Troubled Midnight
John Gardner’s latest novel is a wealth of information about the British Homefront circa 1943 as well as a wartime spy thriller. Troubled Midnight is the fourth in his series about Scotland Yard’s Woman Detective Sergeant Suzie Mountford. When the commander of a glider pilot regiment is murdered, possibly during an interrogation, Suzie is recruited by the “Funnies,” as the intelligence services are known, to help find his killer and keep the secrets of the D-Day invasion under wraps.
In the author’s note that precedes Troubled Midnight, Gardner admits the premise of the book has already been used, but: “It’s a good premise and a starting point for the ingredients—the characters.” The killer’s identity will keep fans of the genre guessing until the end. And Gardner’s widespread pop culture references give his readers a real flavor of English life in the middle years of World War II.
