Is spring in the air? The next story from Inspector Eden Brooke’s wartime Cambridge is now set to appear in late March. I’m delighted with the designs from Allison & Busby – I think they’ve caught a subtle brooding menace in the lamplit streets of the old city.
After a break of four years, I’m back with Brooke and The Borough police force as they tackle crime on the Home Front. This time there’s a saboteur at work at a factory making periscopes for submarines.
Somehow the saboteur is striking while the precisous periscopes are en route to the naval base in Barrow. How can this be, when the van is in almost constant motion, and accompanied by police and – eventually, Brooke himself?
Meanwhile a body is found in one of the city’s public shelters, and their are fears a blackout killer may be on the loose. Enquiries lead Brooke out to the sleepy village of Little Wilbraham, and a gone-to-seed hotel called The Laurels.
It’s clear that this country hideaway is a ‘Funk Hole’ – a place for the rich and idle to while away the war away from falling bombs and food shortages.
But The Laurels has another kind of clientele – young students who have failed their army medicals. Insteads they’re given jobs on the Home Front. But in their spare time they’re clearing making money. Brooke’s suspects the Black Market.
When a second body turns up in a shelter the link to The Laurels is clear: both victims were once residents. But they checked out a year ago, and have tropical sun-tans. Where have they been in war-torn Europe?
The investigation turns out to be one of Brooke’s trickiest. But the solutions to both puzzles are beguilingly simple. In fact, child’s play.
I hope you enjoy the latest Brooke.
