About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

NO KNOWN GRAVE
by Maureen Jennings
McClelland & Stewart, October 2014
352 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0771043295


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Remembrance Day has rolled around once again, and Canadian crime writer Maureen Jennings has drawn on her Inspector Tom Tyler series to remind us of the horrible injuries inflicted on soldiers and civilians alike in the course of modern warfare. It is essentially a locked-room mystery, the events playing out at an isolated country house that has been converted into a convalescent hospital to treat those who have suffered crippling and disfiguring injuries during World War Two. But at a deeper level it is also a compelling account of human suffering, and how violence begets violence. Although rooted in events that occurred well over half a century ago, Jennings' story carries a tragically relevant message today.

St. Anne's Convalescent Hospital, near Ludlow, Shropshire, 1942. On a private estate now given over to tend to the victims of war, violence has somehow found its way into the secluded setting. A member of the staff, Jock McHattie, has been shot to death in his sleep, and one of his sons, apparently wakened by the noise, has also been murdered.

Living in nearby Ludlow, Inspector Tom Tyler gets the call. Arriving on the scene with a handful of officers he learns that one son has survived the killings, but saw nothing. The victim's wife and grown daughter were away at the time and escaped the violence. The crime scene was a house on the grounds of the small hospital where the victim worked, teaching skills that might be useful to the ex-soldiers and others once the war was over.

A small group of Anglican nuns, aided by McHattie and a pair of brothers who served as orderlies, tended to the seventeen patients – thirteen men and four women – who lived at St. Anne's. As suspects, the group is unpromising; it includes several military men who'd been injured in the war, along with a few women who'd been serving and wounded during air raids. There are also several civilians who have suffered injuries. The injuries reflect the brutal violence of modern warfare: there are patients who have been horribly disfigured by fire and flying shrapnel; some are in wheelchairs, others are blind, or missing legs or hands. One is unable to speak, and another is catatonic. While he attempts to cope psychologically with the horrific nature of the injuries before him, Tyler must also try to understand how any one of these severely deformed invalids could have somehow managed to leave a locked hospital, cross the grounds to the victims' cottage, kill them, and return unnoticed to the sanctuary of St. Anne's, all without being discovered.

Adding to his confusion, Tyler begins to receive a series of anonymous typed letters. Each describes the killing of innocents during wartime, but they are so general as to be untraceable.

It doesn't help that Tyler's own life has been turned upside down. His ex-wife Vera has left him, but he's seen her in Ludlow, apparently enjoying life with another man. Ironically, he hasn't laid eyes on his own lover, Clare Somerville, in over two years, knowing only that she's involved in intelligence work somewhere in Switzerland, and unsure whether she's alive or dead.

And while Tyler labours on his case, and carries his private burdens, yet another person will die and others will disappear.

As I noted earlier, NO KNOWN GRAVE is basically a locked-room mystery, but with an added challenge: each of the suspects has no apparent motive; and equally, each, by virtue of physical injuries, is seemingly unable to have committed the crimes, and equally, no one seems to have a motive.

As one might expect, Jennings perfectly captures the atmosphere of the time, and both her characterization and her ear for dialogue is spot on. But more importantly she deftly conveys the effects of modern warfare on the combatants and injured civilians alike and on those who tend to them. No one can read this book and come away unmoved by the suffering these people will carry throughout the rest of their lives. It is indeed a fitting remembrance for those who gave so much.

§ Since 2005 Jim Napier's reviews and interviews have appeared in several Canadian newspapers and on various crime fiction and literary websites, including his own award-winning site, Deadly Diversions. He can be reached at jnapier@deadlydiversions.com

Reviewed by Jim Napier, November 2014

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]