My Review (5 stars out of 5)
(Audiobook)
Birmingham, 1943. A twenty-year-old murder sets Chief Inspector Mason on the trail of a killer. Along with his sidekick Constable O’Rourke, he investigates the death of a boy – Robert McFarlane – who was murdered in 1923. Weirdly, although the body was discovered on dry land, the boy appeared to have drowned. When a possible second victim is discovered, the parallels are too alike to ignore and Mason finds a link to the killings that could point directly to the murderer.
This is the first book in the Erdington Mysteries series, though I’d already read the second one (The Automobile Assassinations). The author skilfully recreates the atmosphere of the war years and brings plenty of relevant details to the story without overegging the custard (excuse the pun). The tale itself is an engaging one, and quirky enough to keep me wondering how it would all end. Creating realistic characters and believable relationships, the author avoids the stereotypical tropes of mysteries set in this period. One erroneous detail did stand out – bananas didn’t return to this country (certainly not in the northeast of England) until 1947. My only other niggle is down to the narrator Matt Coles, who does a decent job for the most part but managed to mispronounce the word ‘drawing’ (draw-ring) several hundred times, which spoiled the narration for me.
A quirky, engaging book with a likeable hero.
Colin Garrow 