Why a Booktrail?
2WW: The war may have ended but the killing has not. A shocking murder takes place in the Sussex countryside. Before long, police experts discover a link to another, earlier, killing hundreds of miles away .
The Reckoning (Inspector Madden 4)
What you need to know before your trail
John Madden is a former detective who is still highly regarded by his former colleagues in Scotland Yard. So when they ask for his help, particularly as the victim, Gibson had written to Madden asking to speak to him before he died.
Madden doesn’t know why this letter should be addressed to him or what it could mean and so it starts off a chain of thought….
Madden links these and possibly other murders to the First World war since the victims were all veterans of the war many years previously. The war of course is a sensitive area to investigate and many issues are still buried and secrets there do not want to be disturbed. Secrets and issues that also have their links to the second world war.
In such a tangled web of deceit and foggy memories, Madden has little time to find and protect the next victim. For they know that there will be one.
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
This is the fourth in a series which is being released with new jackets to appeal to new readers. And this is a good start as the jackets are as atmospheric as the foggy and desolate London streets.
Lewes, Sussex and Ballater, Scotland
Both areas where crimes have occurred which have relevance to the case and the fact that these two murders and the link between them, including a twist of fate are what bring former Detective Inspector John Madden into the investigations. Two crimes far apart in distance and MO but not when you look closely..
The Big Smoke
“Madden left the Yard in a taxi that too him north through drab streets where the buildings, unpainted for many years, rubbed shoulders with bomb sites, crates that had once been home to cellar or basements, but were now empty pits.”
In fact the fog seems to be a character of its own as it evokes the misery and loneliness of the countryside too, of other places –
“The early morning mist had lifted for a while during the day but now it was back, lapping at the balustrade and blanketing the garden below. ”
The war is evoked on every page and it’s the little detail such as the contrast between town and country that really illustrates how the war affected everyone .
The optimism felt in the country at large when the war had ended two years earlier had all but evaporated;the expectation that life would soon be back to normal now seemed a distant dream. Food was still rationed, clothing hard to come by, housing in short supply and petrol all but unobtainable. The prose Airth uses is deeply evocative as is the imagery used to evoke the atmospheric bleakness of post war London.
Where Next?
