Recent crime fiction

An Empty Death (Orion, £18.99) is the second instalment of the series Laura Wilson began with her previous book, the award-winning Stratton’s War.

An Empty Death (Orion, £18.99) is the second instalment of the series Laura Wilson began with her previous book, the award-winning Stratton’s War. Time’s moved on to 1944, and Hitler’s doodlebugs are spreading fear and destruction through the war-weary city. But Detective Inspector Ted Strattton’s immediate concern is the murder of a doctor on a bombsite near the Middlesex Hospital in Fitzrovia and the linked activities of a medical impostor. Meanwhile, his wife, Jenny, is mourning the absence of their evacuated children, who no longer seem quite hers; to make matters worse, she’s increasingly anxious that she might be pregnant again, and (in an elegant counterpoint to Stratton’s investigation) she’s dealing with a bomb survivor who wrongly believes her husband is an impostor.

Wilson is very good indeed at creating a precise historical context, whether it’s the Strattons’ suburban home or the medical profession in the early 1940s.