Colonel Russell before the War had four sons; now he has four widowed daughters-in-law, each facing the aftermath in her own iconic way. Then an old friend of the Colonel’s dead sons resurfaces, reawakening tales of wartime espionage — enemy spies preying on the unwitting families at home — and is he really who he says? When the Colonel is thrown bodily through an upstairs window of his London Club, Eric Peterkin is once again called to investigate.
Eric Peterkin’s second mystery is about recognising that war impacts more than just the men who there are wheels turning behind the scenes and strings being pulled from afar, and the people we leave behind might ultimately leave us behind. Set in the 1920s and the aftermath of the Great War, the story honours the period by reflecting the changing social mores, the gradual emancipation of women, the questioning of tradition, and the illusion of innocence — the truth behind the facade, against a backdrop of ongoing war traum
I loved it!
It’s a strange story that starts as a London-based murder-mystery adventure set in a gentleman’s club, evolves into a story of the Great War‘s aftermath and veterans, and ends as a very dark tale of deception.
Eric Peterkin is taking up the post of secretary of the gentleman’s club, receiving it from the hands of the very popular Colonel Russell, who once had four sons and now has four widowed daughters-in-law.
When a veteran who fought alongside Colonel Russell’s elder son arrives at the club, a carefully crafted balance begins to crack.
This was the best part of the story for me.
It’s about coping with the past, finding a new start, and the fact that sometimes this involves lies and deceit. Not always in good faith.
I loved how the story started, inside the club, a place suspended in time, where men carry on their lives in the shadow of friends, sons, brothers who never came back. The war is a constant presence that colours everything these men think and feel.
There’s something more sad than decadent in the club’s sense of something lost.
The theme of coping with war, which will become central to the story, starts out in a very soft way, almost like an undercurrent that may never come to the fore.
And instead it does.
The four widows are phenomenal characters. So very different from one another, they are all very volitive women, even the one who seems more innocent. Over the years, they have created a strong bond that makes them almost real sisters, and you always wonder whether you can trust them or if they are deceiving you.
In this very male-centred story, these four women shone the most. Their personality, their motives, their secrets, and not least, their bond.
But all the characters are fantastic. None of them is totally ‘good’, all of them carry their own wounds. The narration never gives in to sympathy or an easy way out.
It is a very harsh story, and the characters who inhabit it are just as tough, complicated and full of darkness.
Even if the story starts in this very exclusive club, it then goes out to the battlefields and what remains of them, both physically and metaphorically.
Solving Colonel Russell’s murder means delving into events that happened in the war, secrets and deceit that won’t stay in the past.
Watching these men cope with war, and its aftermath, was the most investing experience.
It is a complex mystery with many layers, each carrying its own theme, but all come together in the end in a conclusion that is hard to take.
I couldn’t put it down!
A Pretender’s Murder
Excerpt
“Peterkin! Introduction won’t be necessary, I trust? Come, join us! I mean, this is your personal armchair, isn’t it?”
The Colonel indicated the chair in which Eric usually sat to evaluate his manuscripts – his Usual Armchair – but Eric smiled and shook his head. “Hardly! I doubt the club wuartermaster – if we had one – would take kindly to any appropriation of club property.”
“Then we’d better take it up with the club secretary. Hang on, that’s you now, isn’t it? Gentlemen, let us raise a glass to Mr. Eric Peterkin, successor to old Jacob Bradshaw: may we always be in such good hands!”
“Hear, hear!” laughed the men around them, and Eric, surprised at being toasted in such public fashion, could only murmur an awkward acknowledgement. For a moment, he thought he saw old Bradshaw in the shadows, a genial smile dying under calculating eyes. Who was Eric Peterkin to usurp the old man’s place?
“You’ll do marvellously,” the Colonel assured him, dispelling Bradshaw’s ghost. “I knew your father – a fine fellow – and if even half of what I’ve heard of you is true, then I can say with some authority that he’d have been pleased and proud to call you his heir.”
“One does one’s best,” Eric replied with a self-deprecating wave of his hand. The Colonel’s reception was growing on him too warm for comfort.
“I knew your mother, too. Not well, admittedly, but enough to know she was a lady.”
Was the Colonel trying to imply something?
The late Magdalen Peterkin, beloved wife of Colonel Berkely Peterkin, had been Chinese, and that heritage came out strongly in the features of her son. Few people really care in the trenches, there being more somewhat pressing matters at hand; in peacetime, however…
The Thursday Quotables was originally a weekly post created by Lisa Wolf for her book blog **Bookshelf Fantasy** . It isn’t a weekly post anymore, not even for Lisa, but just like her, I still love to share my favourite reads on Thursdays and I still use the original template which included an excerpt.
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