‘The Holborn Murders’ by Lynn Brittney

Published by Iris Books,
12 December 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-90714791-3 (PB)

It’s December 1915 and the war that was supposed to be over by Christmas shows no signs of ending.  However, people are trying to make it a special time of year and the London department stores are prepared and hoping for a busy few weeks.  Gamages, the department store in Holborn, is no exception and the seasonal magic show is going ahead.  And the action starts here, when the magician is killed violently in front of his audience.

This is a job for the Mayfair 100 team, a secret group established with the approval of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to deal with certain specific crimes.  The members, mainly female amateur detectives, assisted by hand-picked regular policemen, are quickly allocated their roles, with some members actually working in the store.  As they investigate there is another attempted murder, and then the shocking news that a young actress employed at the Holborn Empire has been killed and that one of their colleagues (a senior police officer) is under suspicion.

The team members have been together for long enough to appreciate and value one another’s strengths and skills and to enjoy each other’s company.  This story enables each member to show and develop their own capabilities, whilst coping with their own private, emotional reactions to the ongoing investigation.

This is a neatly plotted, inventive and well-written story.  Gamages provides some novel backdrops and a good supply of useful characters and adds to the atmosphere and sense of place.  The roles of women in society, the disagreements between the various organisations supporting the major causes (eg, votes for women, the temperance movement, jobs for women in a rapidly changing society) fill in the background and inform the plot, which includes some interesting social history.

This is the sixth in the Mayfair 100 series and, though the central characters are well-established, it’s not necessary to have read any the previous books to enjoy it as stand-alone/introduction to the series. 
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Reviewer: Jo Hesslewood
Other books by this author: Murder in Belgravia, A Death in Chelsea, The Body in Berkeley Square, The Corpses at Waterloo, A Killing near Waterloo Stations

Lynn Brittney has fifty-two plays, books (fiction and non-fiction), and foreign translations of her books registered for PLR. She began novel-writing in 2005 and the first book in her Nathan Fox Elizabethan spy trilogy was nominated for the Waterstones and Brandford Boase Prize. In 2016 she created the Mayfair 100 series, set in WW1. There are now five books in the series. 

www.lynnbrittney.com
  

Jo Hesslewood.  Crime fiction has been my favourite reading material since as a teenager I first spotted Agatha Christie on the library bookshelves.  For twenty-five years the commute to and from London provided plenty of reading time.  I am fortunate to live in Cambridge, where my local crime fiction book club, Crimecrackers, meets at Heffers Bookshop .  I enjoy attending crime fiction events and currently organise events for the Margery Allingham Society.