Rennie Airth

A few things come to my attention with this reading - first is the burgeoning forensic analysis and psychological profiling aspects; distrusted and dismissed by many at this time, they come to be foundational in crime solving 100 years on. Second, we have a serial killer motivated by who knows what - still the most difficult criminal to catch even now. How baffled they were because as sane and law-abiding folks, the cops just can't put themselves into his head as to how and why he does the show more killing. Even with sophisticated criminal profiling these days, it's a chilling and widely scattered prospect. The third things is how similar the watching for weeks or months is to the Tooth Fairy character in Red Dragon. In both books, the investigators find and catalog the detritus left behind in the places the killer watches. show less

This is an intricate mystery by South African author Airth although set in England in the days following WWI when a man in uniform wearing a gas mask bayonets his victims. The detective is a disconsolate John Madden who survived the war but whose wife and daughter both died in the influenza pandemic. The quirk of Airth's story is that the murderer is revealed to the reader early on. A good story with a dramatic ending, but a tad long.

This book started out far too slowly, but if you skim the first 90 pages, the rest of the story makes up for it well enough. In real life murder investigations hit dead ends and get stalled often enough that I suppose this book presents a realistic picture of murder investigations as they really are, but reading about the part where the investigators are stuck is not really very engaging, especially for nearly 100 pages. The investigators themselves are a bit dense, which allows the reader show more to feel terribly clever for figuring out who the murderer is by ~100pgs before the characters work it out, which is great for the reader's self esteem, but makes the last 100 pages less exciting as we wait for the investigators to catch up.
I like the historical elements that Rennie Airth puts into his murder mysteries, though, enough that I forgave the structural problems in this novel for the interesting perspective Airth provides on WW1 field court martials. The characters are believable and likable, however slow they are at working out murder suspects and scenarios, and the female characters in this novel are well balanced, not caricatures. show less

Fifth in the John Madden series. It's been awhile since i read one of these books, and I was happy to read Rennie Airth's perfectly crafted mysteries again. In this book WWII is over, but London is still dealing with the aftereffects of The Blitz. John and his Helen have moved out to the country, and John now considers himself a farmer. He has managed to put his former life as a Chief Inspector in London behind him. Then his old mentor, retired Chief Inspector Angus Sinclair has asked for show more his help to look into an old ten-year-old murder case-- the slaying of a young woman on a country estate. New evidence has turned up and Sinclair isn't comfortable with how the case ended, even though the man that was arrested confessed and had been executed. It all starts out innocuously enough and Madden is almost convinced that the case had been handled correctly. Then bodies start dropping and it is apparent that injustice has been done. John is forced to re-examine his thought processes and his closeness to one of the people that had been at that unforgettable dinner ten years ago. This is a tight and controlled mystery series, and actually could be used as a teaching tool helping others to learn how to construct a mystery novel and a mystery series. I wish there were more books for me to read, but the next one is the last in this series. Highly recommend. show less