no reply to the question put to her by the Clerk whether she wished to say anything before sentence was passed. The Judge, who appeared be deeply affected, said the jury had simply discharged their duty, painful though undoubtedly was. With regard to the recommendation to mercy his Lordship said he would wish and beg her not to place undue reliance upon that recommendation. His Lordship then passed sentence of death in the usual manner. Prisoner fainted as she was being led down the dock steps.”

The general public in Lincoln and round about had become very involved in this tragic case, and even before Hannah collapsed on the steps of the dock, a petition was created and with thousands of names on it, presented to the Home Secretary, Sir Matthew White Ridley KCB. Within days, the threat of the hangman’s noose was lifted.

Peter Spence, a distant relative of Hannah, and to whom I am indebted for sharing his research, suggests that this story has something of Thomas Hardy about it, but we would do well to remember that poor Tess (of the D’Urbervilles) is hanged for her crime. Not only did Hannah survive, but she was released from prison in Aylsbury, apparently going straight to London to work as a servant.

Strangely, that is where the story ends. Peter Spence, and that eminent compiler of Lincolnshire crime stories Mick Lake, like me, have found no trace of what became of Hannah. This is unusual, given the amount of information available on modern genealogy websites, but it it is what it is. There are a couple of inconclusive mentions in the 1939 register, but no evidence that these people are ‘our’ Hannah. There is this, but is it feasible that a servant girl could have eventually returned to Lincolnshire and died at the age of 89, leaving the sum of £2552 10s – nearly £47,000 in today’s money? Perhaps that is a mystery for another day.

I have been researching and writing about historic Lincolnshire murders for some years,and those wishing to find out more about our county’s macabre past should click this link

September 16, 2023 0

‘A PALE FACE AMONG THE RUSHES’ . . . The death of Alfie Wright (part one)

Hannah Elizabeth Wright was born on 25 August 1872 to John Wright, an agricultural labourer, and Mary Anne Key in  Kirkby la Thorpe, a tiny village a few miles east of Sleaford. The 1881 census recorded 256 souls.

Hannah was the youngest of five  children, two boys and three girls. Sadly, her mother died when she was four. Her father remarried so she  was brought up by her stepmother. There were few options for young women ‘of humble birth’ in rural communities in those days. It was either work on the land, or go into service – meaning a live-in position with some wealthy family, either as a cook or a general maid. The census in 1891 shows us that Hannah was working in The Manor House at Ewerby, less than two miles from Kirkby. Her employer was Mr William Andrews, a farmer. The Manor House (left) still stands.

By 1893, she had moved further away to the village of Weston, near Newark. It was here that she began a relationship with a local lad and became pregnant. Alfred Edward Wright was born on 3rd November 1893. He was, by all accounts, a healthy child, but his father quickly disappeared from the scene, and became engaged to another woman. This left Hannah in a dire situation. With no other means of support other than her own work, how was she going to bring up Alfie? A solution – of a kind – was found when a Weston woman called Jane Flear offered to take the boy in – for a price.

We know that by 1895 Hannah was working for a family in Branston, south of Lincoln, and had begun another relationship, with a young man called William Spurr, but she kept Alfie’s existence from him. Hannah had already fallen into arrears with her payments for Alfie, but her problems became worse when she received word from Miss Flear that the price for looking after the little boy was to be raised to three shillings and sixpence each week. Using the Bank of England inflation calculator, that would be nearly £38 In modern money, probably more than Hannah earned each week, given that her food and housing would come with the job.

Jane Flear received this letter (facsimile) from Hannah:

Having traveled to Lincoln on the afternoon of 23rd August, Hannah visited her brother and his wife at their house, 23 Alexandra Terrace. All appeared to well, and on the Sunday evening Hannah even brought her young man, William Spurr, round for tea.

Hannah Wright arrived in Weston on the afternoon of Monday 26th August to collect Alfie. Miss Flear had misgivings about handing over the little boy, and thought that Hannah was in something of a disturbed state. When she went to collect the rest of Alfie’s clothes, Hannah said she didn’t want to take them. The three of them, Jane Flear wheeling Alfie in his pram, set off to walk the two miles to Crow Park station, just outside Sutton on Trent. Hannah and Alfie caught the 6.15 train to Retford. Jane Flear never saw Alfie alive again. Hannah eventually returned to the little terraced house in Alexandra Terrace late on the Monday evening,and explained to Jane and William Wright that her little boy was still in Weston, but she had arranged for someone to adopt him permanently. Jane Wright asked her sister in law if she had discussed the situation with William Spurr, but despite Jane telling her that it was wrong to keep back something so important, Hannah was adamant that he was not to be told. They all retired to bed at 11.30 pm. The next morning, at about 9.30 am, Hannah announced that she was going to visit some friends, and would return later.

