Clothes Make the Murder

On the Kirkus Reviews Web site today, I review A Bespoke Murder, the opening installment of Edward Marston’s new “Home Front Detective Series,” set in Britain during World War I. As I write in that post:

A Bespoke Murder follows a long line of mystery and thriller novels in which World War I or its aftermath are integral to the storytelling. Robert Goddard’s In Pale Battalions (1988), Charles Todd’s A Test of Wills (1996), Rennie Airth’s River of Darkness (1999) and Max Allan Collins’ The Lusitania Murders (2002) are merely a few that have come before. This being the opening chapter in a new series, however, Marston--who’s best known for his Elizabethan theater mysteries and more recent succession of books about “Railway Detective” Robert Colbeck (The Excursion Train)--should have opportunities to explore the war’s impact on life and politics beyond the battlefield in a way those other writers did not. He certainly seems to have the motivation to do so.

You will find the full critique here.