Published by Constable & Robinson London.
ISBN 978-1-84529-936-1
On a bitterly cold night in London in 1922 George Lassiter witnesses a beautiful woman’s death under very strange circumstances. He is ill and destitute and has been so desperate that he has entered the kitchen of a stranger’s house in search of food and warmth. After the death George rushes out of the house and collapses in the arms of the police. He is taken to hospital where his friend and ex-colleague from his squadron in the war, Jack Haldean, finds him. Bizarrely, the body has disappeared (as if by magic) when a search is made but this is explained satisfactorily as a delusion brought on by his delirium.
The story of George continues as he recovers in Jack’s flat. The two comrades have a shared interest in aeroplanes after their time in a wartime squadron and finding others who share that enthusiasm in peacetime life. Jack realises that the peculiarity of George’s experiences in that house does need explanation, especially as further strange events coalesce around his friend. Gradually it becomes a very complicated story of domestic and external obsessions. Meanwhile Jack’s friend who is a police detective is pursuing other serious cases and asks Jack to help. The atmosphere of a febrile London provides fertile ground in which the story twists and turns.
The mystery constantly deepens and shifts as the story progresses so that, as a reader, you don’t know what to believe. It reaches an exciting climax when, in classic fashion, all is revealed!
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Jennifer S. Palmer
This is the third adventure for Jack Haldean. Its predecessors are A Fete Worse than Death and Mad about the Boy?