IN PART TWO

A CONFESSION
A TRIAL
THE BLACK CAP

September 14, 2023 0

THE DEVIL STONE . . . Between the covers

Detective Inspectors – and their bosses the DCIs – are hardly a dying breed in crime fiction, so what is distinctive about Christine Caplan, the central figure in Caro Ramsay’s latest book? For starters, she has been demoted from DCI because her previous case involved some evidence mysteriously going ‘walkies’. Her run of bad continues when, after a night out the ballet in Glasgow (she used to be a dancer) she inadvertently becomes involved in a mugging, and the drug-frazzled perpetrator subsequently dies from falling from his bike. Family-wise, things are not much better. Her husband, Aklan, formerly something of a creative high flyer, has a serious case of depression and rarely leaves his bed. When he does, it’s only to stagger to the sofa where, wrapped in a blanket, he binges on daytime TV. Son Kenny is a ne’er-do-well drug user, flunking college and a bit too handy with mum’s credit card. Daughter Emma is the only glimmer of light. She seems relatively healthy, bright and has something of a future once she finishes her degree.

Things don’t improve for Caplan when she is sent off to the Scottish west coast where, near the village of Cronchie, a multiple murder has taken place. Two teenage boys – “neds”, to use the Scottish slang, have broken into Otterburn House, a mansion belonging to the McGregor family. The intruders get more than they bargained for:

“…jerking the phone, causing the beam to drop suddenly where it caught the ghostly white face staring at the ceiling with nacreous clouded eyes. Unable to stop himself, he looked along. Another face. Then another. Five of them in a row, cheek to cheek. Dried white skin clinging to thin cheekbones, mouths open, teeth bared.”

The lads – one of whom is a devotee of Satanism – have burgled the house looking for a legendary artifact known as The Devil Stone which, according to the ancient lore, is able to predict impending tragedy. They leg it away from the house as if Old Nick himself is chasing them. They are hospitalised suffering from shock, the police are summoned and a major investigation is triggered.

In charge of the investigation is Detective Chief Inspector Bob Oswald, a highly respected officer just weeks away from retirement. When he goes missing, Caplan finds herself put in charge of the case, rather to her own discomfort and the resentment of the local team. One member of the McGregor family – Adam, a New Age hippy and something of a black sheep – is missing from the gruesome line of corpses, and thus he becomes the main suspect.

When Bob Oswald is finally located dead – in mysterious circumstances – Caplan realises that whatever happened at Otterburn House is part of a much bigger conspiracy, involving the distribution of a dangerous new narcotic known as Snapdragon. While she suspects that a nearby New Age community living on the nearby island of Skone may be involved, another discomforting thought is nagging away at her, and it is the suspicion that someone in the police team is batting for the other side. How far can she trust DC Toni Mackie, a larger-than-life woman, with a slightly cartoonish air about her? And what is to be made of the bumbling DC Craigo, with his strange slow blink, and his lack of social graces?

Already facing a twin-pronged attack on her career, Caplan realises that her relentless determination to solve the Otterburn House mystery has brought her head-to-head with some people who are determined to take her life if she gets in their way.

This edition of The Devil Stone is published by Canongate and is out now.

September 5, 2023 0

RUSTED SOULS . . . Between the covers

Leeds, March 1920. Tom Harper is Chief Constable of the City force and, with just six weeks until his retirement, he is dearly hoping for a quiet ride home for the final furlong of what has been a long and distinguished career. His hopes are dashed, however, when he is summoned to the office of Alderman Ernest Thompson, the combative, blustering – but very powerful – leader of the City Council. Thompson has one last task for Harper, and it is a very delicate one. The politician has fallen a trap that is all too familiar to many elderly men of influence down the years. He has, shall we say, been indiscreet with a beautiful but much younger woman, Charlotte Radcliffe. Letters that he foolishly wrote to her have “gone missing” and now he has an anonymous note demanding money – or else his reputation will be ruined. He wants Harper to solve the case, but keep everything completely off the record. Grim-faced, Harper has little choice but to agree. It is due to Thompson’s support and encouragement that he is ending his career as Chief Constable, with a comfortable pension and an untarnished reputation. He chooses a small group of trusted colleagues, swears them to secrecy, and sets about the investigation.

