The Dead of Winter - Hardcover

Airth, Rennie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670020931 ISBN 13: 9780670020935

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2009

Synopsis

A former police investigator tries to solve the murder of his employee, Rosa Novak, following clues through war-torn Europe in 1944, and discovers a connection between the victim, a murdered Parisian furrier, a member of the Resistance, and stolen diamonds.

About this title

About the Author

Rennie Airth was born in South Africa and worked as a foreign correspondent for Reuters before becoming a novelist. He is the author of two other John Madden mysteries, River of Darkness, a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel and a Macavity Award for Best Mystery, and a New York Times Notable Book, and The Blood-Dimmed Tide.

Reviews

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle The classic mystery series starred a detective who might have been preserved in amber. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Lew Archer and Travis McGee (among others) were fixed points in a timeless but corpse-littered world. They didn't age or get drafted or have kids. Each new case -- packaged as a short story or novel of its own -- displayed the sleuth at the height of his or her powers: canny, fearless and several steps ahead of readers. If he or she revealed an occasional flaw, it was romantic or amusing (Holmes's cocaine use, Poirot's palaver about consulting his little gray cells). Occasionally, a character might refer to a past case, but most challenges were self-contained and detached from the messy baggage of real life. Things are different now. Many a series detective is as subject to the vicissitudes of time as you and I. Take Ruth Rendell's Chief Inspector Wexford, who has grown older as the series named for him progresses, as have his wife and daughters and policeman sidekick. But Wexford and company age in small increments, as they should if the staggeringly prolific Rendell is to keep featuring them in book after book. Enter John Madden, protagonist of three fine novels, all set in England, by South African-born journalist-turned-novelist Rennie Airth. Each time we meet Madden, a decade or so has whooshed by. He first appeared in "River of Darkness," when he bore fresh scars -- physical and mental -- from his fighting days in the just-ended Great War. In "The Blood-Dimmed Tide" it was suddenly 1932, and Madden was married with children. Now, in "The Dead of Winter," we leap forward to 1944, and the Madden children are grown up enough to be serving their country in another war. Like the first two novels, "The Dead of Winter" centers on a culprit who kills and kills again. But while the earlier villains were psychos who committed murder out of some twisted compulsion, this fellow is more complex. Marko -- to give him one of several names he goes by -- is reputed to be a graduate of the Black Hand, the gang of anarchists that assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, triggering World War I. Marko is always up for a killing, but it usually has a practical side: removing those who can identify him. Anyone who happens to see him commit a theft had better draw up a will, for Marko is a master of the garrote. Airth makes much of that odious tool, which, when slipped around a victim's neck and pulled tight, cuts off the air supply and is almost impossible to overcome. "After all, it's the true assassin's weapon, isn't it?" a former colleague of Madden's asks rhetorically. "The wire? Silent; bloodless. And it takes a certain kind of man to use it, wouldn't you say?" Indeed it does, and Marko has been that kind of man for quite some time. We first meet him in the prologue (which takes place in Paris, 1940), when he garrotes a Jewish furrier who has just exchanged cash for diamonds, the better to smuggle a nest egg out of Europe while fleeing the Nazis. But four years later Marko, now in England, makes a big mistake when he puts the wire around the neck of a Polish woman from his past whom the Maddens happen to have recently employed. Though John Madden has long since left police work to run the family farm, he still has friends on the force, former colleagues who are always after him to come back. This time they're happy to have him in an advisory role, which, as you might guess, evolves into full-blown case-solving. Airth's books are old-fashioned in one way: Madden is seamlessly admirable. He may live with demons, but this has to do with having experienced the horrors of trench warfare and the deaths of his first wife and child, not with any inherent flaws. At times, his goodness verges on the two-shoes variety. Yet he solves cases by plain, hard work -- interviewing witnesses, following up on even tenuous leads, drawing upon his knowledge of the community in which he lives -- and not, as Holmes and Poirot often do, by tossing off thunderbolts of you'll-never-guess insight. In an era when our real-life heroes tend to have feet of thick, grubby clay, it can be bracing to spend time with a man who is naturally but not implausibly noble. So on to the 1950s, I would imagine, when Madden will be in his 60s but surely not too decrepit to take on another case.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Set in London and rural England in 1944, Airth's fine third mystery to feature ex–Scotland Yard inspector John Madden (after The Blood-Dimmed Tide) shows how five years of war and an overstretched police force have brought a new dimension to lawbreaking, with a serious rise in murders, thefts and extortion. Even decent citizens aren't above black-market dealings. The murder of Rosa Nowak, a young Polish woman, on a deserted London street during a blackout appears to be another act of random violence. Since Nowak worked on Madden's farm, his reputation ensures that his former colleagues thoroughly investigate the case, which leads to continental Europe, stolen diamonds and a string of murders, including that of a Jewish furrier. Airth takes a perceptive look at the frayed emotions of his fully realized characters as he carefully lays the groundwork for the next book in this rewarding series. (July)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670020931
• ISBN 13: 9780670020935
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 409