“The ghost climbed out of a hackney carriage”.

A arresting start to the second Rachel Savernake story by Martin Edwards and one up to which the rest of the novel largely lives. Contemporary takes on the classic Golden Age detective tale usually promise more than they deliver, but the plot here is as meaty and complex as any dish served up by the Queens and Kings of Crime.Graveyards, country houses and louche clubs all feature. The cast is varied and brightly characterful.

Rachel is an interestingly complex woman, with a suitably grim and deprived, yet privileged background, so archetypically British in its way. She also voices some pertinent thoughts on murder:-

“Improvisation?” He breathed out noisily. “Ridiculous. People don’t improvise when it comes to murder.”
“Because murder is so solemn and serious?” She shook her head. “Wrong. It’s precisely when you’re dealing with something out of the ordinary that you need to improvise. There’s no instruction manual for murderers.”

This is a very readable, neatly-crafted and well-written work.

Highly recommendable.

Thank you to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for the digital review copy.

This is the sequel to Gallows Court with the formidable Rachel Savernake and her band of secret crime-fighters and it does not disappoint. Well written, suspenseful and clever - it kept me guessing to the last page. Martin Edwards excels in this period genre and I can't wait for the next in the series. Bravo!

This is one of those books where I felt it would have been advisable to read the authors previous works. Rachel Savernake was a great character but I didn’t feel I really understood her back story.

I found this quite a confusing read with multiple storylines all tangled together. I couldn’t quite decide if the author intended us to be confused, or if it were supposed to be clearer how each part of the story fit together.

Not really my cup of tea, but thanks anyway to NetGalley and the publishers for my copy of this book.

Set in 1930, this is the second book featuring the formidable Rachel Savernake. A series of murder cases in which there is a question over the verdict, a seedy Soho nightclub and a renown criminologist set the scene for this mystery. The style of the book is very much in the tradition of the golden age of mystery writing.
I found the story rather confusing at first, so many characters and seemingly unrelated narrative threads. This is the first book by this author I have read so wasn't sure if reading the first book of the series would have helped. Some of the characters, particularly the Trueman family, were likeable but many others lacked depth. The plot had many twists and surprises but the story became increasing improbable as progressed. I felt that there was lots of potentially good ideas but the big reveal at the end was implausible.

I have not read the other book in this series so was unfamiliar with Rachel Savernake and indeed this author. Unfortunately I felt there were a lot of errors that could have maybe been sorted with a more forceful editing hand. I appreciated that not just the time period but also the writing style is a more antiquated one, a throwback to mysteries of old. But I was unable to connect entirely with the book when so many of the narrative choices seemed convoluted. I would have loved a story about a female criminologist in the 1930s. I would have enjoyed a story about a shadow government pulling strings behind the scenes. I would have been thrilled with a story about murky private clubs in London. Instead I got so many ideas, people and story strands thrown about that it was hard to keep track of it all. As the final act was revealed, none of it made any sense and I was left a bit disappointed. A good yarn but sadly too unrealistic for my own tastes.