He soon has other things to worry about. A quartet of young armed men robs a city centre jewellers, terrifying the staff by firing a shot into the ceiling. They strike again, but this time with fatal consequences. A bystander tries to intervene, and is shot dead for his pains. Many readers will have been following this excellent series for some time, and will know that tragedy has struck the Harper family. Tom’s wife Annabelle has what we know now as dementia, and requires constant care. Their daughter Mary is a widow. Her husband Len is one of the 72000 men who fought and died on the Somme, but have no known grave, and no memorial excep tfor a name on the Thiepval Memorial to The Missing.. Unlike many widows, however, she has been able to rebuild her life, and now runs a successful secretarial agency. Leeds, however, like so many communities, is no place fit for heroes:

“‘Times are hard.’
“I know,” Harper agreed.
It was there in the bleak faces of the men, the worn-down looks of their wives, the hunger that kept the children thin. The wounded ex-servicemen reduced to begging on the streets. Things hadn’t changed much from when he was young. Britain had won the war but forgotten its own people.”

Nickson’s descriptions of his beloved Leeds are always powerful, but here he describes a city – like many others – reeling from a double blow. As if the carnage of the Great War were not enough, the Gods had another spiteful trick up their sleeves in the shape of Spanish Influenza, which killed 228000 people across the country. Many people are still wearing gauze masks in an attempt to ward off infection.

The hunt for the jewel robbers and Ernest Jackson’s letters continues almost to the end of the book and, as ever, Nickson tells a damn good crime story; for me however, the focus had long since shifted elsewhere. This book is all about Tom and Annabelle Harper. Weather-wise, spring is definitely in the air, as bushes and trees come back to life after the bareness of winter, but there is a distinctly autumnal air about what is happening on the page. Harper is, like Tennyson’s Ulysses, not the man he was.

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will.

As he tries to help at the scene of a crime, he reflects:

“There was nothing he could do to help here; he was just another old man cluttering up the pavement and stopping the inspector from doing his job.”

As for Annabelle, the lovely, brave and vibrant woman of the earlier books, little is left:

“The memories would remain. She’d have them too, but they were tucked away in pockets that were gradually being sewn up. All her past was being stolen from her. And he couldn’t stop the theft.”

This is a magnificent and poignant end to the finest series of historical crime fiction I have ever read. It is published by Severn House and will be available on 5th September. For more about the Tom Harper novels, click this link.

September 4, 2023 0

TWO FAMILIES, TWO TRAGEDIES. . . The murder of Florence Jackson (part two)

SO FAR: Grantham man Dick Rowland had seen action in the trenches from 1915 until 1918. Unlike his two brothers, he survived, but was wounded and gassed. Spring 1919 found him back in Grantham, aged 29, just another ex-soldier. He had, however, met and fallen for a Fulbeck girl, Florence Jackson. She was ten years his junior and there, I think, lay the problem. She was pretty, fun-loving and with no shortage of local suitors, not to mention dashing officer types from what was to become Royal Air Force College Cranwell. Florence’s mother thought Dick Rowland too old for her daughter, but she could never have envisaged the events of 31st May 1919. It was the day of Caythorpe Feast, an annual event always held on the last Sunday in May. Dick and Florence were there, with hundreds of other local people both young and old. Dick Rowland had become insanely jealous, and every smile or wave Florence gave to some other young man cut him to the quick. He was particularly vexed when Florence decided to share a fairground ride – the wooden swing-boats with some other chaps.

Sometime around 10.00pm, Dick and Florence decided to walk home to Fulbeck. That road, now the A607, was known as the Lincoln Road. Many other people were on that road, but they would have been spread out and it was very dark. I have no idea if there was a moon that night, but one man heard something in the darkness as he rode his bicycle up to Fulbeck. He was later to give evidence at a Coroner’s inquest. This a verbatim report from a local newspaper:

Richard James Nelson, dairyman, Welbourn, spoke of visiting Caythorpe feast on Saturday night last. He saw the deceased girl in the swing boats with a man called Edward Knights. He left the feast about 1045. When he had reached Gascoigne’s gate in the parish of Fulbeck a man called out to him:
“Chummy, stop!”
He stopped, and man who was a stranger asked him to fetch a motorcar from the top as there had been a nasty accident. Witness asked him what it was, and he said:
“A girl has tried to cut my throat and now she has cut her own.”
He noticed the man’s throat was cut and bleeding and he also saw the body of the girl lying on the ground just inside the gateway. Witness attempted to go through the gateway towards the girl. but the man pushed him away and told him to get on his bicycle and fetch a motor car. He then rode off for the police.

There is a horrible irony in that the next people to arrive at the scene were none other than Florence’s older sister and her young man.

