‘Murder at Lord’s Station’ by Jim Eldridge

Published by Allison & Busby,
18 July 2024.
ISBN: 978-0-74903078-0 (HB)

In March 1941, as the Blitz is in full sway, musician Rosa Coburg finishes her set at the Café de Paris deep under Leicester Square. She and her husband, DCI Edgar Coburg, have barely left to walk home when a bomb destroys the club and kills many of the people they have just been speaking to. Not long afterwards Coburg and his assistant Sergeant Lampson are asked to go to the disused Lord’s underground station where the body of a man has been discovered. He has been brutally murdered with what appears to be a cricket bat. Initial enquiries reveal that he is Desmond Bartlett, a first-class cricketer from the West Indies and a member of the British Empire XI which has been formed to play games in England during the war.

The investigation gradually spreads its wings. Bartlett’s fellow cricketers are soon questioned, with nobody having a bad word to say about him. Coburg then moves on to the RAF where Bartlett worked in the ground crew. Before long, promising new strands appear. There are dodgy bookies and illegal betting, allegations of match fixing, dishonest policemen, and a potential spy ring is identified when a German radio is found. There are also tensions and jealousies amongst air cadets. Soon there is a second death.

There is a sub-plot. The Baxter family, three ne’er-do-well boys led by their mother, the unpleasant widow Prudence Baxter, and their associates are involved in further deaths both before and after their abduction of Rosa and her fellow St John Ambulance driver. As two of the deaths are of Ma Baxter’s feckless sons, she swears vengeance on Coburg and his colleagues and this threat hovers over the rest of the novel.

Bubbling underneath is the fact that DCI Edgar Coburg, or Edgar Saxe-Coburg to give him his full name, is the younger brother of Magnus Saxe-Coburg, otherwise known as the Earl of Dawlish. The latter is a member of the MCC and a fine cricketer, and his knowledge is keenly sought by his brother. We also have the saga of Sergeant Lampson’s forthcoming marriage. He is a widower with a young son and not approved of by his future mother-in-law. She is determined that Eve, Lampson’s fiancée, is going to marry local businessman Vic Tennant. Eve makes it clear that she has no interest in Tennant, but he does not take his rejection lying down.

So, there is plenty to keep the reader occupied, with the main plot keeping us guessing. The wartime setting is convincing, particularly in the early pages, and the dangers, difficulties and tensions of that period play their part. Despite the occasional bouts of violence, it is an easy and enjoyable read.
------
Reviewer: David Whittle

Jim Eldridge was born in the Kings Cross/Euston area of north London in November 1944. He left school at 16 and did a variety of jobs, before training as a teacher. He taught during the 1970s in disadvantaged areas of Luton, while at the same time writing. He became a full-time writer in 1978. He is a radio, TV and movie scriptwriter with hundreds of radio and TV scripts broadcast in the UK and across the world in a career spanning over 30 years. He lives in Kent with his wife.   

http://www.jimeldridge.com/  

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently convenor of the East Midlands Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association.