You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘WW2mysteries’ category.
The Spring 2010 issue of The Bottle Street Gazette (the journal of the Margery Allingham Society) features, among many other good things, the text of an address to the Society by the mystery writer Janet Laurence. Laurence talks in some detail of the very great Traitor’s Purse (1941) and summarises with admirable precision the masterstroke of series development which Allingham engineered in this book. Read the rest of this entry »
Joanna Cannan – They Rang Up The Police (1939)
Joanna Cannan – Death At The Dog (1940)
Joanna Cannan – Murder Included (aka A Taste of Murder aka Poisonous Relations (1950)
Read the rest of this entry »
Raymond Postgate – Verdict of Twelve (1940)
Raymond Postgate – Somebody at the Door (1943)
Raymond Postgate (1896-1971) is a fascinating figure (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Postgate ) : a writer whose subjects were wide and various – from The Bolshevik Theory to The Home Wine Cellar (see http://kirjasto.sci.fi/postgate.htm ). Read the rest of this entry »
Ngaio Marsh – Death and the Dancing Footman (1942)
The book is fascinating for many reasons. It is perhaps worth noting that
it is set in Dorset, very near to the location of Overture to Death and a
couple of characters from that book make a minor appearance. But of far more interest is the fact that this is a War book. Read the rest of this entry »
Enigma – Robert Harris (1995)
Tom Jericho, brilliant mathematician and cryptanalyst, has been sent back to Cambridge University after collapsing with exhaustion while involved in his work at Bletchley Park on decoding the Nazis Enigmas cipher. But in March 1943 he is abruptly summoned back; the Germans have changed the cipher and it appears that they may have suspicions that Enigma has been cracked. Read the rest of this entry »
Troubled Midnight – John Gardner (2005)
It is late 1943 and plans for the invasion of Europe, Operation Overlord,
are in full swing when Chief Superintendent Tommy Livermore and Detective Sergeant Suzie Mountford are called out to a vicious double murder in Wantage. Read the rest of this entry »
Last Rights – Barbara Nadel – 2005
It is October 1940, the height of the Blitz, and East End undertaker Francis
Hancock is reliving his nightmares from World War 1; unable to cope with
shelters, he wanders the streets when there is a raid on. During the course
of one such nocturnal adventure he comes across a man who is screaming that he has been stabbed. Read the rest of this entry »
A Good Death : Elizabeth Ironside (2000)
Theo de Cazalle returns to his home in rural France in September 1944 following exile in London during the war. Instead of the joyous homecoming which he expected he finds that his wife, Ariane, has been denounced as a collaborator, her hair has been shaved and that his farm, Bonnemort, was occupied by the Germans – and on the day they left their commanding officer was found at Bonnemort with his throat cut. Read the rest of this entry »
Mysteries set during WW2 have always fascinated me, starting with those which were actually written at the time (including the very great NorM by Christie and Traitor’s Purse by Allingham. The war seems to have come into vogue as a historical mystery setting over the past few years so there are plenty to select from. The style and tone of these mysteries varies widely from the Sayers ‘continuation’ books of Jill Paton Walsh to the transplanted first-person noir of James Benn. In 2008 my second-placed book (kept from the number one spot by Hill – and I sometimes wonder if I ought to exclude Hill as he is almost bound to win if he produces a DandP!) was Laura Wilson’s absolutely terrific Stratton’s War. The market-place is therefore crowded and comparisons spring easily to hand. It is on that context that the subject for my crime-reading group this month happens to be World War 2 mysteries – so I am going to be adding to my knowledge, but also inevitably making comparisons.
(March 2009)