Laura Emma Jackson, the deceased’s sister, a land worker employed at Fulbeck Heath, said on Saturday night she was at Caythorpe feast where she saw deceased with Dick Rowland who was courting her. They seemed alright together. Witness left the feast at 10:15 and walked towards home with Percy Graves, a friend. When they got to Gascoigne’s gate she saw a man standing there. He said,
“Mr, Mr, come and look what I have done.”
She told Graves not to go as the man was drunk, but the man came towards them holding out his hands and said,
“Is that Laura?”
Witness replied,
“Yes.”
And he then said,
“I am Dick – I have killed your Flo. Another man wanted her. I have tried to kill myself but could not. Go and tell them at home.”
Witness noticed that Roland had blood down the front of his clothing and was bleeding from the throat. She did not notice her sister. She went home and reported the matter to Mr Palethorpe. Rowland was not drunk but seemed to be rather excited. Witness was at the Grantham statute fair on 17th May with her sister and Rowland. Flo went to speak to some soldiers and Roland asked her to keep an eye on her and watch that she did not go with the soldiers. She told him not to be so silly and that she would not go. Rowland shook his head and remarked,
“Flo’s alright. If I don’t have her I will see no one else does.”
Flo was with the soldiers three or four minutes and then she rejoined Rowland and witness.

The Fulbeck Doctor also gave evidence at the inquest:

Dick Rowland was arrested for the murder of Florence Ann Jackson. The Coroner recommended that he be charged with murder and the case was sent to the Sleaford Magistrates who agreed, and arranged for Rowland to appear at the Summer Assizes in Lincoln. Rowland’s bizarre defence that somehow Florence had received her fatal wounds in some kind of struggle for the razor was abandoned, and his legal team asked for a postponement of the trial so that further investigations could be carried out into the man’s mental health. This delay was granted, and so it was that Dick Rowland appeared before the Lincoln jurors and judge Mr Justice Greer (left) in November 1919. He was found guilty and sentenced to death despite the jury recommending a merciful punishment. There was an immediate appeal against the death penalty, but that was thrown out, with the appeal judge famously opining that Rowland was no more mad than Othello,(the newspaper managing to mis-spell the village name, and relocate it to Essex}

So, Dick Rowland sat in his condemned cell awaiting his fate, probably unaware that he had been compared to one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragic characters. Othello, of course, racked with guilt, stabs himself, which is precisely what Rowland claimed he had tried to do on that fateful evening back in May, but he was to have better luck than the Moor.

In the event, it appears that Dick Rowland was released in April 1935. He married, and the records tell us that he died in Cleethorpes in 1954. Had he become unhinged by his wartime service, a victim of what we now call PTSD? Or had his own chilling words – ” If I don’t have her I will see no one else does.” become a dreadful deed? You must make up your own minds. Incidentally, the fatal spot where Florence died is still there for anyone wishing to stand and contemplate.

Incidentally, a local man, Jonathan Wilkinson has written a novel based on the events I have described. It is very well written, and focuses on what the author believes happened in the months and weeks leading up to Florence’s death. It is available from the Fulbeck Craft Centre (07410 968333)

I have been researching and writing about historic Lincolnshire murders for some years,and those wishing to find out more about our county’s macabre past should click this link

September 3, 2023 0

THE RAGING STORM . . . Between the covers

Ann Cleeves introduced us to Detective Matthew Venn in The Long Call (2019). Police officers in crime fiction are ten-a-penny, so writers strive to make their creations a bit different, or to have what marketing people call a USP. Venn is married to a creative arts chap called Jonathan. This is, to say the least, an unusual circumstance in the rugged North Devon fishing village of Greystone, where he goes to investigate the mysterious death of a media-savvy – and much televised – adventurer and sailor called Jem Rosco. Venn is, however, no stranger to Greystone. It is where he was brought up as a member of an exclusive group of evangelical Christians called The Barum Brethren.

Rosco has turned up in Greystone, more or less out of nowhere, although the villagers have seen him often enough on their TV screens. After a few weeks of holding court in the village pub – The Maiden’s Prayer – Rosco disappears, but is then found dead in a little boat anchored just off-shore, in a violent storm. The local RNLI bring his body back, and then his demise becomes a case for Matthew Venn, based in Barnstaple, the largest town in the area.

This is certainly not one of those ‘murder comes to seaside idyll’ stories. Greystone is a grim little village which is frequently battered by the weather. For Its residents life is something of a struggle; there are few amenities, and employment is hard to come by. With all the skill she displays in her other novels set by the sea, Ann Cleeves allows the village to develop a rather forbidding character all of its own.

