RogerBW's Blog

2014 mystery. It's 1950, and variety is on its last legs. Two wartime friends meet again over the investigation of a series of grotesque, and perhaps meaningful, murders.

I was a little apprehensive, having given up on Griffiths' modern-set Ruth Galloway series, but this felt much more anchored in reality rather than soap-operatic shenanigans—in part because one of her grandfathers was working the halls about this time, and passed on stories.

The principals here are Edgar Stephens, whose university career was cut short by the war but who ended up going into the police afterwards, and Max Mephisto, stage magician. They were both posted to a unit in Scotland that was set up to fake defences and invasion preparations after the fall of Norway; it all ended badly, but they at least salvaged a friendship from it. (Shades of Thaddeus Holt's The Deceivers, though Griffiths cites Fisher's The War Magician.)

There are flashbacks, but nothing critical: you could sort the events into chronological order and it wouldn't give away the mystery. There is detective work involved here, but I felt the real emphasis of the story was on how these people came together during the war and the various directions in which they've gone afterwards. And the period atmosphere of dispiriting boarding-houses and fly-blown pubs.

I very much enjoyed this one. It comes from the heart.