The Great Darkness

Jim Kelly

Paperback

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1939, Cambridge. The opening weeks of the Second World War, and the first blackout - The Great Darkness - covers southern England, enveloping the city. Detective Inspector Eden Brooke, a wounded hero of the Great War, takes his nightly dip in the cool waters of the Cam. The night is full of alarms, but in this Phoney War, the enemy never comes.
But daylight reveals a corpse on the riverside, the body torn apart by some unspeakable force. Brooke investigates, calling on the expertise and inspiration of a faithful group of fellow 'nighthawks' across the city, all condemned, like him, to a life lived away from the light. Within hours The Great Darkness has claimed a second victim. War, it seems, has many victims. But what links these crimes of the night?

Book Details

Publisher: Allison & Busby
Publish Date: Aug 23rd, 2018
Pages: 352
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 7.80in - 5.10in - 0.80in - 0.50lb
EAN: 9780749022921
Categories: • Crime• Historical - General• Mystery & Detective - Historical

About the Author

Kelly, Jim: - Jim Kelly was born in 1957 and is the son of a Scotland Yard detective. He went to university in Sheffield, later training as a journalist and worked on the Bedfordshire Times, Yorkshire Evening Press and the Financial Times. His first book, The Water Clock, was shortlisted for the John Creasey Award and he has since won a CWA Dagger in the Library and the New Angle Prize for Literature. He lives in Ely, Cambridgeshire.

Praise for this book

"Kelly has crafted a believable wounded hero, and his re-creation of the first weeks of war in 1939 is wonderful. Another winner from the talented Kelly."--Booklist

"With a strong, effective plot and characters, this is crime fiction from a CWA Dagger in the Library author. If you like crime fiction, this is for you."--Historical Novels Review

"During a blackout a month after the start of WWII, Det. Insp. Eden Brooke, the hero of Kelly's solid series launch, is taking a midnight swim in the River Cam in Cambridge, England, when he overhears a platoon of soldiers on the shore. The men are burying something with a "sticky sweet smell" in a pit. Brooke, a veteran of WWI, later tries to sort out exactly what the men were up to. But before he can get any answers, he learns that an American scientist, Dr. Ernst Lux, who was working at Cambridge University has died, apparently after becoming entangled in the netting of a stray barrage balloon. In the morgue, Brooke notices that Lux's shoes are on the wrong feet, and he suspects that the man's death was no accident. He soon gets on the trail of black marketers and a covert government experiment. Kelly has created twistier puzzles in his Philip Dryden series (The Funeral Owl, etc.), but he makes good use of his chosen setting to portray the challenges of domestic policing during wartime. Fans of TV's Foyle's War will be delighted."--Publishers Weekly

"World War II is well covered in literature and history, but in The Great Darkness, first volume in the new Nighthawks series, Jim Kelly comes up with a fresh take--at least for historical fiction readers... The prose is direct, bordering sometimes on blunt, but always clear. The author ably captures the city, region, and period without overdescription--an impressive feat given how much occurs in the shadows... Readers, of course, will keep turning pages until they know the truth, too."--The New York Journal of Books

"Fans of Jim Kelly and historical mysteries, especially those centered around WWII, will definitely want to read The Great Darkness. Everything about it is unique."--gumshoereview.com