On the first night of the Blitz, a corpse is discovered in a van in the back streets of West Ham. Detective Inspector John Jago recognizes the dead man as local Justice of the Peace Charles Villiers. But then a German bomb obliterates all evidence.
Villiers, not a popular man, was both powerful and feared. As the sirens wail, the detective must start matching motive to opportunity – and it doesn’t help when his boss foists an intrusive American journalist on him.
Jago soon discovers the dead man held many secrets, some reaching back to World War I. A lot of people wished Villiers dead – and an air raid is a good time to conceal a murder.
My review:
This was a new author for me, but I really enjoyed the book. I don't tend to read many books set in England, so that was different and it is also set in a different time period than most of the suspense novels that I read are set in, World War II.
I liked the main character, and found his methods of crime solving in that time period interesting, and his efforts were hampered since the crime scene was destroyed by a bombing. The book wasn't as fast paced as I usually am used to in suspense novels I read, but it was not boring and kept my interest throughout the book. And though I wouldn't call the book Christian fiction, it was clean and I didn't notice any bad language,
Along with the suspense, there is history covered of the War which adds an interesting dimension to the story.
About the author:
Mike Hollow was born in West Ham, on the eastern edge of London, and grew up in Romford, Essex. He studied Russian and French at the University of Cambridge and then worked for the BBC and later Tearfund. In 2002 he went freelance as a copywriter, journalist and editor. He's a published poet, and nowadays when not writing about the Blitz Detective he makes his living as a translator.
Direct Hit is available from Lion Publishing, distributed by Kregel Publishing.
Thanks to Kregel for the review copy.
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