Rating: 4/5
Review:
An enjoyable post-war mystery
This is an enjoyable, old-fashioned police mystery set in southern England (mainly London) in 1947.
The plot is fairly familiar in structure - seemingly unrelated killings begin to show signs of a connection and a retired detective becomes involved in hunting for the perpetrators. I won't give further spoilers but even so, readers may well find themselves some way ahead of the investigators quite a lot of the time. I didn't mind this too much, and was glad that the book held some mild surprises but refrained from Shocking Twists, Conspiracies Which Go Right To The Top and so on. It's Golden Age in structure, which suited me nicely.
The writing is good. Characters are well drawn and believable, although they do have rather a tendency to give speeches and lectures at times rather than talk as normal people do. The period is reasonably well-evoked, although there were weaknesses here which I found a little distracting. There is very little sense of the hardship and rationing which was still very much part of life, for example, and the language spoken by the characters doesn't really ring true to the period some of the time. Modern usages like "quit his job", "healthcare", "not a problem" and so on do creep in rather too often for my comfort, but it's not a serious flaw and the style was sufficiently readable and the plot sufficiently engaging for me to enjoy this overall.
This would make a very suitable summer read, or a relaxing book for anyone who likes a decent, traditional detective tale. Recommended.
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