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Oxford
1946 and ex-Special Operations Executive agent Duncan Forrester
is back from the war and working in the university's Ancient
History Department as a junior fellow. One evening at a reading
of the sagas by a visiting Norwegian academic the peace is
shattered by a hail of broken glass and the sight of a body
tumbling to the earth. The dead man was an unpopular colleague,
and soon the police make an arrest. But Forrester is sure
the man is innocent, and sets out to prove it.
This is the first in a new series and it certainly hits the
ground running, managing to keep up the pace with Olympic
proficiency. You can almost taste bleak, austere 1946 with
this author's brief but evocative descriptions; the war having
changed everybody, worries about Communism, lack of goods
in the shops and a general feeling of uncertainty. The plot
is an imaginative mix of Viking sagas, Norwegian fjords, a
shattered postwar Germany and hints of black magic, something
like Dennis Wheatley meets Inspector Morse. There is something
going on all the time, whether an exciting chase through the
forest, a description of academic life in Oxford or Forrester
getting to finally unmask the killer (I didn't guess whodunit).
Forrester himself is a believable mix of the intellectual
and the man of action, holding his own in both college politics
and out in the field having adventures. The whole is a recipe
for success and I hope will be the first of many; if they
are all as good as this it certainly ought to be.
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