Severn House
Featuring: Harry Barnard; Kate O'Donnell
208 pages ISBN: 0727886053 EAN: 9780727886057 Kindle: B01FHNMMZK Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
This atmospheric, London based, 1960s crime novel DEEP
WATERS will grab your attention at once. The Great Train
Robbers have just been tried, and a bar owner in Soho has
disappeared. He is supposed to be giving evidence soon at
his brother's trial, who attempted to kill him. Maybe
he's changed his mind, or got cold feet, or someone has
taken steps to remove him.
Detective Sergeant Harry Barnard used to be mates with Ray
Robertson back at school, but they parted ways. The bar and
boxing gym owner didn't take kindly to having
a policeman around, but they managed to stay on slightly
friendly terms. Now Barnard has to find Robertson before
the trial. But instead he finds Robertson's ex-wife and Rod
Miller the boxing trainer shot dead in the gym.
Sprinklings of London and English history are shared by
Barnard's Liverpool girlfriend
Kate O'Donnell, a photographer who went to art college with
John Lennon. Homes destroyed during the Blitz are being
rebuilt. On a trip to Canvey Island on the Thames Estuary,
Kate learns how a storm surge flooded the evacuated
Londoners, killing fifty people. Kate also befriends a
fairground woman whose young son has
vanished on the estuary. Since the woman is at odds with her
husband the police
asume the boy is with his father. The Essex mudflats
hide more than one secret.
As this is set in 1960s we see the affairs of the day, the
methods, equipment and concerns of the police at the time.
Breaking up the empires of East End gangsters is important
work and they don't have much but fingerprinting and a
doctor's report at their disposal. I enjoyed the location
and time with references
to pop stars and to matters which have altered in the
intervening years in addition to the retro
police work. Kate learns that outside her London
haunts, attitudes to women are positively medieval. Yes,
times have not changed. While she and Barnard spend a good deal
of time apart the sergeant is definitely concerned for her
welfare.
Patricia Hall has done a splendid job of bringing crime in
1960s
London to life in DEEP WATERS.
A past crime causes new murder in the latest
intriguing Kate O’Donnell mystery
1964. Detective Sergeant Harry Barnard has been ordered to
track down notorious Soho club owner Ray Robertson, who
hasn’t been seen for several days. The case takes on a
greater urgency when a battered body is discovered at the
gym Ray owns. Is Ray the killer … or is he a victim?
Photographer Kate O’Donnell meanwhile is working on a
feature about the regeneration of Canvey Island, finally
being rebuilt after the devastating East Coast floods of
1953. But as Kate and Harry are about to discover, the
Canvey Island floods, the murder and Ray Robertson’s
disappearance are connected in more ways than one …
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