There are several well-drawn local characters, all of whom Venn is forced to consider as he tries to answer the age old question about a mysterious death – “Cui Bono?“. Pub landlord Harry Carter may be every bit of the jovial ‘mine host’ he appears to be, but do shady financial dealings in his past bring him into the web of suspects? Mary Ford is the first woman to be skipper of the local lifeboat, but her life is shot through with anxiety over the future of her son who suffers from a degenerative disease. As a teenager, she had an unrequited passion for Jem Rosco, so has his re-emergence in the village triggered an act of revenge for past slights? Barty Lawson, alcoholic Commodore of the nearby Morrisham Yacht Club, has bitter memories of the days when Rosco – irreverent, mocking and disrespectful – used his celebrity to belittle him. The hint of an old romance between Rosco and Lawson’s wife Eleanor has further soured the man’s mind but, in a rare sober moment, was he capable of engineering the complex piece of theatre which appears to have framed the discovery of the sailor’s body?

When Lawson’s body is later found shattered at the foot of a towering cliff, Venn wonders if this was the final act of a guilty man, but Ann Cleeve provides a solution to the mystery that is much more elegant – and unexpected. The Raging Storm is, on one level, a standard whodunnit, and sticks to the standard framework of a police procedural novel, but it is shot through with subtle characterisations, clever plot twists and an abiding sense of deep unease. Published by MacMillan, the book is available now.

September 1, 2023 0

THE MISPER . . . Between the covers

Central to this powerful novel is one of the great social scourges of modern Britain – the County Lines illegal drug distribution structure. It is horribly simple. The big drug barons, most probably masquerading as genuine businessmen, use a complex hierarchy to deliver the product – weed, crack, whatever is in vogue – to their customers. The criminal equivalent of the cheerful Eastern European Amazon man who delivers your parcel on time is, typically, a teenage boy, perhaps still of school age (but he rarely attends) possessed of nothing more sinister than a bicycle, a hooded sweat shirt and a bandana to cover his lower face. The youngsters have a huge advantage over the police, glued as they are these days to the seats of their patrol cars. These lads can pedal down one-way streets, navigate the narrowest town alleys and passageways, be here one moment and gone the next. Their immediate bosses provide them with cheap burner ‘phones, which are as expendable as the people carrying them.

On this depressing armature Kate London sculpts her story. Ryan Kennedy is a teenager hooked into one of these criminal gangs, and one of his handlers has given him a handgun. When he is cornered in a Metropolitan Police operation, he shoots dead Detective Inspector Kieron Shaw, who was trying to persuade him to throw away the weapon. When Ryan is tried for murder, clever lawyers manage to hoodwink the jury, and he is given a relatively lenient jail sentence. Once inside, of course, he is lauded by fellow inmates as someone who “killed a Fed”, and the big wheels in his organisation make sure his prison term is comfortable.

Kate London then introduces the other people whose lives are radically changed by Shaw’s murder. There is DC Lizzie Griffiths who has had an affair with Shaw and now looks after Connor, the result of that liason. DC Steve Bradshaw was the undercover cop who became close to Ryan Kennedy and, in one way, created the fatal showdown. Detective Sarah Collins was deeply involved in the case, but has now been transferred to another force in the north.

Ryan Kennedy may be many things, but he is not stupid, and he pulls the wool over the eyes of his probation officer and is relocated to the country town of Middleton and given a job in a bike shop. He wastes no time in resurrecting his criminal career and is soon known as NK (apparently a Game of Thrones character) and continues to exert his malign influence.

The “misper” of the title is a fifteen year-old called Lief, who has fallen into the clutches of one of the gangs. He goes missing, and his mother – Asha – eventually alerts the police. The police tie in Lief’s disappearance with the re-emergence of Ryan Kennedy as local boss of drugs distribution in Middleton. No spoilers from me, but what happens next is a tense and vivid narrative that is crying out for a screenplay.

On one level, Kate London has written an an intense and gripping police procedural thriller, but she also poses many questions. Perhaps it is unfair to expect that novelists should provide us with answers to real-life social problems, but the questions still need to be asked. Readers of this novel can infer what they like but, for what it’s worth, my conclusions are: (1) One of the greatest calamities to befall British society is the absence of traditional fathers in the bringing up of male children in certain communities. Ryan Kennedy has no father. Lief has no father. A cynic might say that Connor has no father, because he was shot dead by a criminal drug runner. (2) The British police are being overwhelmed by a tide of budget cuts, aggressive criminal defence lawyers, strident social justice warriors and a cataclysm of civil liberties activists.

Kate London is a former police officer and has written a grimly convincing story of a part of British society that is broken, and a criminal justice system barely fit for purpose. The Misper is published by Corvus and is available now.

August 14, 2023 1