Judith Cutler is the author of many short stories and some thirty novels. Her most recent is Ring of Guilt (Severn House) the latest in the series featuring antique dealers Griff Tripp and Lina Townend. Check out the other novels on www.judithcutler.com
Any novel opening in 1930’s England on the London Necropolis Company’s private station has got to be a winner, especially in the hands of Martin Edwards, connoisseur extraordinaire of the Golden Age of crime fiction.
Young and beautiful but very mysterious, Rachel Savernake warns Gilbert Payne that he is about to be murdered, even offering him the means of escape. For some reason he has abandoned the safety of Tangier, where he lurked in exile, to attend his mother’s funeral. Such filial piety is rewarded, when he ignores Savernake’s offer, with a brutal death. At the Old Bailey, an obvious murderer is saved from the rope by the intervention of a mysterious army hero with a claw instead of a hand. Outside, an ugly amateur criminologist waylays a bright young crime reporter. Thus, the scene is set.
The plot thickens, tightens, twists. We have Gothic moments in private zoos, remote castles and a storm that outdoes any Hardy-esque pathetic fallacy – they combine in a Grand Guignol of a murder mystery. It ought not to work, especially when mysterious right-wing forces and dysfunctional families are involved, but it does, triumphantly, in the hands of such a fine crime writer as Martin Edwards.
It arrived in my hands just as lock-down started; if self-isolation is extended, make sure you get your hands on a copy too. And if suddenly we are free to roam – well, get your hands on it anyway.
Editor’s note: This novel is the follow-up to Gallows Court
