This is the third book by Barbara Nadel that I have reviewed so you would be right in thinking that I enjoy reading her novels.
After the Mourning is the second book about the undertaker detective Francis Hancock, as
distinct from the eight novels set in Istanbul with Inspector Cetin Ikmen as the police investigator. Both are unusual detectives.
Like Last Rights, After the Mourning is set in the East End of London, the year is 1940 the time when London was suffering in the blitz some of the worst of the German bombing. Francis Hancock inherited his father's undertaking business and lives in West Ham with his mother and two sisters. He is of mixed race, with an Indian mother and an English father, now deceased. As a result of horrific experiences in the trenches in the First World War, Francis, or H as he is often called, finds that the noise, violence and flashing lights of the blitz recall too painfully for him his life in the trenches and he cannot endure the claustrophobia of the Anderson shelter and the consciousness of the weight of earth above them. He knows he will have to die in the open air.
Once again, as in his previous book, the curious mixture of race, religion, violence, courage and humour that made up that part of London in the Second World War is grimly and vividly captured. The new element in this novel is the gypsy/traveller dimension and the way in which the two communities, the East Enders, most of whom in this novel are Jews, co-exist with the gypsies. I am using the language of the time, and that used in the book, where the travellers are called gypsies or gyppos. Both groups have their own customs and beliefs and the gypsies are a curious mixture of music and magic. The magic
is emphasised when one young girl, Lily, sees a vision of a woman, perhaps the spirit of her recently-dead sister or, as the
rest of the East Enders identify her, the Virgin Mary. Another presence in Epping Forest where the gypsies are camping, is the military police who are looking for any citizens with a German connection, to incarcerate them in camps and also one German gypsy in particular who is reckoned to be a German spy.
Two other magical occurences are the Head and the Nail. The Head, guarded by Lucy, is shown as a way of making money and is explained by the author as the Disembodied Head Illusion in a postscript, the Nail, guarded by the German spy/gypsy, is the fourth nail that fell from Christ's Cross which has supernatural powers, and is protected by the gypsies.
The murder of Lily and one of the military police on the same occasion is the central crime of the novel. The solving of the crime is as complicated as one would expect with all the communities involved. I will not try to explain it but leave it to you to work if out for yourself by reading a very interesting novel.
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Rosemary Brown