Description de l’éditeur
The Reckoning is a stunning, atmospheric crime novel teeming with twists and moving between the 1940s, the First and Second World Wars.
The Second World War has ended, leaving a bruised and fragile peace. But this tranquillity is threatened when a shocking murder takes place in the Sussex countryside. Before long, police experts discover a link to another, earlier, killing hundreds of miles away . . .
While Scotland Yard detective Billy Styles struggles to find a link between these two murders, a strange twist of fate brings former Detective Inspector John Madden into the investigations.
As the victim count rises it becomes clear that to catch this serial killer Madden, Styles and young policewoman Detective-Constable Lily Poole must act quickly. But Madden remains haunted by the mysteries at the heart of the case. Why was his name in a letter the second target had been penning, just before he died? Could the real clue to these perplexing murders lie within the victims' pasts? And within his own?
Rennie Airth, the author of River of Darkness, The Blood-Dimmed Tide and The Dead of Winter presents his greatest and most compelling novel yet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like its predecessors, Edgar-finalist Airth's so-so fourth John Madden novel (after 2009's Dead of Winter) transitions from a whodunit to a search for a known killer well before the end. In 1947, someone shoots Oswald Gibson, a retired bank manager, in the head while he's fishing in a stream near Lewes, Sussex. Before his death, a visit from a stranger prompted Gibson to compose a letter to Scotland Yard asking about Madden's whereabouts. Long retired from Scotland Yard, Madden is sure he never met the man. A month earlier, someone shot Dr. Wallace Drummond in his surgery in Ballater, Scotland, "in exactly the same manner." Readers will have little trouble staying ahead of the police as they attempt to figure out what Madden, Gibson, and Drummond could have had in common, and they will be disappointed by a plot hole in the resolution. Less developed than in previous books, Madden comes across as somewhat dull.
