23 July 20201.
ISBN: 978-0-7490-2682-0 (PB)
It
is September 1940 and London, amongst other British cities, is enduring the
nightly horror of the Blitz. The bombing causes death and carnage, but also
exhaustion as people struggle to work after nights of fear, cold and discomfort
in primitive air raid shelters. For Detective Inspector John Jago and many
other men who served in the First World War, the Blitz brings back hideous
memories of bombardment in the trenches.
After a night disturbed by the bombing,
Jago is summoned to a badly damaged street in Canning Town, where rescue
workers have discovered the body of a young woman. To find dead victims after
an air raid is not unusual but the rescue team are certain that the body had
not been there when they first attended the damaged houses to check whether
anyone was injured or buried in the rubble; they had left the street and when
they returned, sometime later, they discovered the dead girl. Jago and his
assistant, Detective Constable Cradock, cannot find a handbag or any belongings
to identify the dead woman, and although the first doctor on the scene cannot
find any sign of foul play, a keen-eyed pathologist confirms that the woman was
strangled.
The dead woman is identified when the
head of personnel at an engineering firm reports that one of their employees,
Miss Mary Watkins, has not turned up for work. One or two of Mary’s colleagues
speak kindly of her but Jago can find nobody who is really close to her or
cares about her death. Not even Mary’s sister, her closest living relative, has
any affection for her. Jago discovers that components and chemicals are going
missing from the engineering firm and wonders whether Mary was involved with
these thefts or whether she had discovered something about them that led to her
death. Hitler’s forces are just over the Channel in France and Britain is in a
state of high alert. Many people believe that invasion is imminent, while
others believe Nazi propaganda and maintain that the government was wrong to
have not allied with Germany from the start. There is talk of the Fifth Column,
with enemy agents and sympathisers active in Britain and blending into the
general population. This makes a difficult and complex situation for the
investigation of a single murder, and the deeper Jago delves into Mary’s life,
the more motives he discovers for killing her, but who, amongst the people she
had deceived and betrayed, had resorted to murder?
The Canning Street Murder is the second book in the World War Two series featuring
Detective Inspector Jago. It is a superb evocation of a tense and dangerous
time, with excellent period detail and a convincing portrait of the attitudes
prevalent near the start of the war. The plot is intricate, clever and neatly
interwoven, and Jago is an intelligent, engaging protagonist. The Canning
Street Murder is an intriguing and thoroughly enjoyable read, which I
recommend.
-------
Reviewer: Carol Westron
Mike Hollow was born in West Ham, on the eastern edge of London, and grew
up in Romford, Essex. He studied Russian and French at the University of
Cambridge and then worked for the BBC and later Tearfund. In 2002 he went
freelance as a copywriter, journalist and editor. He's a published poet, and
nowadays when not writing about the Blitz Detective he makes his living as a
translator. He lives in Hampshire, England, with his wife Margaret.
https://promotingcrime.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/carol-westron.htmlwww.carolwestron.com
http://carolwestron.blogspot.co.uk/
To read a review of Carol latest book This Game of Ghosts click on the title.
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