Copses and corpses

What a welcome change from the energetic staccato style of many modern thrillers is this, Rennie Airth’s second book. No short thudding sentences for him, no relentless brutality and spattered swear-words, more a leisurely, gentlemanly unfurling of a story which yet is as bloody and grim as any.

The rape and murder of a Surrey schoolgirl, her face hammered beyond recognition, tax the police from the local constabulary. Her body is found lying beside a stream in a wood frequented by tramps. Gradually a few other cases of young girls with smashed faces come to light in other counties and Scotland Yard is brought in. The investigation widens and enquiries are made as far afield as Germany. As gradually more is revealed about the psychopathic perpetrator so the necessity of catching him before he strikes again becomes more urgent. The year is 1932.

Airth’s earlier book, River of Darkness, set in 1921, introduced the Scotland Yard detective, John Madden, a shrewd policeman and an attractive character but not without a certain melancholy brought on by his experience in the Great War. Now, 11 years later, Madden has left the police force and is living with his wife, Helen, a doctor whom he had met and married in the last book, and enjoying life as a gentleman farmer on the Surrey/Sussex border. It is his misfortune (and the reader’s luck) that he is the one who discovers the body of Alice Bridger, the young murder victim, in the wood. Former colleagues become involved in the case and Madden, to the irritation of his wife, cannot help but get caught up peripherally. His old acuity leads to the linking of vital clues and plays a crucial part in drawing the net tighter round the killer.