Today’s team review is from Liz, she blogs here https://lizannelloyd.wordpress.com/
Liz has been reading Listed Dead by Jan Edwards
You can tell from the title that this volume of investigations by Bunch Courtney and Chief Inspector Wright involves more than one fatality. Not only are people losing their lives in combat or in city air raids but now there is a murderer about, working through a list of rich young people whose supper club meets up at the Café de Paris in London. When the first deaths occur close to Bunch’s home, she discovers she knows the victims so she will be indispensable, assisting William Wright with his investigations. He doesn’t seem keen for her to follow up leads but that is probably because she is putting herself in great danger.
The lifestyle of these self-centred young people contrasts with the suffering of the military forces and also with the ordinary folk, but it reflects the social structure of the Sussex countryside before the war. Now in 1940 there is another dimension and people like Bunch put many hours of hard work into the war effort. She juggles care for her Land Girls who run the estate, worry about her sick mother and determination to find the murderer. Her relationship with William moves between close companionship and detachment reflecting the complex social rules and busy working life they have.
This series gives an interesting picture of the home front during World War Two and the difficulties experienced when people’s homes and land were taken over by the military authorities. We feel the fear and danger of a London air raid and the attempt to continue country life as it had been pre-war. In Listed Dead, Bunch finds herself in several frightening situations as she gradually works out the complex mystery. A most enjoyable read.
November 1940. The Battle of Britain has only just ended and the horror of the Blitz is reaching its height.
Two deaths in rapid succession on the Sussex Downs brings Bunch Courtney and Chief Inspector Wright together once more. What could possibly link a fatal auto accident with the corpse in a derelict shepherd’s hut? The only clue the pair have is a handwritten list of the members of a supper club that meets at London’s Café de Paris.
Two of those on that list are now dead and the race is on to solve the mystery before any more end up on the mortuary slab.
Rosie Amber 