The Camden Murder (Blitz Detective, 7)
This is the seventh in the Blitz Detective series set in London in World War Two, featuring Detective Inspector John Jago of London’s East End police. Seconded to work in Scotland Yard, Jago and his ever-present young assistant Peter Cradock are summoned to attend the death of a chocolate salesman Les Latham, whose charred body is found in a blazing car in Camden, in north London.
This is an excellent police procedural, authentic and detailed in historical context. The emphasis is on uncovering evidence through interviews and solid police work rather than the construction and solution of a convoluted whodunnit. As Jago investigates Latham’s life, all sorts of skeletons come clattering out of his and other people’s cupboards. Latham was hugely ambitious, a trait which led to his murder. Detective Constable Cradock seems to be still just a little too naïve in his role as the Watson-like foil to Jago’s wisdom, experience and superior detection—the author uses Cradock’s banal questions and analysis to allow Jago to amplify his thinking for the reader to assess the evidence. And Cradock’s continual yearning for food does get a little monotonous as a long-running gag. Nevertheless, this is excellent historical fiction, and Jago is a fundamentally decent, likeable sort of chap, and the reader is always wholly on his side in his battle to maintain law and order in war-torn London.
