Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
As the Great War rages the body of a murdered prostitute is found in the garrison town of Bethune. Prior to her death she had worked at an establishment servicing the needs of senior members of the British Army.
Keen to find the killer without causing further tensions in an already fragile alliance with the French the authorities bring in ex-colonial administrator and former soldier Frank Champion to investigate the case.
As more bodies are discovered Champion must find a way past a wall of silence to uncover crimes that reach into the highest levels of small-town society and the British high command.
This is the first book in what has the makings of being a highly rewarding series, Marsh puts together a neatly crafted mystery with a plausibly damaged central character. The historical element is hugely convincing, he captures perfectly the horrors of war and the feverish desire for what might be their last shot at having a good time felt by soldiers briefly down from the front.
The Bethune he describes is a fly trap drawing them in for the sole purpose of emptying their pockets, and hiding this, and worse, behind a thin veneer of provincial propriety.
In Frank Champion Marsh has created an investigator unwillingly well suited to swim in such murky waters. A man damaged physically and mentally by his experiences, yet still imbued with a powerful and often awkward sense of morality.
Hopefully this will be the first of many journeys into the heart of his personal darkness and that of the first half of the twentieth century.
