Most crime novels offer a curious kind of escape, to places that jag the nerves and worry the mind. Their rides of suspense give a good thrill, but it’s rarely a comfortable one. If it’s cosy detection we’re after, we usually look to the past, as Dylan Thomas clearly did: ‘Poetry is not the most important thing in life… I’d much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.’ Rennie Airth, with his series of John Madden mysteries, provides a middle way, and one that in many ways feels altogether nobler.
The Reckoning is the fourth of Madden’s cases. It sees our man in retirement from his role in Scotland Yard, a few years after the conclusion of the second world war. But it is an earlier war that must now preoccupy Madden when he is reluctantly pulled back into policing and his past by a murder whose victim had been on the verge of contacting him.
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