A commonplace killing

This book is introduced in the Foreward by the husband of the author who talks us through the difficult journey that his wife underwent while writing this novel, her battle with cancer that would eventually take her life before she completed it, or so he thought. He talks about finding her written notes that contained the last few chapters in their most basic form and so with their inclusion he went ahead and published this novel as she would have wanted him to do.

It's a tale set in a dark and dismal post war London, where rationing is still going on and people are perfectly willing to take things from a booming black market in order to supplement the meagre amounts they are living on despite the fact the war is now over and the men are home. The book opens with the discovery of a woman's body in an area of bombed out land in the east end of London, the detective investigating the murder has no idea who she is or how she comes to be lying strangled in an area of waste ground with no identification and no clue as to who is responsible for her death.

The book flits back and forward between the life of the victim Lilian Frobisher and the investigation into her death and it's circumstances. We learn that Lilian's life is not a happy one, her husband Walter has returned from war but their loveless marriage is still no better than it was before the war and in fact for Lilian life was better during the war when she'd happily spend a night with a GI or soldier in order to get access to the perks they could offer her such as stockings or a little lipstick. In fact her husband's return is making her so unhappy she dreams of running away and starting a new life where her looks will allow her to trade for a better standard of life.

From the detective's perspective he finds himself dismissing the case as one that is now ‘commonplace' in the landscape postwar, many woman are to be found selling themselves on street corners and the streets are full of many dodgy characters who will happily sell illegal wares on the blackmarket and crime really is the only career which seems to be paying.

This book was for me a really interesting one. At the time I'd been watching the BBC show, “Further Back In Time For Dinner” and I happened to be watching the week about the 1940's where they explored the attitudes to people being offered black market rations and the struggle to survive on the meagre amounts of meat that families were offered and the dreadful reconstituted foods that they had to survive on. It helped me to bring the time frame of this book to life and to perhaps understand more the state of mind that Lilian found herself in. At times she appears to be a difficult character, one who isn't always likeable but one who is clearly long suffering, struggling to find glamour in a very austere and bleak post war world and who just longs to hang onto her youth for a little longer before it fades forever. She doesn't have years ahead to wait for the good times to return as then she will have faded forever into the background where younger girls are more appealing.

For me this book was a read that kept my interest throughout, I found myself thinking about it and it's characters throughout the day and they would keep calling me back, longing to find out more about the murder and how Lilian did come to find herself strangled. Subsequently though the ending for me didn't quite provide a fulfilling package. Now yes, we need to bear in mind that perhaps it's author only just managed to get her ideas outlined for the concluding chapters before unfortunately she passed away and you do find a difference in the descriptiveness of the last section, however for me it was around the murderer and the reasons for their actions.

I don't want to give anything away but I found that it never fully offered an explanation other than it was an effect of war. An unfortunate incident caused by a man who the war has left wounded and who cannot provide any more explanation than that. I would have personally liked a little more background to this character as he did only pop into the story in the first person tense on a couple of occasions and it might have been nice to have read a little more.

Overall, a good read and enjoyable if you like war time settings and one I think will stand out in my memory, for me a more conclusive explanation for the murder would have made it a better more comprehensive read.